Andy Morton

1 week ago | pressandjournal.co.uk | Andy Morton

The last time Chris Thomson ran a marathon, he ended up in the back of an ambulance. A Type 1 diabetic, the Peterhead runner is used to dealing with insulin spikes. But on that occasion, about halfway through the Edinburgh marathon, reality intervened. “I didn’t even realise my blood sugar was dropping,” Chris, 35, recalls. “A medic spotted it, grabbed me and put me in the ambulance.”It was a frightening moment.

2 weeks ago | pressandjournal.co.uk | Andy Morton

Marion McKelvie has a simple question for NHS Highland: “What happens next?”The 69-year-old from Inverness, who has Type 1 diabetes, has been under the care of Raigmore vascular surgeon Bernhard Wolf for the past eight years — ever since she developed hardening of the arteries in her left leg. Mr Wolf, she says, was a brilliant surgeon who successfully treated the issue.

2 weeks ago | pressandjournal.co.uk | Andy Morton

When Euan Russell was 19, his life was packed with possibility — college, work, martial arts and everything that comes with early adulthood. So when he noticed a lump developing on his neck, he tried to ignore it. “At first, I thought it would just go away,” says Euan, now 22. “I didn’t tell anyone — I was 19, and that’s not something that young people go through.”Even when the lump was diagnosed as diffuse B-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, he still felt the urge to turn his back on it.

2 weeks ago | pressandjournal.co.uk | Andy Morton

One cancer diagnosis in a family is devastating. Two is rare. Three — all at the same time? That’s what Peter Jones, his wife Anne Jones, and daughter Claire Collett faced after Christmas 2023. “I honestly don’t know how we kept going,” says Peter, 62, who is now living with incurable cancer. “But we did. And we still are.”Peter was the first to be told. In mid-2023, he began feeling food catch in his throat when he ate — sometimes spending 15 or 20 minutes trying to swallow a single bite.

3 weeks ago | pressandjournal.co.uk | Andy Morton

Vicky Ferries was eating pizza when the phone rang. It was 10.49pm – a detail she’ll never forget. “You’ve got leukaemia,” the voice on the line told her. It was just three days before her 25th birthday, and Vicky’s world shifted overnight. Now, nine months into treatment and with just two spinal taps to go, the 26-year-old from Lumphanan is slowly reclaiming her strength – on the family farm, with her twin sister Emma at her side and with Elijah, her pet cow, standing solid as ever.