Until recently, I didn't really have an opinion about Jade Goody. Like many people, I knew Jade as an irritating wannabe who had struck lucky. Until she almost blew it in the Big Brother race row. But she bounced back from that setback the same way that she seemed to overcome most of life's obstacles. Until now, that is. I was impressed by her determination as well as by her odd, hyperactive sincerity. I didn't bear her any ill feelings but I wouldn't have cared to be trapped in a lift with her.

At present, it's difficult to avoid the constant media coverage about the way the dying reality TV star has chosen to showcase the remaining days of her terminal illness. A debate often forces people to take sides. However, Jade's potent combination of strong opinions and crass naivety was always destined to make people sneer. You can't argue with her wish to exploit her illness to safeguard her children's future.

Still, there is the feeling that something else is going on. That we are all being scammed or manipulated in a way we can't quite put our finger on. Shouldn't Jade 'die with dignity', as opposed to checking out with a profit? Dying with dignity in this case, means that Jade should die anywhere except in public. This is a strange and new situation, and we are unsure how to deal with it, or how we really feel.

The wedding photograph of Jade and her new husband Jack, kissing as though they had their whole lives ahead of them (which is what a wedding day is supposed to signify) may have looked like a typical, perhaps even exploitative wedding shot. But to me, it had a poignancy that even the media thrashing could not entirely obliterate. It reminded me of a movie poster for some new rom-com that had a sad ending. One Wedding and a Funeral? I wanted to wish this couple well.

I wanted them to make it.

I can't imagine how Jade Goody feels now. But I was once in her situation. I was diagnosed with cancer in the late '80s. I was 29, newly married and had just started a new job. Suddenly I had testicular cancer. I felt singled out, jinxed, angry. I remember that a TV producer wanted to make a documentary on my struggle against serious illness.

Anyway, I got through my illness (with the help of my wife and friends) and reclaimed my life. I wrote about my experience in a short memoir, Bald Head. My wife and I appeared on The Late Late Show.

Most of the feedback we received was generous, but there was some criticism. One man stated that I had "exploited" my cancer for profit and should be ashamed. I should have kept my illness private.

Media exploitation (or exploration, if you are feeling kind) of illness is nothing new. We have long had a fascination with celebrities who kick the bucket before middle age could claim them – James Dean, Jim Morrison, Marilyn Monroe, Heath Ledger.

Jade Goody is 27 and dealing with a terrible situation. I don't blame her for utilising everything she has learned in her time at the top of the media ladder to try to exploit or prolong her life.

She is not the first well known person to do it. John Diamond, Nigella Lawson's first husband, chronicled his four-year losing battle with cancer in his newspaper column as well as in a moving TV documentary. Art Buchwald, the famous American humourist, gave wryly humorous frontline reports from nearly a decade of serious illness in columns, articles and TV interviews. When Buchwald finally died in 2007, the website of The New York Times posted a video obituary in which Buchwald himself declared: "Hi. I'm Art Buchwald, and I just died".

Perhaps because we only know her as a TV reality show success story (which is definitely what she is, no matter what one might think of her), it is difficult to remember that behind all of the media ballyhoo is a very real and vulnerable human with the same hopes and fears as the rest of us. Her situation is one that we hope will never happen to us or to our loved ones. The world of serious illness co-exists alongside the real world of our everyday lives but we rarely see its human face. TV and newspapers usually deal in facts and figures – allocations of resources for health budgets or diseases that have no visual image. Observing someone well-known on the way out is just too real. Maybe we are simply too fragile.

Fascinating perhaps. Controversial, undoubtedly. But does the coverage of Jade's plight evoke compassion for a young woman whose only crime is to remain true to herself?

Jade Goody is only doing what she knows best. Perhaps it is the best possible therapy she can find. Maybe it gives her focus. Who can say?

I hope she keeps fighting. I hope she seizes every moment. From where I'm standing, it seems like she's making the best of a terrible situation. She has every right to "exploit" her illness for as long as she can. At the very least she has increased our awareness about cervical cancer. At the worst, she may use up her limited supplies of energy and deny herself some precious private moments. But it's her life, her right and her choice.

Michael Clifford is on leave