I am two days post op for malignant melanoma with a large scar in my leg and a tender groin where nodes were removed: now the real work begins in working out my faith and moving forward.

Faith is not a passive slumbering thing, it is real and active, coming alive even more in challenging or life threatening circumstances. Some would say faith is blind (in the past psychologists and atheists described accepting Christian faith as a blind leap) but currently for me it helps clarify what life is all about.

Staring mortality in the face is not a popular past-time in modern culture; we are all busy, trying to get comfortable whilst constantly reassured by advertising that says “we are worth it” “we are in control”. However it doesn’t take much to get a glimpse of the reality lying just beneath the polished veneer of our fragile existence: a near miss on the roads, a friend has an accident, a natural disaster occurs or your own health or that of those you love, is called into question. Shocked, we are forced into taking stock, pausing to consider just for a short while what life is all about and what we really value, why we are here and what our purpose is.

Blind faith would speak platitudes into my situation and the future saying “it will all be alright”.

Real faith, as the Bible puts it, says “The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen” (ESV Hebrews 11v1) sees our fragile reality and in the face of uncertainty, real doubts and honest concerns, fights to believe that God has a purpose and has not left the building.

Those with real faith do not expect to be exempt from suffering: no-where in the Bible does it state that those who follow Christ will somehow magically avoid illness, accident, suffering and harm – even death; but that we should expect challenges in life; that in our suffering God is with us, carrying us and helping us to become stronger, learning to deal with human frailty and to understand more clearly his values and the eternal picture.

CS Lewis, Christian author and writer of the Narnia series watched his wife die of cancer and explained that “pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world”. The illusion of control is so strong now that it takes a significant event like the Tsunami to help us realise what is really important and how we should spend our time and resources.

My chosen reaction to this bad news of cancer has a background; I had an excellent example growing up from my Dad who survived a near fatal car accident when I was one and was paralysed from the neck down. He was told he would never walk again, but through prayer, faith and determination he walked out of Stoke Mandeville Spinal Injuries Unit a few months later. He has written and spoken of his struggle with suffering and has fought to hold on to faith through it all. Recently he suffered another fall leaving him in a wheelchair and has fought for months to regain some walking once again. He has never complained and I admire his determination to fight on and believe that God is still with us.

So where does that leave me? Well it’s hard to deal with mortality and see the reaction to my news in those around me. I have been reminded of the fact that my life is still in God’s hands and that my earthly future is uncertain, but my eternal one assured. I would like people to acknowledge their reaction and to look into what life is really about; also to help others be more aware of preventative measures to reduce their own cancer risk.

My faith is now moving up a gear, more active as I hold in tension the reality of a potential for more suffering, loss and an increase in my risk of going to heaven in the next ten years, while still seeking God’s path for my life and trying to live like Christ, as he said “I have come that they may have life to the full”(John 10v10).

This means I am setting myself some goals over the next few weeks, months and years to remind me of what’s important and to focus on what is right.

1. To spend time with the people I love and develop my relationship with God.

2. To serve those I am called to in my role as a Doctor, Husband, Father, Brother, Friend and Son.

3. To make the most of my energy, time and resources to life live to the full.

4. To start training for a Triathlon to be achieved next summer once my wound heals.

5. To do all I can to raise awareness of preventable health problems.

6. To try to live every day to the max as if it were my last.

Another great verse puts all this better than I could, not hiding in denial but running the marathon of life with real faith :

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”. (Philippians 3v14)

This complex syntax typical of St Paul basically states that he is focused by faith on what is unseen and wants to reach the goals set by Christ not those set by the material world around him. Amen to that.

So when people find out what I do, they inevitably want to hear my most gruesome stories of injury, disease or misfortune.

Here’s one. This guy comes into my surgery a few months back, he is so obese he can’t see or take care of his feet anymore, and his belly hangs in a floppy apron over his belt, wallowing in a mass of bloated, mottled skin.

He has that smell people have when they just can’t wash themselves all over.  I imagine him struggling to get out of a bath and finally resorting to sitting in front of the sink with a wet flannel hopelessly unable to reach the places he really needed to wash.

Anyway he struggles to squeeze into the seat in my room and settles on the edge of the chair, leaning forwards, his swollen ankles spilling over the rim of his surprisingly clean white trainers. “When my father died I had to step in to run the family business, but I couldn’t cope with the strain and fell out with my brother, so you see I started drinking…”

Looking back in the notes it’s clear that he has admitted this many times before and been advised more often than not to self refer to the local alcohol services – as a test of intent and motivation.

“They just come over and tell me to stop drinking, which doesn’t help much, and I keep getting told to go to the doctor and ask for help.”

I’m internally aware of reflecting at this moment, my mind racing forward picking up all the sensory cues of the scenario as I listen to his story of woe, already jumping ahead to the obvious question he wants answered “can you help?”  As a Christian and a clinician I wrestle internally with my own question – “What can we offer this man with sad eyes?”

As he comes to a halt, I’m brought back to the present, he has used 30 seconds of his prescribed 120 seconds of free speech. Research proves that most patients will tell the key information in their case within the first 2 minutes of a medical consultation if left to speak freely after introductory pleasantries.

When this research study was conducted the average time it took the doctor to interrupt the patients’ verbal flow was ten seconds, cutting down the chance of a good history by drastic odds and ironically prolonging the consultation in an attempt to speed it up by taking control.

As he stops speaking I breathe, reassured that as I met and escorted him from the waiting room my initial assessment of his ability to stop talking within 120 seconds was correct. A few patients are still blissfully unaware of the NHS 10 minute allowance enshrined in the unwritten GP rules and will drone on undeterred by their own statement of, “I really hope I am not wasting your time doctor as I know you’re so busy … but …”

The man with sad eyes is not one of the latter group we learned about in training. Relief! These are the notoriously hard to please “entitled demanders”. As a new trainee GP I soon became hardened by the realisation that we are not trained in order to please all the people all the time.

Some patients will play little games with you to gain your sympathy or win you over to their demands. I remember the lonely old lady who would visit me on a weekly basis for a fix; as a trainee I was the most accessible of all the doctors in the practice.

I naively accepted her compliments, “haven’t you got such nice teeth!” All the while she was undermining my lovely teeth with decay in the form of chocolate bribes to justify a few extra minutes of what would be recorded as “had a chat” in the notes. How much should I conspire with such behaviour and what would Jesus have done in my shoes?

But to return to my sad alcoholic – I was still wracking my brains as to what support we could offer on the NHS? Like I said he had already unsurprisingly ‘disengaged’ from the usual courses of action, I found myself wondering, “could he be another dreaded type of problem patient – the ‘manipulative help rejector’?”

The manipulative help rejector delights in the extra attention afforded by a caring and willing practitioner trying out all possible avenues of referral and therapy, but sabotages every attempt by refusing to accept that solution or help for what are soon discovered to be insoluble problems. When we are sick we get stuck in a rut; sometimes the ill-gotten gains of being unwell are too much to lose as we become comfortable lying in our hole.

So he hit the bottle when his father died – a salutary tale. I quickly perform a mental check on my weekly intake of units and drinking behaviour to make sure I am still on the right side of the line. Men are more likely to become alcoholic than women as they get a greater neurotransmitter response in the brain hitting the pleasure center after alcohol, this pleasure surge reduces over repeated excess so it takes more of the drug to get the same “high” next time.

I want to help him. I became a doctor because I believe Jesus cares so I should care. I believed it would give me the chance to help all kinds of people and be an interesting and fulfilling life – this answer would have resulted in a rejection on an application form for med school.

So did I share the love of Jesus with him and pray a prayer of salvation then and there side by side on our knees on the floor in my GP room? No, it didn’t work out quite like that. In the past I had been ashamed that this sort of salvation only happened once in my life so far and not more often to those under my care. So what would Jesus do?

I looked him in the eye, listened and talked to him, tried to show I cared and found out what his ideas, concerns and expectations were.

I dared to suggest we treated him for depression after he scored for moderate depression on the PHQ9 mood questionnaire. He was interested in treatment as there had been no suggestion of a mental health cause in his case for what looks like a purely social problem.

I advised him to occupy himself with worthwhile activity, offered some antidepressant medication and suggested he reduce alcohol so the medication could work. He managed to do this until the medicine had taken effect a few weeks later at which point I suggested he re-engage with the alcohol team, while awaiting counselling for family issues from his past.

He reported feeling “like a new person” and continued to see me for 3 months until I left the practice. Towards the end of my time he had resolved to lose weight through weight watchers and started a little business dog walking for cash and exercise! He also engaged in voluntary work in a charity shop using his accountancy skills. I have never seen him since, as I moved on to another practise to complete my training. I still think and pray for him and often wonder how he is now.

It takes a lifetime of falling over and getting up again to break some habits, especially those with roots deeply embedded in our past hurts, which may ultimately end up defining us. These issues need a complex concoction of our willing engagement in social, medical and psycho-spiritual intervention – more perceived than prescribed. I hope that through trying to care I can help people into a position where they have a better chance of meeting Jesus through the links he leaves in their path.

I notice like myself some of my Christian GP colleagues attract more than their fair share of alcoholics, druggies, the desperate, the needy, those who society would rather forget and has long since washed its’ hands of – Jesus people!

I long to be a part of a local church I feel confident in inviting them to, but haven’t ever stepped out in this way. I tell patients I will pray for them (with a mostly positive response on their part). I am part of a young community church plant in a poor area and I hope to have the guts to invite my next hopeless patient to the place where they cannot fail to meet the love of Jesus, and get plugged into a caring community of people following the narrow path towards a beautiful heavenly home.

Ben Sinclair is a Men’s Health Specialist. Find out more about Ben and his work on The Optimise Clinic.