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Squinting in the bright light of a hot summer morning, Vu Thi Thinh perches on the edge of her small wooden boat and plucks a polystyrene block from the calm...

A mother who felt she was being “eaten away” after hot flushes led to an incurable blood cancer diagnosis in her late 50s has urged women not to ignore symptoms. In the summer of 2022, Barbara Geraghty-Whitehead, 58, a school inclusion manager who lives in Cheshire, began to experience hot flushes, dizziness and she developed an ear infection. She said she “put it to the back of (her) mind”, but her symptoms persisted – and eventually, after months of hesitation, she visited her GP in September 2022 and underwent blood tests. Within a matter of hours, she received a phone call from her doctor, saying that they were concerned about how high her white blood cells were and that they suspected it could be cancer. One week later, after further tests, Geraghty-Whitehead was told she has chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and it is incurable. “You say you want to carry on as much as normal, but from that second nothing else was going to be normal anymore,” she told PA Real Life. “I wanted to go in and for them to say, ‘No, it was a mistake, it’s something else,’ but they didn’t, they said it was CML.” Geraghty-Whitehead started taking chemotherapy tablets that same day – and despite experiencing side effects of fatigue, nausea, acid reflux, and a loss of taste, nearly one year later she has responded well to treatment and has been able to see her daughter get married in Cyprus. After nearly ignoring her own symptoms, she wants to encourage others not to “make excuses”, as “people need to know the signs so they can get diagnosed early”. “When I was first diagnosed, you don’t know where to start and that in itself is overwhelming, but the support I’ve received has been fantastic,” Geraghty-Whitehead said. “I think about [my diagnosis] every day and it is hard and I do get upset, but now I’ve just got to face the fact that this is the new me. “I’m never going to be the person that I was before but I’m going to recreate the new me.” Geraghty-Whitehead said she almost ignored her cancer symptoms and attributed her hot flushes to warm weather and “thought no more of it”. She said she did not think it was related to menopause, as she had already been taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) patches for years to treat her bone pain. “I started not feeling right and I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I didn’t do anything about it – I just left it,” she explained. She added: “I never ever got hot flushes. Even though I was put on HRT patches, it was mainly for my bone pain, so I just put it to the back of my mind and I thought no more of it.” Looking back now, she realises she should have acted sooner – but on September 16, she visited her GP and underwent blood tests. Days later, on the day of the Queen’s funeral, she found herself sat in an empty hospital waiting room, preparing for further blood tests – and by the end of that week, on September 23, Geraghty-Whitehead received the news she has CML and the following minutes felt like “a blur”. “Everything happened so fast, it was just like a roller-coaster,” she said. “I think it was worse waiting for the blood test results because I didn’t know what type of cancer it was, whether I was going to live, whether I was going to die. “But all I wanted was to get the very first tablet into my body, as I felt like I was being eaten away because it was in my blood and your blood travels everywhere.” Geraghty-Whitehead started treatment the same day she was diagnosed, which she said was the “first positive move”. Although she was told her CML is incurable, doctors reassured her other patients had responded well to the chemotherapy tablets she needed to take daily, and this gave her hope. For more information and support, visit Leukaemia Care’s website here: leukaemiacare.org.uk Read More 9 arthritis myths we all need to stop believing What happens at a sexual health check-up? 9 key signs of leukaemia, as awareness is called ‘non-existent’ Cancer-hit dad who planned own funeral outlives three-week prognosis What happens at a sexual health check-up? 9 arthritis myths we all need to stop believing

Charles Leclerc saw off team-mate Carlos Sainz by just 0.067 seconds as Ferrari locked out the front row for Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix. Max Verstappen improved on his final run at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez but could not usurp the Ferrari drivers, finishing 0.097 sec adrift. WEEKEND PREVIEW: How home hero Sergio Perez can save his Red Bull seat The triple world champion also faces a nervous wait to see if he is moved down the grid after being summoned to see the stewards. Verstappen, charged with impeding on the pit exit, was among four drivers who was be hauled in front of the race officials, but only Logan Sargeant received a penalty. Follow updates from the Mexican Grand Prix with The Independent Read More F1 grid: Starting positions for Mexican Grand Prix F1 icon Willy T Ribbs: ‘There were death threats – but I was never going to play the victim’ Charles Leclerc leads shock Ferrari front row at Mexican Grand Prix

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Defining Dishes is an IndyEats column that explores the significance of food at key moments in our lives. From recipes that have been passed down for generations, to flavours that hold a special place in our hearts, food shapes every part of our lives in ways we might not have ever imagined. There is a family scene I would love to engrave into my memory that involves my father, myself and my son, all making prawn wontons in one kitchen. Prawn wontons are so simple, like all good dishes, and they have a really special place in my heart. I have very fond memories of making them with my father, who is from Hong Kong, when I was growing up and it is my favourite dish. Now, it’s my five-year-old son’s favourite dish as well and he’s the same age I was when I first started making prawn wontons with my father, so it makes me excited to share the dish with him. When my son was younger, his Ye Ye (grandfather) would bring homemade wontons whenever he came over to my house in Peckham. But just recently, we were over at my parents’ home, and he made his first wonton. We were all very proud! It’s so nice because it’s a dish that has run right through my family, it was brought and championed here by my dad. He moved here in 1975 and has the classic first-generation immigrant story. He worked three jobs, moved around a lot, saved money and opened his first restaurant in 1985, 10 years after arriving in England. He finally retired in 2017, but he couldn’t get away from my restaurants. I opened my own establishment, Mr Bao in Peckham in 2016, and then Daddy Bao in my father’s honour. Even now when he comes around to visit, I make him talk more about restaurants. I think he enjoys it, though, and it reminds him of home. That’s really important now because ever since the 2019-2020 mass protests in Hong Kong, the country is a sad place at the moment if you’re from there. But it’s still an amazing place. My favourite part about making wontons from scratch was always the time spent with my dad. The chit chat between us, me kneeling on a stool and him standing at the counter. My hands were not as dextrous at that age and I certainly wasn’t practised, but he would be there to help show the right way to make the little parcels and finish them up for me. The bonding moment is what I cherish the most. Mum is English and she got involved too, she is actually amazing at it. Prawn wontons are also part of Christmas time for my family. Our big tradition is to have a massive steamboat on Boxing Day, which most people of Chinese descent will be familiar with. It usually involves a big, steaming pot of soup on a constant boil, and everyone sits around the table cooking fresh, raw ingredients in it and eating as they go. Prawn wontons are a big, big part of that meal for us, especially now that we have a couple of young kids running around at Christmas time, they really love it. The thing I remember most about making wontons with Dad is the filling. He has his own method for making the prawn mince that goes inside the parcels. He gets his prawns and chops them up, mixes them with any additional ingredients like garlic, and then he would make me pick up a handful of the mixture and throw it back down onto the chopping board, pick it up and throw it back down. It somehow aerates the mince and softens it, and makes it stickier so there aren’t big chunks of prawns floating around. I haven’t really adapted Dad’s recipe for myself, aside from the type of dipping sauce I like to have with them. We keep it very traditional. Oh, I suppose I do have a slight modification, actually. I like to mix gambas (white) prawns from the southwest coast of Spain with North Atlantic shrimps, which are tiny, tiny little crustaceans the size of your nail. They have got a really good flavour. I like to chop those up into the mince with the bigger prawns, add a bit of salt and white pepper, stir it through and then do the throwing method as my dad does. We usually make our own wonton skins. In a pinch, we’ll use shop-bought ones, but when we know we’ve got time we’ll make our own. At the moment, Dad makes handmade dumplings with my sister for her business so they have a dumpling skins machine – but we used to make them by hand, old-school style. He would roll them out because he could get the thickness of the skins right. It wasn’t possible when I was young as I had no idea and was clumsy! They have to be thin, but not so thin that they break or the wontons will open up in the water. It’s something I haven’t managed to master, but there’s still time. Some places don’t even use the regular wonton skins, and they are still amazing. One of my favourite restaurants ever was in Hong Kong – it has closed down now – but it was a hole-in-the-wall type of place that served two types of wontons: classic wontons or fish skin wontons. That was their entire menu. They used fish skins instead of pastry skins to wrap their wontons, and they were something like £1.20 for a bowl at the time. It was definitely the best meal I had with Mum, Dad and my sisters in Hong Kong. The wontons get boiled for two minutes. You can make a wonton soup with a base stock, using ginger, spring onions, salt, pork bones. Boil that down and skim off the top. Or, you can dip the wontons into a chili garlic sauce, which is how my dad likes – although another way I differ from Dad is that I like to add black vinegar to the sauce of soy sauce, garlic and chili, to add an extra layer of acid. You can also eat them as they are, they are completely delicious. My stomach is rumbling as I think about them. As my son gets older, it will be really nice to be able to make wontons altogether, the three generations of us at the kitchen island, chatting away. That’s what I’d like my son to take away from those sessions, the memory of doing it with his Ye Ye and me. I’d also like him to, in time, be able to link quality to food and what you’re putting in your body. I want him to understand that even though it’s so easy to go to the shop and buy something, everything starts out as a living thing. A prawn is an animal and a chive is a real plant grown in the soil. You don’t have to make it yourself and you should go to restaurants to support them, but when you do go, you’ll have a better appreciation for it. Frank Yeung is the chef-owner of Mr Bao and Daddy Bao in London. Read More The dish that defines me: Alex Outhwaite’s Vietnamese bun cha The dish that defines me: Eddie Huang’s Taiwanese beef noodle soup In Horto: Hearty, outdoorsy fare in a secret London Bridge garden Five dinner ideas from around the world to try this week Hi Barbie! Nine cocktails inspired by the doll’s most iconic outfits

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When it comes to weird diets, TikTok is pretty notorious for spreading the word about them – and the latest iteration, the carnivore diet, is no different. The carnivore diet tag on the video-sharing platform has over a billion views, with followers of the diet dedicating themselves to meals consisting of a lot of meat (both cooked and raw), eggs and lumps of butter. With some content creators reporting immense fat loss and improved general wellbeing, how healthy is the carnivore diet? The pros “The carnivore diet, also known as the all-meat diet or zero-carb diet, is a dietary approach that involves consuming only animal products and excludes all plant-based foods,” says Dr Simon Theobalds, GP at Pall Mall Medical. Comparable to the no-carb, protein-heavy keto diet, it has the potential to boost some much-needed macronutrients, vitamins and minerals in your diet. “Red meat is a rich source of complete protein, providing all the essential amino acids the body needs for various functions, including building and repairing tissues,” says Theobalds. It can also boost iron levels: “Red meat is one of the best dietary sources of heme iron, which is more easily absorbed by the body compared to non-heme iron found in plant-based foods,” he says. “Iron is essential for transporting oxygen in the blood and supporting energy metabolism. “Red meat is also an excellent source of vitamin B12, a nutrient mainly found in animal products. Vitamin B12 is essential for nerve function, DNA synthesis, and the formation of red blood cells.” And it’s a good source of zinc, a mineral Theobalds says plays a vital role in immune function, wound healing, and cellular growth and repair.The cons So far, so good. But, where does it start to be damaging? “Red meat, particularly fatty cuts, can be high in saturated fat and cholesterol,” says Theobalds. “Consuming large amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol has been associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.” Similarly, processed meats, such as bacon, sausages, hot dogs, and deli meats, have been classified as Group 1 carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). “This means there is strong evidence linking processed meat consumption to an increased risk of cancer,” he adds. It could also mean when you get sick, it’s harder to get well again, as it may encourage antibiotic resistance. “In many countries, livestock may be treated with antibiotics to promote growth or prevent disease,” Theobalds notes. “The overuse of antibiotics in meat production can contribute to antibiotic resistance, making it harder to treat bacterial infections in humans.” Despite the nutrients you can get from animal products, this diet could still lead to certain deficiencies. “Meat lacks essential nutrients found in plant-based foods, such as dietary fibre, certain vitamins like vitamin C, and minerals such as potassium. Long-term consumption of only meat can lead to nutrient deficiencies and related health problems,” he adds. A varied diet will also promote a healthier gut. “Aiming to incorporate 30 different plants into your diet each week is a great goal to have in mind,” says Anna Tebbs, registered nutritionist and head chef at Green Chef. “Having a range of plants in your diet will ensure you are fuelling the different gut microbiomes in your body. A plant-based diet tends to be higher in prebiotics, which gives the good bacteria in your gut extra fuel, and has an anti-inflammatory effect.” Is it worth it? With so many people posting about and adopting this diet, is it worth the risks for the benefits it promises? “While consuming meat can provide important nutrients, relying solely on a diet of meat and excluding other food groups may pose several risks,” says Theobalds. “A balanced diet provides essential nutrients, supports overall health, and reduces the risk of nutritional deficiencies and associated health problems. Before making any significant dietary changes, especially one as restrictive as an all-meat diet, it’s essential to consult with a registered dietitian or healthcare professional. They can help assess your nutritional needs, provide personalised guidance, and help you develop a balanced and sustainable eating plan that aligns with your health goals. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live How to save money on your summer barbecue as prices soar Exercise and yoga can help improve lung function in adults with asthma – study 7 ways to ease back-to-school worries

On Monday, May 1, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the national organization representing television