My earliest memory of my little sister Alison was of a summer holiday at the seaside, running across sandy beaches, eating ice cream and paddling in the sea.
The last time I saw her, she was lying in a hospice bed, aged 46, breathing with the aid of oxygen tanks, weak and frail.
Over three years, what should have been treatable breast cancer ravaged her body, and Alison died far too soon.
Hers wasn’t a case of medical failings or missed diagnoses. Instead, like the supermodel Elle Macpherson – who last week said she had gone against the advice of 32 doctors when she was diagnosed with breast cancer – Alison also refused conventional medicine in favour of a natural approach.
Except, for my sister, that was a death sentence.
Deborah and her sister Alison, left, who refused conventional medicine in favour of a natural approach when she was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 32
Elle has admitted turning down a mastectomy, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and Alison followed a similar path, refusing to have chemotherapy or take the hormone-suppressing drugs that oncologists recommended.
Instead, she thought she could cure herself with alternative therapies, spending £50,000 on everything from a carrot juice retreat on Gozo to clay baths.
Because of Alison’s experience, when, in December 2020, I was told I had breast cancer, I wanted every conventional medical procedure thrown at it.
Born three years apart, Alison and I were always different. While I was academic, she was sporty, which meant we weren’t terribly close growing up. But once we’d left school, we’d confide in one another about everything.
While I went on to pursue a career in governance, Alison became a personal trainer, with neither of us marrying or having children.
She was incredibly fit and was rarely ill, but always preferred to shun mainstream medicines such as antibiotics and would take paracetamol only as a last resort; ironically, I think it was all part of her wanting to make sure her body was in best possible shape.
Unfortunately, she took that approach to a new level when she was diagnosed with cancer.
Alison always had a great sense of humour and joked that it hadn’t taken much effort to find the lump in her right breast as she was only an AA cup.
But very quickly things became serious. Tests revealed the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and it was recommended she have a lumpectomy and the affected lymph nodes removed, followed by chemotherapy. She’d also need to take the hormone-suppressing drug tamoxifen for several years to help prevent a recurrence.
But while she had the surgery, she refused any other treatment.
Would it have made a difference if someone had accompanied her to appointments and tried to persuade her to listen to her consultant? We’ll never know, because she was stubborn and incredibly independent so insisted on going alone.
After Elle Macpherson was diagnosed, she said she retreated to Arizona and dedicated eight months to ‘focusing and devoting every single minute to healing’ herself. While Alison didn’t have a multi-millionaire’s budget, her approach did have similarities.
Enthusing so publicly about alternative therapy, Elle Macpherson did, gives dangerous hope to extremely vulnerable cancer sufferers, writes Deborah Tidy
She likened her cancer to a common cold, which would be ‘over in no time’, as if healthy living could cure her.
She pored over stories on the internet about cancer patients who attributed their survival to alternative therapies or diet and lifestyle changes, and believed that chemo was a money-making conspiracy concocted by the big pharmaceutical companies. Not even the discovery of a second lump, this time in her left breast, six weeks after the initial diagnosis, was enough to persuade her that she should reconsider.
In fact, this time she even refused surgery, convinced that the original lumpectomy had caused cancerous cells to spread.
I was distraught. I tried so hard to dissuade her, but she wouldn’t budge. Our mother – who died of a stroke while Alison was ill – was also incredibly upset, but my sister remained determined to overcome cancer with no medical intervention. It was incredibly distressing and I felt powerless.
Within weeks of her diagnosis, Alison put her house on the market and moved in with a close friend. Using the profits from the sale, in three years she blew over £50,000 on holistic medicine. The first alternative therapy Alison tried was a set of expensive blood tests with a ‘doctor’ who claimed they could find out what toxins in her system had caused the cancer.
She swallowed every word when told that she’d been poisoned by fake tan, sleeping under a duvet with synthetic filling and her mercury dental fillings.
So rather than have another operation and chemo, she ditched the fake tan, bought a feather duvet and spent hundreds of pounds having her fillings replaced with porcelain ones.
Upon the expensive advice of one so-called expert, she drank her own urine; on the say-so of another, she switched to a vegan diet. Then she spent thousands of pounds on months at a retreat on the Mediterranean island of Gozo, where she lived on a diet solely of carrot juice – a regime so extreme that even her resolve cracked and she flew home.
Back in the UK, she forked out for regular magnetic clay baths at one clinic and liver ‘flushes’ prescribed by another – basically surviving on raw vegetable juice and potassium-rich foods. She took all sorts of vitamins, and invested in an earthing blanket, which claimed to reconnect the body with the earth’s healing electrons.
Alison remained adamant that she was getting better, even though every time I met her for lunch she’d rock constantly because she was in so much pain; It was torture seeing her like this.
Alison also made the journey to a Sussex clinic run by a Harley Street cardiologist, lured by the idea that high doses of intravenous vitamin C would kill cancer cells. Shame on him.
Her final trip there was just a month before she died and she fell so ill that our local hospital in Yorkshire had to send an ambulance to collect her, admitting her straight to the hospice for end-of-life care.
Deep down, I suspect by then she knew that had she had surgery, chemo and tamoxifen, the outcome would have been different. But right to the end she’d insist that she’d leave the hospice well enough to buy a little house with a garden and a few chickens.
Her death, when it came, was both a tragedy and a relief of sorts because of the immense pain she was in – she had even refused morphine.
Three years after Alison died I got my own breast cancer diagnosis, which was found to be triple negative – the deadliest form of breast cancer, which tends to be genetic. Further tests revealed I had the BRCA1 gene; I now suspect Alison did, too. Our father had died of cancer as well.
I had a double mastectomy, my ovaries removed (the BRCA1 gene dramatically raises the risk of ovarian cancer) and 12 rounds of chemotherapy.
Yes, it made me incredibly ill, and I still have side-effects such as a dry mouth and aching joints, but I finished my 14 months of treatment in August 2021 and I am still cancer-free – and that’s down to the medical treatment.
It strikes me that Elle Macpherson took a chance and she got lucky. But enthusing so publicly about alternative therapy gives dangerous hope to extremely vulnerable cancer sufferers.
Ironically, given Alison’s view of the big drug companies, there’s huge money to be made out of alternative cures. But it’s costing people their lives – and, in my case, a much-loved sister.
If I can warn people about these charlatans and save one person from going down the same path, then I will feel that at least Alison’s death won’t have been totally in vain.
As told to Sadie Nicholas.