Hanne Foighel, at The Blogs

Aug 11, 2020, 10:02 AM

Bells, freedom and chemotherapy

With ovarian cancer, life is what happens when you are in chemotherapy.

Jul 18, 2020, 7:09 PM

Death is not the man with the scythe

Life is a gift. Death is part of life.

Jun 30, 2020, 8:09 PM

There is a Jewish gene involved in cancer

I live in a constant internal struggle between my inner scientist, who wants to understand and explain everything, and the random fact that there (apparently) is no reasonable, logical, or hereditary explanation of why I have cancer. I am a...

Jun 20, 2020, 10:21 PM

It is all about living life

Consider life a pizza. It has to be eaten slice by slice, sometimes small slices, sometimes large ones, but if you try to swallow it all at once, you suffocate

Jun 11, 2020, 10:24 PM

There is so much we give one another

Every Friday I received the most generous rounds of big saltwater-spiced hugs and kisses and encouraging remarks that comforted and snugged me like a golden energy-sheath

Jun 2, 2020, 8:57 PM

The ever present threat of recurrance

NED stands for: No Evidence of Disease. It covers the unspeakable threat always in the back of the mind. The threat that cancer may recur. Again, and again.

May 22, 2020, 1:23 PM

In an operating theater or being interrogated ?

For a split second, the crazy but not at all unlikely thought runs through my mind; that instead of being in a hospital operating theater, I have ended up in a KGB interrogation cellar

May 13, 2020, 3:16 PM

Helping others eventually is helping yourself

Today it makes sense in a completely new way that my grandmother in her day took responsibility for raising money for cancer research, and that I, as a teenager, naturally became part of that effort

May 3, 2020, 4:50 PM

Of cancer, mice, (men) and women

I hate the term chemotherapy. Never use it. I call it chemistry. Or when I want to be more specific: poison.

Apr 27, 2020, 5:15 PM

My thanks to taxus, science and native Americans

The remedies of the original American medicine men were subject to special attention, and it turned out that a particular toxin found in the bark of the American Yew could stop certain types of cancer growth. The substance was called Taxol.

About Me

Born 1956 in Copenhagen Denmark. M.Sc. in cell- and micro-biology, and physical education from Copenhagen University. Has been working as a journalistic writer as MiddleEast correspondent for Danish media since the middle of the 1980ies, filing for the Danish public service Radio and TV, DR, and for a number of Danish print media: Berlingske, Weekendavisen, Politiken. Currently corresponding for the daily Christian newspaper, Kristeligt Dagblad published in Copenhagen. Married to press photographer André Brutmann, widowed in 2002, mother of two, grandmother of 3. Was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in October 2018. This blog has been written during the period of chemotherapeutical treatment and surgery at Tel Hashomer hospital that lasted through March 2019. By October 2019 the cancer had recurred setting off another round of treatments.

Contact Me