15 October 2024.
Cole’s 1st birthday.
The house was busy with balloons, wrapping paper, and the usual chaos that comes with having 2 small boys. My dad and his partner, Liz, stopped in on their way back to Guernsey after a trip to Spain. Ana’s parents, Abuela and Opa, were visiting – They helped feed the boys and quietly watched over Ana as she healed. She moved carefully, three neat scars across her chest from the surgery that removed the top lobe of her right lung thirteen days earlier.
That afternoon, I drove myself to the hospital for an endoscopy to find out if the issue that had plagued me for year was as innocuous as the doctors kept telling me.
I told everyone it was routine, just a procedure for reflux. I had been complaining about this reflux since c. 2017/18. I had waited six months for this appointment. Yet another six months of hearing, “take omeprazole,” “avoid spicy food,” and “probably stress.”
Two weeks before, a GI consultant – the first to really connect the dots on my symptoms – noticed my weight loss and decided to also order a CT scan “to be safe.” I had it on Sunday 13th October. He kindly reassured me, “It’s not going to be cancer, Dale – it’s likely just an infection or an ulcer – but let’s rule things out.” I clung to that sentence like a lifeline.
So yes, I kissed Cole on the head, told him I’d be back for cake, and drove to the hospital as if it was just paperwork.
It wasn’t.
The Long Road To Being Taken Seriously
It started like it always does: a bit of heartburn after meals. Then the cough came. By 2020, acid rose high enough at night to burn my throat and creep into my nose. Sleep turned into a gamble, and food became a negotiation.
When the back pain started, I called a chiropractor. It felt like a tight fist deep under my ribs – a type of pressure that wrapped around into my back. He said it was muscular, probably postural. We clicked, twisted, and cracked. I went along with it because I wanted to believe it was true. Later, I learned the tumor had been pressing on a cluster of nerves. Of course it felt like heart pain – they liken it to an angina pain. Pain doesn’t always follow the rules.
By early 2024, meals often ended with me lying on the floor, flat on my back, waiting for the spasm and sharp stabbing pain to pass. I started losing weight – 20+ kilograms gone by October. “Good diet,” people said. “New you.” I nodded and tried to laugh.
The system wasn’t cruel; it was just slow. Without an obvious crisis, it moved at a snail's pace. I asked, chased, and waited.
Life, In Parallel
Because life is ironic, the collapse happened just as things were coming together.
I’d launched my consultancy, a firm focused on Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) and Transformation in the finance sector, and it was gaining traction. A high-street bank had a major deal lined up to discuss with me on 17th October. Nearly 100 staff penciled in and hiring underway, forecasts and models agreed, and strategy mapped out. Years of work were finally leading to something truly substantial.
And my body? A mess of symptoms that I attempted to work around daily. I took teams calls on the living room floor and skipped lunches because chewing hurt – I was living off Huel meal replacement shakes most days. I made an internal deal: land this deal first, then focus on getting healthy again.
Ana’s story unfolded alongside mine. In August, she was rushed in to hospital with chest, jaw, and neck pain. The ECG cleared her heart. However, the “just-in-case” X-ray found a nodule in her upper right lung. By September, we met the surgeon. On 2nd October, she had surgery to remove the entire upper right lobe of her lung. She came home on the 5th, stitched, sore, and not allowed to lift anything heavier than a kettle for the net few months. Her parents flew in from Texas and turned our house into a recovery space that smelled like soup and hope.
Two weeks later, it was my turn.
The Endoscopy
Artificial banana spray numbed my throat. The nurse asked if I wanted sedation. I said no. It was too soon for Ana to drive and none of our visitors had a valid UK license to drive me, so numbing spray allowed me to drive myself home after. She gave me the look that clinicians reserve for people who think they’re brave but will regret it.
The scope slid in. My gag reflex kicked in. The monitor lit up.
A healthy oesophagus should look like smooth, pink corridors. Mine didn’t. Pale, ridged, calcified, irregular tissue wrapped the lower third like invasive coral – alive in a bad way. The consultant let out a soft, involuntary “oh” – that professional sound that says everything words can’t.
She took a biopsy, and I tasted metallic blood in my mouth. The world narrowed to the whir of a machine and the sudden realisation that I was not okay.
She sat me up gently. “I’m very sorry, but this looks like malignant cancer.”
Malignant. A precise, polite word for something violent.
The Drive Home
October light can be beautiful. That afternoon, it was unbearable – too golden, too sharp. I sat in the car for a long time, watching people drink coffee and scroll on their phones, still living in a universe that had just split in two.
Then I drove home to balloons, cake, and grandparents speaking Spanish in the kitchen. Ana moved carefully. Axel tried to climb everything. Cole grinned like all one-year-olds do, blissfully unaware that the world is not always simple. May it stay that way for as long as possible.
I opened a bottle of wine and sat them all around the dining table. I didn't want to drop that word in the middle of my son’s first birthday, but I couldn’t hold it in…
Still, after those fateful words settled, we sang happy birthday. Cole’s fingers wrapped around my thumb as he focused on the flickering candle. For 30 seconds, nothing else existed. I held on to that moment like it was air.
The Days That Followed
If you’ve never experienced diagnostic limbo, it’s a unique kind of hell. You measure life in phone calls and acronyms. CT, PET, MDT. You think in twelve-hour windows: keep the kids fed, hold it together for Ana, answer a few emails, try to sleep.
The consultant’s “unlikely to be cancer” assurance vanished. That six-month wait for the endoscopy felt outrageous. But I’m not here to criticise the NHS. The NHS also gave Ana a surgeon who removed a cancer before it could take her. Two truths can coexist: gratitude and frustration, love and the need for improvement.
The Visit To Somerset
17 October was supposed to be the bank meeting, the one that opened a new chapter in my career.
Instead, I cancelled it and drove to Somerset to tell my mum in person.
She had scleroderma – her lungs stiff and oxygen tubing looping around her house like a tether. I couldn’t tell her over the phone. She deserved to see my face when I said it.
“Mum, I’ve got cancer.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “I always worried something was being missed,” she said (my mum having spent her career as a palliative care focused district nurse), pulling me in for a careful hug whilst the oxygen line stretched between us.
I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time I saw her alive.
On the way back, the fields looked ordinary. I remember thinking how rude that was.
The Pain Has A Name (In Hindsight)
That angina-like pressure under my ribs, the back pain that made me grunt when I moved, and the chiropractor’s adjustments that never really fixed anything – hindsight creates a clear story. A tumor pressing on a cluster of nerves. Pain that mimicked a heart issue. Me lying on the floor after meals because it was the only position that let me swallow without pain.
People often say, “listen to your body.” I did. The issue wasn’t in the listening; it was getting anyone to translate what I was saying.
The Moment That Split Everything
Some dates become etched in your mind. 15th October 2024 marks a big black line in my timeline: before and after.
Before: a family planning to move, a business finally taking shape, a life in Spain on the horizon, toddlers in perpetual motion, reflux dismissed as “probably stress.”
After: a word – malignant – and a new life overshadowed by that word. Appointments, scans, logistics, and the intimate task of telling loved ones that the future had changed.
People talk about “finding strength.” I don’t believe you find it. I think you create it, often in a rough way, out of scraps: a routine to follow, a promise to yourself, an appointment you keep even when you’d rather not, a walk you take when your sofa is tempting you to stay put. Strength is more admin and consistency then anything else – crucial, but far from easy.
That night, I laid awake, listening to the baby monitor and Ana’s careful breathing. I replayed the statement – this looks malignant – until the words lost their meaning while the truth remained. Somewhere between anger and fear, a steadier feeling arrived: resolve. If I couldn’t control the diagnosis, I could control my response.
If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting – and fighting smart.
Looking Back (Without Flinching)
I won’t romanticise it. That fortnight was brutal. Two cancers under one roof. Toddlers caught in the chaos. A business launch turning to dust. A high-street bank deal replaced by a drive to tell my mum I had cancer.
But breakdown and clarity often go hand in hand. When everything collapses, you see what really matters. I learned that the body communicates loudly, the system operates slowly, and denial has tremendous strength. I learned that I’d rather face the harsh truth than live with a polite lie. And I learned that grief and gratitude can coexist without destroying each other.
This is the story of the fortnight everything fell apart. It’s also the story of the day I decided not to.
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Such a brilliantly written blog my friend. I was gripped from start to finish even though I know your story only too well. The writing captures all the right feelings, emotions and best of all the glimpses of determination that will surely appear in your later writing. Very proud of you, a must read. Well done. Phil
Thank you Phil – I really appreciate it. Yes, lots of determination to come.