Fifteen years ago, Trent Scanlen was struggling with persistent back pain. As an active 34-year-old, he assumed it was collateral damage from all the jujitsu and Muay Thai kickboxing he was doing. But as the pain worsened over a number of months, Scanlen got an MRI to check it out. What the scan discovered was horrifying. At the base of his spine was a tumour the size of a golf ball. “They thought it might be a sarcoma, which is one of the worst forms of cancer,” he recalls.

Originally from Wollongong but living in London, Scanlen was subjected to a fortnight of hospital tests. Fearing the worst, he began shooting video diaries for his one-year-old son. In the event of his death, Scanlen figured, the videos could be a way to connect with his child. Thankfully, the test results were relatively positive. Scanlen was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a treatable form of blood cancer. To manage his discomfort, he was put on the opioid painkiller Oxycontin and began to undergo chemotherapy.