Personal Blogs

Where the Storm Pauses: Cancer and Technology

It’s March 17, 2026, and I’ve just had my consultation with my doctor at the Beatson cancer hospital in Glasgow.

I was adopted and raised by a man old enough to be my grandfather and who belonged, in some quiet way, to another century. He had lived in a time when milk arrived at the door in glass bottles, set down gently from a horse and cart, as if even delivery, like the proud horse carried a sense of dignity. He loved Dickens, and I think he trusted stories more than inventions. I now find myself in a fast‑moving world that would seem, to him, almost like fiction.

If I could sit with him again—perhaps on an ordinary afternoon—and tell him what I am about to write, I think he would listen with that same patient curiosity. Not disbelief exactly, but caution.

I watch a scientist called James Tour, who has built—I’m not sure this is the correct word—a “nanocar”: a micro‑structure in the form of a vehicle small enough to enter the bloodstream and carry out essential repair work in the body. It is a strange thought, that something so small could be made to move at all. But there it is, pulled out of the realm of science fiction and made real as the sun rises.

Now, what has this to do with my conversation with the doctor?

In the first chapter I explained that I was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. For a time, the treatments held things in place, like bags of sand placed carefully against a rising storm. But yesterday, I was told that one tumour has begun to grow again. Back in my father’s day, if the first diagnosis was the end of the line, what would he have made of this latest news?

The doctor spoke of something called PRRT—Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. The name itself feels weighty. But in essence, it is something surprisingly simple.

PRRT works by using a kind of targeted medicine. Cancer cells like mine carry specific receptors—think of them as micro parcel lockers. PRRT carries a substance designed to find those lockers, open them, and drop in a tiny amount of radiation. And unlike parcel delivery, which can be indiscriminate at times, these tiny parcels of radiation find the specific locker. It sounds similar to the nanocar to my mind: the idea that something so small, so carefully designed, can move through the body, find its target, and act. Not with drama, but with quiet purpose.

I think my father would have struggled with this—not because he lacked understanding, but because it asks us to trust in things we cannot see at all. A story of human hands learning, slowly, how to speak to the smallest parts of creation. I am not sure why, but I think of that verse where David writes, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book.”

Cancer remains what it is. It does not become less serious because the tools have become more refined. The storm still exists. There are still days when one wakes in that land of Oz.

PRRT does not promise a complete solution. It offers time in a life where we refuse to die.

And in a life where time is no longer measured in years but in distances between worlds, that matters.

Perhaps that is what I would say, if I could sit beside my father again. That the world has changed, yes—but not entirely. That even now, beneath all the complexity, there remains something familiar: a quiet reaching toward life, even in its most fragile places.

But there is something else, too—something that does not belong to laboratories or consultations, something that does not depend on what can be measured or delivered.

A hope that stands a little further out, beyond the reach of medicine.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… God Himself will be with them as their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:3–4 (BSB)

I find myself thinking, more often now, that the distance between worlds is not only something we endure, but something that will one day be closed. When the quiet absence that follows loss will give way to presence again.

I think of my father then—not as someone left behind in another time, but as someone simply sharing an eternal horizon where time merges and to be truthful, time will only be the gaps in eternal events.

Reference: Scientists say tiny ‘DNA nanobots’ could deliver medicine by travelling through the body - College of Medicine and Integrated Health

Image my Marcus Woodbridge https://unsplash.com/@marcuswoodbridge

Image created with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot

And They All Lived Happily Ever After: The Dénouement

One of the most enduring gifts my father left me before he passed away was the joy of books. Not just the stories themselves, but the happiness and hope they could carry—sometimes when you needed it most.

I grew up in Govan, a shipyard town in Glasgow. I must have been about seven when I wandered into The Modern Book Shop, a quiet little place that sold second-hand books and comics. That day, a book’s cover caught my eye. Something about the image pulled me in. I opened it and read the first lines of the first chapter:

"Now it happened that Mr Cherry, the carpenter, found a piece of wood that laughed and cried like a child."

And just like that, I was in. The story of Pinocchio had begun.

We all know the tale, how a wooden puppet longs to become a real boy. But do you remember how it ends?

After being lied to, tricked, nearly killed, and running from every bit of responsibility, Pinocchio changes. He begins to care. He sacrifices. He works hard. He chooses love and duty over selfishness. And in doing so, he transforms—not just in form, but in spirit. He wakes up human, and the puppet body is left behind, useless now. He says:

"How funny I was when I was a puppet! And how glad I am that I’ve become a real boy!"

It’s the classic “happily ever after.” But it’s more than that.

Every powerful story follows this same shape—the hero’s journey. Something breaks. Things go wrong. The hero struggles, fails, grows. And eventually, there’s a resolution. A turning point. A moment of justice. We need that resolution. Without it, stories feel incomplete—like the soul of the tale was stolen.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That’s more than a comforting thought. It speaks to something we instinctively understand we live in a moral universe. And our stories—especially the ones that endure—reflect that.

Imagine if the Fairy had turned Pinocchio back into a block of wood. If everything he had learned, all the growth and love and sacrifice, had been erased. We would have closed the book angry. Empty. Betrayed. Because stories aren’t just entertainment. They’re mirrors of something bigger.

Take the Bible, for example. In Genesis, humanity is given a task: to make the earth a paradise. Then, everything breaks. Pain enters. Struggle begins. But it doesn’t end there. Jesus steps in, offering hope, offering restoration. “You will be with me in paradise,” he promises. And in Revelation, that promise comes full circle into the dénouement :

“See, the home of God is with His people.
He will live among them;
They will be His people,
And God Himself will be with them.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
Mourning no more, crying no more, pain no more,
For the first things have gone away.”

The Voice Bible

This is the ultimate dénouement. Paradise lost, paradise regained.

So maybe the reason we crave resolution in stories is because, deep down, we’re wired for one ourselves. We believe that wrongs can be righted. That the struggle means something. That even in the darkest chapters, the ending is worth waiting for.

That’s the legacy my father left me. A quiet kind of faith hidden in the pages of a second-hand book.

Scripture taken from The Voice™. Copyright © 2012 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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In some mysterious way, the universe was expecting us.

The universe, vast and incomprehensible in its scale, seems almost inexplicably fine-tuned for life. From the delicate balance of gravitational forces to the exact properties of atoms, the conditions that permit life are staggeringly precise. But what compels the universe to produce the components perfect for life?

Consider the concept of fine-tuning in cosmology. The universe operates within a narrow range of physical constants that allow for the existence of life as we know it. One such constant is the gravitational constant (G), which governs the force of attraction between masses. The number "N," approximately 10^36, describes the ratio of the strength of gravity to the electromagnetic force between atoms. If this number were even slightly smaller or larger, the universe would either collapse under its own gravity or expand too rapidly for stars and galaxies to form. Without these structures, life would not exist. The fine-tuning is so precise that any deviation in this gravitational force would render the universe inhospitable.

Now, consider Planck's constant (h), which dictates the behaviour of particles on the quantum level. Even a minuscule variation in this constant would radically alter the behaviour of atoms and molecules, potentially preventing the stable formation of matter itself. Likewise, if the speed of light (c) were altered, the balance between energy and matter would shift, destabilizing the processes that allow stars to burn and planets to form. These constants are not arbitrary; they fall within an incredibly narrow range, and any fluctuation would make the existence of complex life impossible.

Then there are you and I. The human body, composed of trillions of cells, relies on molecular and atomic interactions so complex that they defy chance explanation. What compels the molecules within us to assemble into intricate structures like the eye, the brain, or the nervous system? Evolutionary biology provides part of the answer, but even within that framework, we are left in awe of the staggering complexity. Consider the formation of the human eye—a process that requires the precise coordination of proteins, enzymes, and DNA to form a functioning organ capable of receiving and processing light. The probability of these processes arising by pure chance is astronomically low.

Moreover, we must consider not only the physical structures but also the phenomenon of consciousness. What compels our brains to produce minds capable of self-reflection, language, and abstract thought? No other creature on Earth possesses the capacity for moral reasoning, artistic expression, or the ability to contemplate its own existence. Neuroscience has begun to unravel the biological mechanisms behind consciousness, yet the "hard problem"—why we have subjective experiences at all—remains elusive. Why do we admire flowers, landscapes, and beauty? Why can we learn any language from birth? These abilities suggest that there is something more than mere survival at work. It all makes little sense unless someone—or something—knew we were coming.

This leads us back to an age-old question: why does the universe exist in such a way that life, and particularly human life, is possible? While science can describe how the universe operates, it struggles to answer why these conditions exist in the first place. The remarkable precision of these constants, coupled with the emergence of intelligent life, suggests purpose, a design, or at the very least, a deep mystery.

Consider the words of an ancient shepherd boy, contemplating the heavens thousands of years ago:

"When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?" —

 Psalm 8:3,4

The Psalmist's awe reflects our own modern wonder. In an era where science has revealed the vastness of the universe and the delicate balance that sustains life, we are still left grappling with the same fundamental questions. The cosmos does not need to be this finely tuned, yet here we are, marvelling at its beauty and complexity. Perhaps, as the Psalmist suggests, we are more than accidental by-products of the universe. Perhaps we are here because the universe was, in some mysterious way, expecting us.