Vicky Clement-Jones gets warnings that something may be wrong with her health after two serious illness. With the return once more of abdominal pain, tests reveal the bad news that she has advanced cancer of the ovaries. She realises there is no word for cancer; even doctors find it difficult to talk to her, another doctor, openly about cancer. Resolving on honesty the only policy she determines to seek clarity and be frank with everyone, whatever lies ahead.

In August 1982 Dr Vicky Clement-Jones was thirty-three. A string of academic successes marked her progress and a glittering future in the medical world lay before her. She was a senior registrar and held a clinical research fellowship in the department of endocrinology at St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London. There was also the private excitement of preparing for the children that she and her husband Tim were now eager to have after nine years of marriage.

Vicky was glad all the same that this particular summer was fading and coming to an end. It had been the most fraught time of her life that she could ever remember. She had suffered two serious illnesses: the first, in early 1981, a severe bout of rheumatic fever which was followed some six months later by a perforated appendix resulting in peritonitis and the discovery of a pelvic abscess. Both had entailed dramatic dashes to hospital followed by periods of long, tedious convalescence which, for one normally so healthy and always super energetic, had been hard to bear.

After a family reunion in Honolulu Vicky returned to England feeling shattered and drained. At once she started to have tests at St Bartholomew's Hospital, (Barts as everyone calls it). An ultra sound was followed by a CT scan which revealed a mass in her abdomen. The surgeon decided to perform a laparotomy (abdominal operation) to investigate what he believed to be a return of the pelvic abscess.

She awoke later that evening feeling very groggy from the anaesthetic to find the houseman standing by her bed. 'Was it an abscess?' she asked him immediately. 'No,' he stuttered. 'It wasn't an abscess. They've taken a biopsy and the professor will come and see you tomorrow.'

Oh, my goodness, thought Vicky to herself. Something's up. It must be serious if they are taking a biopsy, but why aren't they telling me? Still in a haze she consoled herself with the thought that maybe she was having a bad dream and that if she went back to sleep it would go away.

But when she woke up in the morning the bad dream had not vanished. The senior registrar was the first to visit her. He shuffled uncomfortably, pulling the curtains round her bed to give her some privacy. His expression was gloomy. Avoiding the mention of words like 'tumour' or 'malignancy' he too could tell her no more than that the surgeon had discovered a mass in her pelvis and had decided to take a biopsy.

Cancer, Vicky noticed, was a word everyone had difficulty saying, yet the doctors were trying hard to be honest with her. She was, after all, a colleague. The consultant told her that they thought it was in the ovaries but he was unwilling to commit himself to a definite opinion about the precise nature and stage of the disease until the pathologist had analysed the biopsied tissue. It was clear, though, to everyone that it was an advanced cancer since other organs in the pelvic cavity as well as her ovaries had been infiltrated. She became keenly aware of their pessimism; people were looking away from her, trying not to meet the questions in her eyes. The buzz had gone round the hospital grapevine. Everyone knew that Vicky, the brilliant young doctor, was gravely ill with cancer.

There followed the dreadful suspense of waiting for the biopsy results to come through. She described that terrible time poignantly in an article she later wrote for the British Medical Journal as 'Four days of devastation, fear, anger, and the question "why me?" . . . The sadness and numbness of the diagnosis shattered my world and the horizons and expectations that my husband and I had known . . . I was left with the thought that no treatment was available.' The doctors said it was inoperable and they gave her three months to live. That meant she would be dead by Christmas. Vicky was determined to prove them wrong.

One of the ways of reducing her sense of helplessness was to talk about what was going on. Her husband, Tim, sprang into action and telephoned around the world to both families and all their friends. It was deliberately done, all part of the plan he and Vicky had already made that they intended to be totally frank about her illness. They wanted neither to keep secrets nor hear whispers.

Vicky was often to say how grateful she had been to Tim for taking this burden of explanation from her. It meant that everyone knew where they were with her and could talk openly to her about what was going on. Tim gave them the facts, all that he and Vicky knew at that stage, and warned them that they would be depending on their support and love in the coming months. Close friends and family visited her and were amazed by her resilience. Her family travelled from near and far to be at her side to face this sudden news and stood behind her and Tim all the way. She told them not to worry about her. She intended to think positively and prepare herself for whatever treatment might be proposed.

Battered and bruised she may have been but she was not yet defeated. Vicky felt wonderfully supported and cherished by those she loved most in the world. She could not guess what was waiting for her out there on that stormy sea but whatever the fates brought her, she was determined she would fight hard to survive.

To understand how she became such a fighter, we must go back to her early years.