Home help

HER career as a reporter for national newspapers and magazines has taken her to some of the world's most dangerous places, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Christine Aziz's closest brush with death came six years ago, when she was living in the Netherlands and a routine examination revealed that she had an extremely rare form of cancer.

"When the doctor saw me, she said: 'You are the first person I have met with this condition and I will never see anybody else with it in my medical career'. I was getting really frightened," she recalled.

At one stage in her illness, Christine was rushed to casualty. "I started to bleed to death. If I had been on my travels, I wouldn't have lived. I lost all my blood: it happened again a month later."

She had a year's treatment at a big London hospital. "I spent several weeks in an oncology ward. I can honestly say it was worse than any war zone I've ever worked in. It was awful," she said.

"Cancer is such an emotive word. There's a huge feeling of hopelessness around it. There were a lot of people in the ward who felt they had a death sentence.

"There were some wonderful nursing staff, but I would say the majority of doctors behaved like prison warders. They didn't listen to what you were saying to them. They had no sense of the patient, just the disease."

While undergoing chemotherapy, Christine found homeopathy helped her cope with the side-effects.

Homeopathy uses very small doses of plant, mineral or animal-based medicines to stimulate the body's natural defences. Famous adherents have included the Royal Family, Paul McCartney, Gandhi and Yehudi Menuhin.

Now fully recovered, Christine says of her illness: "I'm glad it happened. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

"Cancer for me was a real wake-up call. I realised I couldn't go on as I was. I had to change my life and I decided to train as a homeopath."

She says: "Our bodies want us to be healthy. Your body will work for you - all homeopathy does is give it that push. You can't say it's all in the mind - it's used very effectively on babies and animals."

Now 56, Christine left school at 15 with O level English. "I was from a working class background. There were lots of factories where we lived. Writing was the only thing I felt I could do, but it wasn't the sort of thing that was expected of me."

She landed a job as a trainee on the Hillingdon Mirror in London, where her colleagues included future BBC boss Greg Dyke ("very bright, very left wing") and future Mohammed al Fayed spokesman Michael Cole ("terribly posh").

After a break to have her two children, she divorced and returned to journalism as a freelance.

"I had to do it because I had absolutely no money. I started getting commissions from newspapers and magazines and started to travel a bit.

"I went to some dodgy places and was in some quite dodgy situations. I've been a few times to Afghanistan, and was in Iraq three weeks after the war. It was still pretty heavy.

"I went right into the countryside where people have absolutely nothing and are very traumatised by war. I've seen children with their arms and legs blown off, grieving parents, whole communities deeply depressed years after conflict.

"I've met the most amazing women in Iraq, but the world's media doesn't give them a voice," she added.

"When I was there, there was some degree of optimism for women. The security situation is worse now. After the war, you had all these Iranians flooding into the country providing money, setting up charities and infiltrating sectors of Iraqi society.

"Women friends in Baghdad who are highly educated and independent are now being stopped at gunpoint and being told to wear the veil. This is what happened in Kabul. There were 30,000 widows and when the Taliban came in, they suddenly couldn't earn a living at all."

Homeopathy appointments with Christine can be booked through the Bay Tree Holistic Health Centre, 126 Poole Road, Westbourne, Bournemouth, telephone 01202 540088.