Steve Mclean was the assistant editor of the Bristol Evening Post, a loving husband and devoted father.
But he died of cancer earlier this month, only 12 weeks after diagnosis.
Before he died he wrote this poignant story for his newspaper.
We publish it today with permission from the Evening Post, and due to requests from Holdthefrontpage readers after reading the recent tribute to him.

There are some dates that stick in the mind for ever. The day you left school, the day you opened your first pay packet, the day you knew you wanted to spend the rest of your life with someone.

Friday April 26, 2002, is now logged, underlined and circled in red in my brain. Except that my own particular forever may not be for all that long.

I have cancer. It's a stark statement and one that I would give untold riches not to have to say, but it's there. It's a bowel tumour in my sigmoid colon, it has spread to most of my liver and I may only have a 50 per cent chance of seeing out the next year. It's an old man's disease, one I shouldn't have got, if I was going to get it, until maybe I was 70. But I have an amazing wife, an eight-year-old son who is my world and I'm only 45. How fair is that?

So I have one choice. There's nothing to do but fight back - and the first few rounds have proved to be an eye-opener.

There was no real reason to suspect I was all that ill. I was tired, work had been a bit demanding and I was used to seeing a few blood traces in the toilet - legacy of a largely sedentary job, or so I thought. Then things began to get a little worse - a few stomach pains, more blood than usual and fatigue.

The GPs at first dismissed it as a "lifestyle" problem, just as they had done over the last few years when, on occasion, I had felt a bit out of sorts. "Lifestyle" was their way of saying I was burning the candle at both ends, and there may have been a certain amount of truth in that.

But this was different. When even my boss passed comment, it had to be. Finally, I got to see a GP who was thorough. She organised blood tests, diagnosed possible irritable bowel disease or colitis and arranged an examination by a colon specialist. As the days passed, my blood levels dropped to almost half the usual level and I was admitted to the Royal United Hospital in Bath as an emergency case. But within the space of a few days, my life and my family's future were, it seemed, thrown on to a roller-coaster which was only going one way - downhill.

This white-knuckle ride started with my clinical notes. They were there at the end of the bed after I woke from the effects of the sedative I had been given before a colonoscopy - a camera investigation of the large bowel - earlier that day.

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