‘I wanted to live for my daughters’

Sitting on the floor at the base of a flight of stairs, Mark Borg places his hands on the step behind him and pushes his heavy body up. He continues with the laborious task until he has climbed all six steps leading to the lift of his apartment block, where he lifts himself on to his wheelchair and rolls himself in. When he was still waiting for the lift to be installed five years ago, Mr Borg spent some three months using his arms to make his way up and down the 44 steps leading to his second-floor apartment. Yet the 39-year-old would have climbed a hundred steps a day if it meant living in his own home again with his wife and young twin daughters. Losing the ability to walk in 2007 following radiotherapy was only the tip of the iceberg for Mr Borg, who developed cataracts and dangerous pressure sores from the disease that nearly claimed his life – leukaemia. But most painful blow of all was the fact that he was missing out on a large chunk of his daughters’ childhood. He was diagnosed with leukaemia in August 2005, a mere two weeks after Amber and Alayah were born. As Mr Borg relives the arduous tests life put him through, what shines through his story is his extraordinary...