Why did you become a nurse and also an oncologist?
That’s what my mom wondered when I told her I wanted to be an oncology nurse. And he warned me that he had never been a caring person.
Was she offended by the maternal comment?
On the contrary, I thought: “Well now you’ll see”. And I went to Edinburgh to study nursing and then to London to specialize in oncology.
Why oncology?
Because I’ve always thought that the most interesting and wonderful thing for people is other people. And, by treating cancer, I could get to know them for months and years and have deep and lasting relationships with my patients.
Doesn’t it pain you to see some of them die?
Cancer treatment is often brutal and leaves them devastated, but because of that, it’s when you can make a difference in their lives… It’s a wonderful opportunity to feel needed and useful.
Suffering is bad; to have suffered, good
I have experienced it with them too! And after the suffering they have given new meaning to their lives and to mine as well. And don’t think that the experience of cancer is far away.
I’m afraid it’s hard to think about.
When I started as a nurse, in the UK we had one in four citizens diagnosed with cancer; now we approach one in two.
Does it increase because we live longer?
In young people, cancer is also increasing by 2% a year, especially of the lung and larynx, so that by 2040 we will have 30% more patients.
Why do they think there are more cancers?
The pollution we suffer today is less observable than the smoke of other times, but more carcinogenic, like that of microplastics.
How did the Maggie’s Foundation start?
I met Maggie Keswick 30 years ago when she was 53 and had advanced breast cancer. Maggie was an influential architect and her husband, Charles Jones, an equally influential critic. At the hospital, Maggie did not accept being another patient.
In what sense?
Back then there was no internet and patients resignedly accepted whatever the doctors said. Maggie, on the other hand, wanted to be proactive in her own healing…
With?
He was a wonderful person surrounded by great creators like Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano… And I wanted to know everything about his treatment and we weren’t used to it…
In the end wasn’t the patient “yes, doctor”?
He was never satisfied, and when he went back and forth between his home in Los Angeles and Edinburgh, he ended up proving that the hospital there was better in some things…
Which is?
He said that in the UK we were lagging behind the US in helping patients to help themselves…
Was he right?
All, but he was not satisfied with having it: he wrote a patient manual. And she began to design spaces as an architect so that the hospital would not isolate the patient from nature or make him feel worse than at home and would not add pain to what cancer was already inflicting.
What did he propose?
He didn’t propose: he did. He convinced Frank Gehry, who continues to design at 94, to design our Dundee building pro bono; and Richard Rogers, who projected the London one, while Norman Foster assumed the Manchester one.
Were the results up to par?
They are not only an aesthetic challenge but a place to recover the illusion of living.
Did this help Maggie in her illness?
Maggie survived 18 months worrying about all the projects and in the end, after a lot of demanding, she commissioned me to succeed her at the Maggie’s Foundation, and that’s why I’m in Barcelona today, to help us Kalida center.
Why did they also choose Barcelona?
Because Enric Miralles had designed the magnificent building of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh… before he too suffered and died from cancer.
He left a great work here too.
And Benedetta Tagliabue presided over the panel that awarded Rogers for our building. We were also financed by a Scottish oncology patient who lived in Barcelona. And the Miralles Tagliabue studio designed our building in the Recinte de Sant Pau, Kalida.
How is it different from a hospital?
It does not differ from it, it complements hospital care and helps the patient in what the system cannot: by providing emotional, psychological and social support to him and his family, from diagnosis to cure, for example , with cosmetic and restorative surgery.
