Jonathan Taylor signs a new lease on life despite life-threatening news.
In the fast-paced, instant-information world we live in, we are continuously bombarded with bad news almost every hour. Be it a devastating earthquake on the other side of the globe or a bad political situation locally, it is all around us.
Although you would think such over-exposure would jade us, the opposite has become true. Studies have shown that this constant flow of negative news has resulted in huge rises in general stress levels and even a lower tolerance for dealing with difficult issues across demographics. With all of this going on around us, receiving devastating personal news can just feel like the last straw.
Although no bad news can be seen as good, there can be no worse news than learning that you have a life-threatening disease. When this happened to Jonathan Taylor, a Darlington local from the UK, his entire world came to a crashing halt. The forty-five-year-old father of two had it all. Good health, a beautiful young family as well as owning his own property development company. His body became overtaken by enlarged lymph nodes, some the size of tennis balls, with other the size of plumbs, around his abdomen, lungs, heart, bowels and oesophagus. It was then that he received his diagnosis. He had a rare form of late-stage Lymphatic Cancer (NLPHL).
With the life-threatening disease already having overtaken his body thus far, doctors advised him that he would have to stop working immediately. To most, rightfully so, this would spell the end of their lives as they know it. But for Jonathan Taylor, what others saw as the end, he saw as the beginning. During this terrible time, he discovered something within himself – a writer.
Thanks to his love for life, drive, creativity and talent, not only did Jonathan write a novel but he wrote the Amazon number one best seller entitled The Forgotten Mission – The Return. Written during his cancer treatments, the story is built around Scott Salvador, a NASA employee who finds himself in the mids of conspiracies and espionage. The author commented:
“I had the idea whilst on a family holiday to Florida, USA, back in 2010. It stayed an idea for a few months after returning, until my wife, or should I say my rock, my best friend and mother to my two fantastic and talented children, encouraged me with the words; ‘You have to write these down, they are fantastic!’, as I made up yet another story for our children. Well, I kind of took her advice this time and started putting pen to paper, or should I say fingers to tablet. After a few thousand words, the idea sat there waiting for me to carry on, never finding the time to do so. This is where that thing happened for a reason. My former job was very demanding and physical, and with the kind of cancer I had and where it was, this stopped me from continuing in this line of work. Then, unfortunately, I had a reaction to the chemotherapy, leaving me with severe nerve damage all over. All that aside I’ve never once lost my positivity. ” He added:
“I took the bull by the horns and danced to the rhythm of the drip-stand. Making the most of what life had to throw at me.”
Jonathan managed to rise above his situation despite, or perhaps because of, the circumstances he found himself in. He beat a life-threatening disease by living life. By not allowing preconceived limitations that we might have about ourselves our a situation determine the end of a full or rich life. By being stubborn enough to see it as the beginning of a new chapter and not as the end.