'Cancer treatment inspired my plant-based music'

A Brighton composer who creates music for people undergoing cancer treatment says she has received "amazing" feedback from patients across the globe.

Helen Anahita Wilson uses frequencies and biological data from medicinal plants, which she gathers with electronic sensors, as well as the rhythms and sounds of chemotherapy machines as the basis of her compositions.

She was inspired to create her composition, titled linea naturalis (we are all bioelectrical beings), after her own experience undergoing cancer treatment.

"I've had lovely messages from people all over the world from Kuwait to Tokyo to California," she said.

The 43-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019 after she found a lump on her chest wall, sending her "into shock".

She was due to fly to India the next day to conduct research for her PhD in south Indian classical music but had to abandon the trip to undergo immediate chemotherapy.

She said: "I sat in the Sussex Cancer Centre for nine or 10 hours at time, hooked up to this giant appendage, listening to the sounds around me. It was incredibly noisy.

"Eventually I decided I wanted to create something purposeful out of my experience and take away some of the trauma for patients."

Ms Wilson, who lives in the Seven Dials area with her fiancé, pivoted her studies to music exploring experiences of cancer and its treatment, using Indian rhythms.

She later developed her unique techniques for making music out of data obtained from plants and chemotherapy machines purchased from eBay.

"I try to compose music that engenders the same mood as the plants that are used in treatments, to help with stress or anxiety," she said.

"If I'd known some of what was in those frightening-looking toxic bags delivering my chemotherapy was plant-derived, I would have found some comfort in that."

Cancer Research UK features Ms Wilson in a campaign to encourage people to leave a donation to the charity in their will.

She said her treatment would not have been possible "without the dedication of researchers who are relentlessly striving to make new discoveries".

Follow BBC Sussex on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected] or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.