I kept cancer private for three years. Didn't want it to define me, didn't want the pity, didn't want to be "that bloke with cancer." Just got on with it. Told the kids when they were very small. Told them again recently—they'd forgotten, which honestly felt like the right outcome. Let them live.
But something shifted. Maybe it was sitting in the chemo chair for the hundredth time, watching the same nurses, the same beeping machines, the same conversations about side effects and cycles. Maybe it was the emails from people saying they wished there was a place where someone talked honestly about what living with this actually feels like, instead of the pink-ribbon platitude industrial complex.
So I'm going public. And I'm doing it with AI.
Why Now?
The diagnosis happened years ago. Colorectal cancer. The treatment was brutal, then it stopped being brutal, then I had a few good years, and now it's back. That's the arc. That's my arc, anyway. Metastatic. Terminal eventually, probably. But probably not for a while, and probably not if the treatment keeps working.
The point is: I've been living with this thing. Working through it. Parenting through it. Building a business through it. Running, cycling, eating properly, seeing consultants, getting scanned, getting infused, losing my hair, finding my hair, losing it again.
The chaos of it is extraordinary. On a single day I might have a consultant appointment, a team call, a school pickup, a chemo session, and a conversation with my kids about whether I'm going to die. All of it real. All of it happening at the same time.
The Pledge
There's a thing called the Working With Cancer pledge. It's about being open, being honest, not pretending everything is fine when it isn't. That resonated. So here's what I'm committing to:
- Honest. No silver linings unless they're actually there. No inspiration porn. Just the real stuff.
- Public. People living with cancer need to know they're not alone, and they need to hear from someone who isn't trying to sell them something.
- Practical. I'm building tools. AI tools. They actually work. I'll share them.
- No bullshit. Cancer is hard. Managing it while working and parenting is harder. I'm going to talk about both.
The Tools
This is where the AI stuff comes in. Because managing cancer is a data problem. You've got:
- Consultant appointments and what they said
- Blood results you never quite understand
- Scan reports with words like "lesion" and "stable"
- Side effects that come and go in patterns only you notice
- Medications, dosages, interactions
- Questions you meant to ask but forgot
- The daily chaos of trying to work while feeling like shit
This is where AI actually becomes useful instead of just hype. Because I can give it my medical records and ask it questions. I can track my symptoms with voice input when typing is too much. I can build a searchable record that my brain—fried from chemo—actually can't manage alone.
I'm not saying AI is going to cure cancer. I'm saying it's going to help me remember what my consultant said, spot patterns in my side effects, and maybe give me back some control in a situation where control is basically an illusion.
The Daily Chaos
This is what nobody talks about: the sheer, mundane chaos of living with cancer while everything else keeps happening.
On a Tuesday I might have:
- 6am: Woken up by anxiety about a scan result
- 8am: School run with one kid asking if I'm going to die
- 9am: Team call where nobody mentions the cancer because they don't know how to
- 12pm: Lunch where I'm trying to eat properly to manage side effects
- 2pm: Consultant appointment, new treatment plan
- 4pm: School pickup, pretending everything is normal
- 6pm: Dinner, homework, bedtime routine
- 8pm: Research on clinical trials instead of watching TV
- 10pm: In bed, can't sleep because of the steroids
That's not tragedy. That's just what life looks like. And the mental gymnastics required to hold all of that at the same time without losing your shit is genuinely extraordinary.
Why I'm Doing This
Because there are thousands of people living with cancer who feel like they have to choose between being sick and being normal. Who feel like talking about it means they've given up, or they're being negative, or they're looking for sympathy.
Because the best thing I've done in the past year is build tools that actually help me manage this, and those tools should exist for everyone, not just for people who happen to know how to build them.
Because I'm angry. I'm angry that cancer exists, I'm angry that it's back, I'm angry that I have to explain to my kids why daddy has no hair, I'm angry that I have to choose between treatment days and work days, I'm angry that the NHS is stretched so thin that consultants are apologising for the wait time.
And I'm angry enough to do something about the parts I can control. Which is: being honest, building tools, and refusing to let cancer be the only interesting thing about me.
The Commitment
I'm going to write about this. Regularly. I'm going to share the tools I build. I'm going to talk about what works and what doesn't. I'm going to be honest about the hard days and the good days and the weird days where I can't quite work out which category they fall into.
And I'm going to do it with the understanding that this is an open-source approach to managing cancer with AI. Not in the sense of code being open-source, but in the sense that I'm sharing everything: the failures, the wins, the patterns, the mistakes, the learning.
Because if I'm going to have cancer, I'm going to make it useful.
So: fuck you, cancer. You get some of my time, some of my energy, some of my hair, and some of my sanity. But you don't get all of me. You don't get my work. You don't get my kids' childhood. You don't get my refusal to think clearly about what matters.
You get managed. With AI, with honesty, and with a decent amount of spite.
Let's build something.