None of this was supposed to happen. At 38, I wasn’t supposed to lie on my back in the E.R. on a late December morning and be told by a teary radiation oncology resident that the pain I’d been having for two months — that I’d been assured was from having a weak core after months of chemo — was actually from a tumor that had devoured my L2 vertebra. John wasn’t supposed to have to hold me up on the toilet. Put my pants on for me. Do Christmas Eve for the children without me. I’m not supposed to be thinking about where he will sit and hold my hand as I take my last breath.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, but so early that I knew it wasn’t a death sentence. Until we get a cure for cancer, early detection is our best hope.

When I had a bicycle accident when I was 24. I was on a bridge going down; the bicycle broke and I smashed to the ground, face first. I broke my jaw and my teeth, and had to have plastic surgery. It all took half a year and then, funnily enough, I got my first big job – a TV series – with what I thought of then as this big, ugly scar.

I choked on a hard-boiled lemon sweet when I was 13. My brother Sam saved me.

To my mother for disappointing her. Mummy wanted me to be a different sort of person from who I am, but one can’t change oneself.

Facebook and the need to pee.

Short. Fat. Jewish.

Nothing at all.

Glenda Jackson said I was an amateur during rehearsal for The White Devil at the Old Vic. I called her a cow, but that was inadequate.

Every time I got a lucrative voiceover, I bought a picture. The most expensive was by James Gillray.