If any one is interested John Diamond was a journalist who wrote about his experiences in his newspaper column as he was going through treatment. I remember reading them at the time and being affected by them, it's easy to be flippant about other people when your viewpoint is purely superficial.

Here are a couple of good articles about his experiences.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1198541.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/04/features.review1