Bowel cancer journey chronicled on new album by Sussex singer

Recorded at home, the album comes out of Abigail’s experience of surviving bowel cancer. It is already out in digital form and is released in CD format on June 6.

“I was determined to channel my personal pain through creative work,” Abigail explains. “While finishing my chemotherapy, I came up with the idea of creating an album with proceeds going to charity.”

Containing six songs and two instrumentals, it is available from https://abigailhopkinsstardust.bandcamp.com/ Proceeds from sales and streams are going to The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. Abigail has also started fundraising for Cancer Research UK: Abigail's Giving Page.

“I have always worked in the arts and I thought now that I have survived, I wanted to reignite the flame of making music and contributing something through music and also using my own voice. My album is quite autobiographical. It starts with a song about being in hospital and being diagnosed, and I hope it gives the cancer a personality. And then the album moves through a series of songs going through the emotional turmoil and ending up in a good place. The whole thing is about how we are all connected to everything which was why I've called it Stardust. The astrophysicist Brian Cox talks about us all coming from stardust and how we are all connected.

“I was traumatised by the experience but I found even when I was going through it that there was a very strong detached part of me that was telling me that it was all going to be OK if I just took it one day at a time. I did have meltdowns but I had this strong part of me that was saying that it would be OK and that's why I feel it's very important to be in the now. You can't undo the past and we don't know what the future is going to be. I think we have just got to focus on the present.

“It all began when I started having blood in my poo probably about a year and a half or more before my diagnosis. I was in the mindset that this kind of thing didn't happen to me. I didn't really know what it was. I thought maybe it was haemorrhoids but I just thought I was too busy to worry about it. I decided to pretend that it wasn't happening. I was in this weird state of denial but deep down I knew that something was wrong because I had fear around it. And this was going on for quite some while.”

Anaemia became an issue and became really bad in February 2020: “I used to be able to jog to the sea front and back again but it started really escalating to the extent that I was struggling to breathe going back up the hill to my house. And the bleeding got worse and worse. Cut to December and the bleeding was really, really bad. I could not properly make it to the loo in time. I had a test and all my chemical levels came back OK but I had to go and have a colonoscopy and there was this great big tumour almost immediately on the screen. It was fascinating to see but also grotesque. I found out that I had stage-three bowel cancer.

“I was referred to the Royal Marsden and I closed up my house here and went to live with my mum. At first the tumour was inoperable. It had grown into my bowel wall and they couldn't take it out. I had to have radiotherapy for five weeks, and then I had a pill form of chemotherapy and then I had to wait until the radiotherapy worked. And then in June I had surgery which was wild. I was in intensive care for two nights.”

But looking back: “It was a big kick up the a**e both literally as well as figuratively. It was a huge wake-up call having this life-threatening illness and the chance that I not might not make it through. I've had a few friends that didn't make it, and actually it's only now four years later that I'm beginning to feel like my body is healthy again.”

Inevitably, it has changed her: “I feel very connected to life now. I feel very connected to myself. I feel less condemning of myself emotionally. I was very driven before I had cancer and I was very hard on myself emotionally but now I embrace whatever I'm going through. I feel much more peaceful and grounded with myself, just recognising my own vulnerability rather than beating myself up for being vulnerable.”

As for the album: “I was worried that I would not be able to play the guitar again, but due to the expert care I received, and after practice, I can play the guitar almost to the same standard as before. My voice was also affected, so I chose to utilise the situation and on some tracks, such as The La La La Song, I projected my voice with a deliberately husky performance. I think this lends feeling to the vulnerable tone of the album. In the same sense, I made the tracks autobiographical, charting my journey from being diagnosed in The Corridors of Hospitals and Storm to then going through a journey of discovery and healing.”