cancer

Phil Isherwood, pictured, right, with a patient at Bolton Hospice, where he is a volunteer poet, discusses the potential for poetry to boost patients' psychological wellbeing in hospice settings. Phil is also a research student at the University of Bolton, writing a thesis on ‘Numinous Connections: Poetry in the Hospice’. 

Tony and Dorothy Bonser, of Hoghton, near Preston, lost their 35-year-old son Neil, pictured below, to cancer. In the four years since, they have periodically received communications for Neil, despite having informed the organisations involved. Tony shares the couple's frustration. 

My husband Bill died in the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospital in August 2008.

He had been diagnosed with emphysema and fibrosis of the lungs in the autumn of the previous year, and was being treated at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.