Shadow of a Survivor

“A life once given up for lost — now a story that’s saving others.”

At 18, he was told he wouldn’t survive cancer. What followed was an agonizing battle through the wreckage of failed treatments, where hope flickered like a distant light.

Eight years later, his four-year-old daughter was diagnosed with terminal leukaemia. She, too, endured the brutal toll of chemotherapy — and, like her father, she survived. She would go on to win two silver medals for Team GB at the 1998 World Swimming Championships in New Zealand.

From the ashes of suffering, he rose — not just healed, but transformed. Returning to the very hospital that once sealed his fate, he became a senior cancer nurse specialist, guiding others through the same darkness he had once known.

Now, fifty-one years on, he is one of the UK’s longest-living cancer survivors.

His journey stretches from the thundering stages of rock festivals to the sacred lands of the Lakota Sioux Nation — from despair to healing — in a memoir that pulses with courage, compassion, and quiet triumph.

Shadow of a Survivor, by John Walker Pattison, is more than an award-winning memoir. It’s a lifeline — a testament to resilience, to love, and to the fierce strength that can rise from suffering.

Read it. Feel it. Be changed by it.

Shadow of a Survivor is a raw, honest account of survivorship, jam-packed with an authenticity that will stimulate every emotion, from tears to laughter.

“It’s more than a cancer story—it’s a story of purpose, humanity, and turning pain into power.” Mike Briggs. Central Valley Radio, California.