The importance of checking worrying health symptoms is highlighted in Pink magazine’s story of a doctor who ignored her body’s alarm bells only to be diagnosed with an advanced stage of pancreatic cancer.

Her bleak prognosis of six months has stretched to over two years, due to her insistence on surgery when the only option being proposed was palliative care.

It is the story of a fight for life, of a doctor who would have sent her own patients for immediate tests had she been faced with similar symptoms but chose to sweep her own under the carpet.

Read her message – from a doctor turned patient – in tomorrow’s issue, out with The Sunday Times of Malta. Speaking with the benefit of painful hindsight, the woman says patients are not just a number. They must take ownership of their treatment, express their wishes and question their doctors, whose job is also to encourage the fact that life is worth living.

Fitness, travel, psychology, beauty and the latest Chanel fragrance all find space in the August issue of Malta’s leading women’s and fashion magazine, produced and published by Allied Newspapers Ltd and printed by Progress Press.