Poignant footage shows Dame Deborah James having chemo

A friend of Dame Deborah James has paid tribute to the late campaigner’s ‘love for life’ in an emotional social media post. 

Author and motivational speaker Emma Campbell, who lives with breast cancer, met Dame Deborah when they were both undergoing treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea, London. 

The campaigner and mother-of-two died aged 40 on June 28, after a five-year battle with stage four bowel cancer.  

Emma has now shared an emotional video of Deborah on Instagram, which was filmed by the late campaigner during her cancer treatment. 

In the written accompanying post, Emma praised Deborah’s determination to say ‘yes’ to life, revealing how she inspired her to live to the full. 

Emma met Dame Deborah when they were both undergoing treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea, London

The cancer patient said she ‘missed’ her friend and revealed how Dame Deborah’s memory helped her going through her own treatment 

The video showed Dame Deborah wearing a blue dress with an IV line in hospital. 

‘Now, we’re not allowed to have friends or family when we have chemo, but, it’s the best chemo day because my friend Emma is in the chair next to me,’ she said. 

‘We’ve known each other for three years, and we were just working out how we met, and I’m going to show you a photograph of when we first met,’ she said, in the extract. 

Another clip, this time taken filmed by Emma, showed Deborah in her hospital bed, receiving treatment, with the caption ‘Not sure I’ll ever forget today with @bowelbabe.’ 

In the video shared by Emma, Dame Deborah could be seen rejoicing in the fact they were having chemo together, noting how good it was to have a friend for support in those hard moments 

Emma often appeared in the video Dame Debs filmed dancing in hospital throughout her cancer treatment 

The sweet video was accompanied by an emotional piece of writing, with Emma beginning with: ‘I miss my friend.’

She continuned: ‘I miss her smile, her glow and the way she embodied what so many of us strive to access. A pure and unwavering love for life.

‘She showed up. Always. She made me feel that I could dig a little deeper. I bet she made you feel like that too,’ she added. 

Emma, a mother-of-two herself, went on: ‘She unknowingly taught me to believe that maybe I could find the inner core that so often went into hiding.

Emma was among the first friends of Dame Deborah to pay tribute to the campaigner when she passed away in June 

‘She gifted so many of us with a ‘If she can do it so can I’ attitude even if it meant we had to fake it to make it.’

She also paid tribute to the videos she and Deborah recorded dancing in hospital throughout their treatment, calling it ‘Jazz hands and chemo choreography.’

‘I miss being around someone for whom saying “yes” to life came so naturally. Seizing the moment seemed to be an intrinsic part of her DNA and not just because cancer came but because that’s who she was,’ she said. 

She went to reveal that thanks to Deborah, she is no longer ‘scared’ of going into the Royal Marsden for treatment.  

‘I stride up them now because I’m privileged to be there. 

Dame Deborah James (pictured at Royal Ascot 2022) passed away at the end of June aged 40

‘Not privileged to be a cancer patient, but fortunate to be part of such an incredible community of patients and professionals who live and breathe with an awareness that we all just want to be here. For as long as we can,’ she added. 

It comes as an extract from Dame Deborah’s book, How to Live when You Could be Dead, revealed the campaigner used to suffer panic attacks before she was diagnosed with cancer. 

The broadcaster and campaigner revealed in the book, to be published posthumously that she lived with anxiety for 20 years.

Extracts from Dame Deborah’s book, How to Live when you Could be Dead, detail the terrifying panic attacks that she lived with for most of her life.

She said the episodes would sometimes wake her up in the night with a feeling she was dying, The Sun reports.

In one incident, the mother-of-two had a panic attack in the changing rooms at Karen Millen, which caused her to run outside the shop wearing only her underwear. 

Looking back after receiving a terminal bowel cancer diagnosis, the former headteacher pointed out the irony of being so terrified of dying when she was perfectly healthy.

When she received her diagnosis at the age of 35, Dame Deborah said she had ‘no choice’ but to look her greatest fear in the eye.

After enjoying Christmas 2021 with her husband Seb and children, Hugo, 14, and Eloise, 12, a test at the beginning of January showed Dame Deborah’s liver function was ‘dangerously out of kilter’.

Further tests revealed the tumour around her bile duct had grown in the four months she had stopped cancer treatment and had caused a blockage.

She was booked in for an operation on the tumour the following day, but that night, she recalled feeling very unwell and dizzy.

She described how Seb came home to find her barely conscious and unable to speak before bundling her into the car and rushing her to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

There, Dame Deborah was taken into resuscitation where the ‘amazing’ staff managed to stabilise her.

Later, medics discovered the tumour around her bile duct had ruptured the portal vein, and other veins in her oesophagus were also bleeding – which required several operations.

After spending 10 days in hospital unsure if she would ever make it back home, Dame Deborah explained how she learnt to ‘break the cycle’ of negative thinking about her illness. 

When she returned home, she forced herself to get out of the house and go for a walk so she could enjoy life.

She wrote: ‘If you’ve got a one per cent chance of living, that’s something to hold on to. A one per cent chance is better than nothing.’

Sadly, after getting over the terrifying incident, Dame Deborah’s health continued to spiral until May 2022, when it became clear there was nothing more doctors could do for her.

She recalled having to make the ‘devastating’ decision to go to her parents’ house in Woking to receive hospice care.

Writing in her final days, Dame Deborah said it was ‘becoming hard to live every single day’ because she was weak and exhausted.

As people continued to call her ‘brave’ for fighting on, she argued the alternative was much worse and all she was doing was taking small steps to keep living every day.

She said: ‘The truth is, we are all braver than we realise.’  

How to Live when you Could be Dead will be published on 18 August