Pete Bate

I've slowly realised that there's a difference between living with cancer and living with cancer. It seems possible to do both in one month, one week, or one day even. Last week, Lisa and I headed to Sorrento to celebrate, in advance, of our 30th wedding anniversary (yes, we did get married aged 12, thanks!). It's the first time we've had a week away together - sans kids - for almost two years. A lot has happened in that period. It's hard to explain the impact an unexpected terminal diagnosis...

It's a few days after my 52nd birthday. We had a great Bank Holiday weekend, celebrating with friends and family; even the weather held out until my annual birthday barbecue was winding down. There have been four such barbecues since I was diagnosed. It dawned on me, as the third year of my cancer journey came to a close, that I have lived for over 1,000 days following the colonoscopy that revealed my 4cm primary tumour on Maundy Thursday 2023. One thousand days! It's something we, and the...

Sitting at home surrounded by silence apart from the hum of the laptop and the rain on the windows, I'm decompressing after preaching at church for the first time in 18 months. It was a different experience to the last time I spoke there in October 2024. That felt more emotional as, preaching for the first time since my diagnosis, I outlined our cancer journey in some detail. Today, I used Palm Sunday as a diving board before sharing a bit about how we're finding life in the crater that...