A detective sergeant was given six months to live after waking up to find paramedics in his bedroom.
Dad Dave Bolton was rushed to hospital following a horrifying 15-minute nocturnal seizure before being diagnosed with a brain tumour.
The then-33-year-old, from Greasby, Wirral, went to bed ready for his daughter's birthday the next day only to wake up with no idea what had happened.
He remembers "wolfing down" a bowl of cereal prior to calling it a night only to find paramedics standing over him at around 11.45pm, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Dave had stopped breathing in his sleep.
When he came round he felt groggy and was so surprised he tried to boot the medics out of his house.
He recalls struggling to remember where he worked or his date of birth, when they asked him.
The dad-of-two underwent surgery to remove the tennis ball-sized tumour at the Walton Centre and had to take medical retirement from his job at Merseyside Police.
The following year, scans showed the tumour had returned and had become a Gliblastoma Multiforme (GMB).
A GMB is a fast-growing and aggressive tumour with a devastatingly short survival rate of just 12-18 months.
Dave was told his diagnosis was terminal and he had six to eight months left to live with treatment or three months without.
The 41-year-old said: "I went away with a hard decision to make and slipped into one of the darkest places I've ever been to. I spent about a week, two weeks, just lying on the couch.
"I accepted that I was going to die and I just lay there and waited for it to happen. I just didn't care anymore."
The former world kickboxing champion, said it was his wife Samantha who helped him to get out of that dark place in July 2015 and he decided to tackle his brain tumour like a fight.
He said: "I just thought if the average is 6-8 months there must be people that go before then and there must be people who get up to 18 months.
"I thought you've never been average at anything, so what I did is, I kind of treated it as if it was a fight. I named it Terry my opponent, and when I took on a fight say it was 3-4 months I'd go into a full on camp lockdown.
"I decided to tackle it 360 degrees, so by diet, exercise, forming good habits of sleep, alternative therapies, supplementation, mindfulness, mediation and then accept the treatments as well, so the gold standard. It was dual radiotherapy and chemotherapy followed by full on chemotherapy."
Dave continues to outlive his terminal diagnosis over seven years later and in January this year doctors told him only small signs of the disease were visible.
He has now become a motivational speaker who helps people, charities and businesses and now runs a charity called Ahead of the Game Foundation, based in Wallasey, with former Premier League footballer Dominic Matteo.
He has shared his story to mark Brain Tumour Awareness Month and highlight the need for more funding for brain tumours, with historically just one per cent of the national spend on cancer research being allocated to brain tumours.
Dave said: "I'm trying to use my own horrific situations to remind people that there is another way, there is another option and there is hope.
"I’ll never be cured. I have to live everyday knowing it could come back at any second because even though I have."
While the last scan showed there was "no real evidence" of the disease but there are still a "web" of cells, creating a "perfect storm for it to spark" but he has "decompartmentalised it", he added.
If you would like to donate to Ahead of the Game Foundation click here.
