Case studies are people, not press fodder

If one day someone asks me if there’s anything in my career I regret, I won’t have to think about it. It’s the way I dealt with a teenager who was dying of cancer in a hospice a few years ago. She wanted to tell her story in a national magazine or newspaper so that she could leave a little flag on Planet Earth to say, “Hello, fellow inhabitants, just to let you know, I was here for a bit.” I’ll call her Jenny. I never met her in person but I spoke to her on the phone and I’m still haunted by the image of her sitting up in bed with all her make up on, waiting for an interview and photo call that was never going to happen.