It has been an emotional month.
There have been conversations that left me full of hope, and others that left me staring into the abyss a little.
That is the truth of serious illness: your mind can travel from fear to faith and back again in the space of a few hours.
One sentence from a doctor can lift you. Another can flatten you.
You try to stay steady, but you are human.
Over the last month, I have learned again that hope is not something soft or sentimental.
Hope is hard work.
Hope is what you cling to when your body is battered, your mind is tired and the future feels uncertain.
I have also been reminded how much good people matter.
I have been so impressed with my team at the hospital.
From the moment I came in a month ago, they moved with urgency, clarity and compassion.
They got me into radiotherapy within days.
I already believed radiotherapy was the most powerful treatment for this tumour, and now I have even more reason to believe it.
It is giving me more life. More time. More possibility.
And then this week, something happened that I am still trying to process.
My dad was coming down on the train from Scotland that morning.
I was in bed when Dr Ross, my oncology doctor, arrived at my bedside smiling.
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Not a polite smile. Not a guarded smile. A real smile.
He told me straight away: the cancer had shrunk by 8 millimetres.
Eight millimetres.
That might not sound like much to some people, but when you are living inside a fight like this, it sounds like everything. It sounds like life.
It sounds like momentum. It sounds like prayer being answered through medicine.
Then came more good news. The drug I am taking has not caused the level of toxicity they feared.
My body has handled it. So now they are going to increase the dosage.
Again, for most people that might sound clinical. But for me, it felt profound.
It meant my body was coping. It meant I was strong enough for more treatment.
It meant there was more that could be done. It meant we were not backing off. We were pressing forward.
It honestly felt as though God had spoken to me through that moment.
I could hardly say a word.
I rang my wife, and I think at first she panicked because I could barely get the words out.
But I was struggling to speak because I was overwhelmed.
Completely overwhelmed. Relief can hit just as hard as fear. Maybe harder.
After weeks of carrying the weight of uncertainty, I was suddenly hit by this wave of gratitude and disbelief and hope.
And the truth is, this news also helped make sense of something I had already been feeling.
Recently, I have had increased sensations in my body.
Even though I still cannot move anything right now, something has been changing.
Little signals. Little reminders. Flickers that make you wonder whether things are shifting beneath the surface.
This scan result seems to confirm that something real is happening.
Has my hope of moving again increased? Absolutely.
But even bigger than that, my hope in life has increased.
This week did not just tell me that the tumour has shrunk. It told me I am not going anywhere just yet.
A month ago, so many conversations seemed to circle around decline, transition and death.
Even when those words were not spoken directly, they hovered in the room. They sat in the silence.
They lived in the cautious tone of people trying to prepare you for every possibility. And I understand that. I really do.
But this week gave us a different conversation.
Radiotherapy has worked. Medicine has worked. My body has responded.
That changes the emotional landscape completely.
When my dad arrived and saw my face, that was a moment I will never forget.
To be able to give him that news in person was incredible. I could see the relief in him. I could see the joy. I could see the release of all the thoughts he must have been carrying on that journey down from Scotland.
And when I thought about him on the train home, I smiled.
Because I knew that must have been one of the best train journeys of his life.
Not because the route was beautiful or the coffee was good, but because he was carrying joy home with him.
He was carrying gratitude. He was carrying news that every parent longs to hear when their child is in trouble: things are better than we feared.
So where does that leave me now?
It leaves me with work to do.
This is not the time to drift. This is the time to push on.
Rehabilitation matters. Visualisation matters. The mental work matters. Belief matters.
Not in a fantasy sense, but in a practical one. If there is a window opening, then I want to meet it with everything I have.
This is the Stoic philosophy for me right now: when life gives you a sliver of light, you do not argue with it. You step towards it.
You keep going.
You trust the medicine, you trust the people helping you, you trust the work, and you trust that even in the darkest months there can still be days that change everything.
This week gave me one of those days.
And I am unbelievably grateful for it.
