For patients like Maddie Cowey, who was 18 when she was diagnosed with incurable cancer, the stakes of the debate couldn’t be higher. Photographer Alicia Canter spent four months capturing people facing the end, and bereaved relatives desperate to see the law change – even if it will be too late for some. Interviews: Erica Buist
When she was only 18, a few months into an undergraduate degree in classics at Warwick University, Maddie Cowey was diagnosed with a rare cancer called sarcoma. She had gone to the GP about a lump on her shoulder that had been growing for 18 months. Soon after, she learned that the cancer had spread and was incurable.
As there are no approved treatments in this country for Cowey’s type of cancer, it has been managed so far through a mix of clinical trials and compassionate-use (individual, rather than group trial) drugs. “The cancer is not completely stable,” she says. “The aim is to slow it down. If it shrinks, that’s great.” Now, aged 27, she isn’t experiencing any symptoms from the cancer itself. “I’m in reasonably good health. Most of the issues I’ve had have been side-effects from the treatment.
Cowey photographed with her parents Jane and Colin (above) and at home taking her medications (top left), some of which is stored in her fridge
