A Season in Saudi Arabia

When the busy summer season ended, I was offered a lot more work than I expected in the first couple of months of the autumn. While it meant bringing the Gerson juices to work, the extra money was more than welcomed with an expensive two years of nutritional therapy in front of me.  Alongside the work, God delivered some truly magical days of solid northeast swell groomed by offshores. They were surprisingly powerful and the water was warm enough to be sans gloves and boots for now.  I guess I felt like everything was going as well as possible in October and November: both my wife and I had work; my son Raf had company every day when his cousins came home from school; and the surf was about as good as it gets for Norfolk.  Sure, the Gerson therapy was tough and super time consuming, but I was managing okay especially with my wife’s efforts in the kitchen. Most of all, I felt pretty good, sometimes really good, and that meant a lot to me. But it’s worth mentioning that fea...

When I was first diagnosed with nodular melanoma nine months ago, I immediately saw it as a death sentence. From the very beginning, I had googled obsessively and developed symptoms I’d read about soon after: everything from painful or possibly swollen lymph nodes to new irregular black patches on my skin. Of course, I knew some or all of these symptoms might be psychosomatic or benign, but I utterly convinced myself I was already either stage 3 (nodal involvement) or stage 4 (distant skin metastasis) and likely to die soon. A month later, a melanoma surgeon in Davao took a large swathe of skin away from my shoulder and biopsied two other black patches and a lump (all confirmed as benign) and told me I was only stage 2A and everything would probably be okay - 95% sure he said - and I should just stay out of the sun (or use loads of sunscreen) and hope for the best. Out of extreme caution, he recommended a PET scan but nothing else (he was unable to do a sentinel node lymph biopsy). I ...

While summer itself was a bit of a blur, there were definitely a few stand out moments. Within a few weeks in England, I quickly realised I had changed beyond all recognition - more fearful, more resentful and a little bit angry. I guess melanoma does that. So my standout moments weren’t exactly good ones. I spent much of July praying about whether to go ahead with the additional surgery recommended by the Spire melanoma surgeon. My mum’s advice about seeking God and him always replying when we need an answer just didn’t play out for me. Sadly, all I heard was deafening silence. Therefore, in August, I conformed with the medical establishment’s advice and had more skin was taken away for the princely sum of £750. The result came back 42 days later clear of any malignant cells. I guess God felt the private hospital needed the money more than I did.  In addition to private skin surgery, I’d tried to get back in the NHS system by re-registering with the local surgery and repeatedly as...

Before leaving the Philippines, I’d contacted my brother via WhatsApp and asked him to “give us a year” at his home. I’d carefully explained what had happened to us and the danger of melanoma. After some time, he said his wife had agreed “in principle” for us to stay one year, but it was likely they’d need a break from us during the year and suggested we move to my mother’s house later in the year. Overall, it was clear they wanted to offer us the exceptional help we needed, but it might unravel at any time given the general pressure of their family life.  On July 1, 2023, we arrived at their house in the back of a van driven by our old friend Tom, who had picked us up at the airport and was visiting us all in Norfolk for the first time in years. While he and his family got quickly reacquainted with my brother and his family, I unpacked our belongings in the room we’d been allotted. Inside the room, I immediately felt the gravity of the situation in front of me: I was surrounded by...

Two years ago, my family and I left the Saudi Kingdom behind right in the middle of the Covid-pandemic. It was a highly-charged, truly epic departure, where we felt the presence of God himself as he worked a series of miracles to lift us out of Arabia against the odds and bring us back to our family house on Siargao Island, Philippines. Final deliverance itself was sweet enough, but once back on the isla we were able to build our dream house  (using funds saved from my second Saudi season), surf every day and look forward to a five-year residency on an island we truly loved. Far from the mask-wearing and app-showing conformity of pandemic Saudi, life suddenly felt free again and the freedom was sweeter than the ripest date in the world.  Quite frankly, the idea of returning to KSA for a third time was the furthest thing on my mind in those heady days. Indeed, I had written off ever seeing Saudi again for the rest of my days. Yet today, unexpectedly writing this blog from Engl...