On Thursday 16th October, our family completely changed when our brother Philip passed away at the age of 31.

Philip suffered with a cancer called Squamous Cell Carcicoma which is a very rare cell cancer. He was diagnosed is 2023 and underwent 2 rounds of chemotherapy which were unsuccessful; he then had radiotherapy which helped the shrink the tumour to more than half of what it had grown to. When he went for his next scan, the cancer had grown back larger than the original size. The only option was him to have an operation to have the cancer removed. The surgeons were sure that the cancer hadn't spread to anywhere else in his body.

In November 2024, Philip had major surgery which lasted 20 hours to cut out the cancer. He was told that he would never walk the same again. Despite this he worked hard to rehabilitate himself and after 3 months in hospital he finally came home. He continued to improve however in August 2025, he couldn't keep any food down and his nurse called an ambulance. He went back into hospital and the results of a scan showed the cancer was back and more aggressive than before and had spread all over his body.

As devastating as this news was, we wanted to make him as comfortable as we could in his final months with us.

Philip was at home for 7 weeks before he passed away and in this time, Dougie Mac played a massive role in supporting him as well as his family through such a terrible time. They managed all his medication, came for regular check ups with us all, helped get equipment at home to aid him and organised sits for family to have respite towards the end when things got very tough.

We honestly couldn't have got through this time as a family without Dougie Mac and there continued support we would like to raise as much money as we can to show our appreciation to them.

To support Dougie Mac, we are requesting family flowers only but if anyone would like to contribute to use the QR code on the order of service to donate.

In addition to this; on 6th December, members of Philips family will be taking part in the Mini Santa Dash which Dougie Mac hold to raise money for them. If anyone can donate anything to this great cause we would be forever grateful.