Our kid took the worst words a doctor can fire at you back in April 2025. Stage four oesophageal cancer. No warning. No soft landings.
It hit right after he flew home from Dubai, the place he’d called home since 2008. His insurance blocked treatment over there so he packed what he could, swallowed the fear and came back to the UK with that dread clinging to him.
Something shifted in the wreckage. He came back to us. Properly. The whole tribe. The moment he wrapped his arms around his kids again, Anthony, Jamie, Sarah, Alfie and Mia his stepdaughter, carried more weight than anything a doctor could hand you on a chart.
The wider clan closed in as well. Chris known everywhere as Longy. The grandkids. The friends Anthony collects like passports. My sister Lynn with Daniel, Donna and Katie. My own lad and his mam. Cath who’s mum to Anthony and Sarah. Denise who’s mum to Jamie. Everyone sent warmth his way, steadying him because that’s what they do.
We’ve all crowded into the same WhatsApp ever since. Voice notes at daft hours. Jokes that wobble but push the fear back. Messages that say everything and nothing. His weight fell from eighteen stone to twelve and you catch yourself staring at old photos because they belong to another life.
Yet he kept cracking jokes, still lifting us even when the tiredness dragged at every breath. That’s him all over, fronting up while the world boots him in the ribs.
Then November arrived and he said he wanted to fly back to Dubai for two weeks. To see his girlfriend Nida and the Dubai crew who’d become his second family. He hurt but he pushed on because cancer wasn’t going to choose his borders.
Then the madness started. He slept straight through his flight at Manchester Airport. Missed it. Caught another through Paris. Missed that as well. When he finally made it to Dubai thirty hours later he looked finished. Freezing in the desert heat. Shaking like he’d been dragged out of the sea.
Nida opened the door, saw him and knew. He was in hospital that same night.
It was sepsis. The kind that doesn’t wait. While he lay wired to machines in a Dubai ward we paced around kitchens and living rooms across the UK checking WhatsApp so often the screens warmed under our thumbs. Twelve days stretched into something heavier than time.
But he fought his way back. Inch by inch. Enough to get discharged. And right now while I’m writing this he’s in the sky again heading for Manchester. Heading home.
My dad was born on the thirteenth of March and used to say that if it wasn’t for bad luck he’d have none at all. We laughed but I carry my own twist of it. Lucky in my unluckiness. It sits deep and it sits true today.
Anthony wears his heart on his sleeve. What you see is what you get. He deserves all the love in the world.
He could have died out there. Sepsis moves faster than fear. But he had someone beside him who didn’t blink. Someone who dragged him back into the light when seconds mattered. Nida and her friends have been a gift. We owe them more than words will ever manage.
So tonight at six when that plane touches down in Manchester we’ll breathe again. All of us. And we’ll take whatever luck waits by the door.
His son Anthony, and his mate Bri, will be waiting to pick him up at Manchester Airport with open arms.
