Two years ago, I was informed that the very cells that had served me faithfully all my life had gone rogue. They staged a rebellion in my prostate, then marched to my pancreas, and finally made their home in my liver. A cancerous time bomb ticking away inside me.
A few weeks ago, that time bomb almost went off. My out-of-hours doctor rushed me to A&E with what is called a carcinoid crisis — when the body suddenly floods itself with hormones, raising blood pressure to a fatal level. That is what it feels like to live with cancer: never quite knowing when the wires inside your body might spark, when the mechanism might fail.
How can random acts in the body like this be controlled? The doctors tell me stress makes it worse. Easier said than done. It means avoiding certain situations, planning carefully, and steering clear of people who emit stress. This has caused tension at times as others who do not communicate well with me, who do not understand and feel I am being unloving. But I love everyone, but I also love myself and want to go through life quietly and avoid those who will never change. It's a decision I made in my late teens and more radically now.
I am grateful to consultants, doctors and nurses in hospitals and my local surgery who treat me with dignity and compassion in a practical way. They will never know how far human compassion feels; we all crave it. Beyond that, my more important steadying act is speaking with my Creator, God. The diagnosis was first delivered to me on September 2023; I was given a short time to live.
It came quietly, almost tenderly: neuroendocrine cancer, spreading from prostate to pancreas to liver. The words were spoken gently and sympathetically. There is no script for receiving such news. And yet, I discovered there was a script after all. One already written, long before I knew I would need it.
The morning, I was due to receive my results, something extraordinary happened. Before I even stepped into the hospital, before the diagnosis had a name or a timeline, God spoke to me through words I hadn’t sought, but that found me like a lifeline dropped into deep waters:
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.’”
— Psalm 91:1–2
I didn’t read those words casually. They were spoken into my spirit. Not just read but revealed. It was as if God leaned close and said: This is for you. For today. For what you’re about to hear.
And He didn’t stop there.
That evening, my wife — who has walked each step of this path with me — pointed out something I had overlooked. She had been reading the same psalm, but her eyes were drawn to the closing verses:
“Because he loves Me, I will deliver him;
because he knows My name, I will protect him.
When he calls out to Me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble.
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
and show him My salvation.”
— Psalm 91:14–16
In her quiet way, she showed me what I needed most. God was not only promising protection, He was promising presence. Not just a fortress, but companionship in trouble. Not just deliverance, but honour. And most tender of all, long life, whether measured in days here or in eternity with Him, and salvation.
Cancer can make you feel absurdly small, like Sisyphus condemned to push the stone of your own body uphill, knowing it will only roll back down. Albert Camus once said: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” But unlike Camus’ Sisyphus, my life is not condemned to futility. The stone is heavy, yes — but I do not push it alone. God’s presence transforms the absurd into the bearable, the unbearable into the meaningful.
Viktor Frankl, who endured the concentration camps, wrote: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’” My “why” is clear. It is anchored not in medicine or prognosis, but in God — my refuge, my fortress, my salvation. This all sounds like clichéd Christian rhetoric, but unless you have walked the path with God, you may never know.
Psalm 91 does not promise the absence of pain. It promises His presence in it. It promises that when we love Him and call on Him, He hears, He answers, He walks with us.
I may have been given a year, but I have been given far more than that — I have been given hope. Not wishful thinking, but anchored hope. The kind that steadies a man living with a time bomb inside him.
To anyone who has sat in that sterile room and heard the doctor say “cancer,” or who lies awake wondering what the future holds: I want you to know that God still speaks. And more than that — He stays.
Note: If you are going through a similar crisis , feel free to contact me for a supporting Email chat at JimAlba@proton.me