Today is World Cancer Day, and for me, it’s a day of reflection. It’s been two years and three months since the surgery that saved my life—and changed it in so many ways. But it’s also more than ten years since I finished chemotherapy for a brain tumour in my teens.

I’m still here to tell the tale. Sadly, one of the most painful realities of having had cancer is that along the way, you meet people who don’t have the same luck.

I’ve attended the funerals of two friends—two people who should still be here, but for the cruelty of cancer.

So today, I remember them, and everybody else who died from cancer.