When Duncan Thomson talks about the time before September 2018, it is as if he is recalling a completely separate life – and in many ways, he is.
“It was a good life, it was a happy life, and it was a life that I really enjoyed. I would say it was quite a fulfilled life.”
After that life was shattered by his cancer diagnosis, Mr Thomson, from Balmedie, found that it would be impossible to try and put the pieces back in the same order.
With his mortality proving impossible to ignore, he knew would need to make choices that would threaten his comfort and his short-term happiness, in order to be able to live as his true self.
And it could all be traced back to a simple haircut.
An unexpected shock
In August 2018, Mr Thomson’s then-wife spotted something unusual on his head: a group of moles with small white spots, which had not been there after his previous trim four weeks earlier.
They called the doctor and got an appointment within a week. A couple of weeks later, he was sitting in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s dermatology clinic at Burnside House.
He said: “I thought I was going in for a check, only to be told to take a seat again because it was actually going to be removed.”
Mr Thomson was given local anaesthetic, and the moles were removed for a biopsy. He then stopped thinking about it, until he got a call from ARI while relaxing on a sun lounger in Dubai.
After flying back, he went into hospital and was told he had stage 1B melanoma in his head.
He said: “Your head is trying to process all this information, but all you hear is cancer.
“You can’t actually deal with anything else at that point in time, you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, you don’t know how you’re supposed to feel.
“You don’t know if you need to make a will, plan a funeral, are you supposed to tell anyone, are you not supposed to tell anyone?”
Surgeons cut an incision flap in his head – one of the widest ever done in Grampian, he was told – and ended up with a scar that he said left him looking like Herman Munster.
‘Ultimately, it always wins’
But the biggest effect of the whole situation was psychological.
“I tried not to have too much time on my own, but there were quite a few scary moments where I was thinking to myself, I have to be realistic about this,” he said.
“This might not go away and I might now be left living with this.
“Ultimately, it always wins, generally. It doesn’t just have a potshot at you and that’s it.”
The fitness fanatic was told he would not be able to exercise beyond walking for weeks, depriving him of one of his main mental remedies.
And looming large in this confrontation with mortality was one simple fact that he knew he needed to act upon: he was gay.
He said: “I always thought I was happy and content with who I was as a person, because I felt like my life was complete, like it had everything that it needed, and my sexuality was a side product of it.
“But it took something like cancer to tip everything upside down.
“When you see the contents of your life scattered across the ground… it was the prospect of dying, and not being here, and not being able to have lived my life the way that I wanted that scared me the most.
“Because it was like, if I die, no one will know who the real me was, apart from me.”
Three and a half years on from his original diagnosis, Mr Thomson has finished treatment, is single, and keeps himself very busy with his two jobs holding fitness classes and as an IT business analyst for an oil and gas company.
Stepping out for Friends of Anchor
On May 5 and 6, he will walk the catwalk for Friends of Anchor’s all-male fashion show Brave, two years after he was first chosen to be a model.
Over those two years, some of his fellow members of that original set of men have lost their lives to the disease.
“That is so difficult,” he said.
“They never walked the catwalk, and they were guys that you met with, chatted with at the couple of meet-ups that we had, and you just think it could be any of us.
“I feel really humbled, because I’m not undergoing treatment at the moment and things are going fine.
“But it makes you reassess your life, you feel actually, you’re not maybe here for the long time you first thought and things are not as straightforward as you imagined.”
He added: “Here’s me thinking, I teach fitness, I don’t smoke, I hardly drink, I try to eat healthily and look after myself, and yet it doesn’t actually matter.
“It doesn’t care who it picks out.”
Tickets for Brave, which will take place at Aberdeen’s Beach Ballroom, are now on sale. Visit the Friends of Anchor website to join the waiting list.
