Tributes have flooded in for a man who died from a "silent killer".
James Robinson, from Bebington, first started having health issues when he began feeling pains in his chest and would hit it like he was trying to clear something. An echocardiogram (ECG) revealed he had heart block, which is when the heart beats slower or with an abnormal rhythm due to the electrical pulses controlling the heart beat being disrupted, according to the NHS.
Shelagh Robinson, James's mum, urged her son to get his symptoms checked by doctors, which he did. James changed his lifestyle, and by November 2021, things seemed to have reverted to normal.
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Shelagh said: "He was elated. He'd stopped drinking and stopped smoking for six months, and due to the change in lifestyle, it improved something. But at the end of that year, he was having problems swallowing and he actually got something stuck, they had to bang his back.
"Things weren't going down properly. I was actually out with him just before Christmas that year and he couldn't even drink the fizzy drink he ordered. It hurt when it went down."
Following tests, James was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, one of the deadliest cancers, which kills more than 50% of people within a year of diagnosis. James tragically died on January 31.
The 44-year-old was described as "really funny" and worked as head of corporate at G2M, a property company. James "loved a dance" and had a passion for making music and art.
He had also just moved into a "dream house" in Pendle, Lancashire with his wife, her two children and his daughter when he got the life-changing diagnosis in February last year.
Since publishing the dad-of-one's story to raise awareness of this type of cancer, dozens of tributes have been left for James. ECHO readers sent messages of support and paid their condolences on the ECHO's Facebook page.
Carol Dodd said: "My family know this lovely man very well, he was an amazing talent and taken far to soon. RIP." Barbara Evans also added: "He must have been a very brave man. Rest in peace."
Missie Jo also said: "This is heartbreaking. I’m so sorry for your loss." Ali Taylor said: "Awww how sad, I’ve got tears in my eyes reading this, poor man suffering so much. May he now rest in peace."
Sister Keeley described James as "really special to me", she said: "He called me every single day, sometimes just about what was going on, or sometimes about being ill. It was really strange. It's like he could accept what was happening, but he couldn't accept what was happening at the same time. He'd ring me really frightened like, 'I'm going to die, I'm going to die'. That'd go on for several minutes and I'd try and calm him down."
She added: "That's always been my role in our relationship. It's really hard to know what you can do for somebody with cancer, and I used to think, that's one of the most important things, and I was happy to do that for him."
James' friends will perform a song they used to sing together at his funeral in Woodchurch on February 23, which Keeley hopes will show the "really creative person" he was. She said: "If it was up to him, he would have wanted everybody in curly black wigs, black moustaches and shell suits. He would have wanted everyone to be really silly. He didn't like things being really serious."
He never felt able to talk openly about his own condition, so his mum and sister are talking about it for him in the hopes others won't feel so isolated in their experience with cancer and can face it with loved ones. Keeley added: "What would have helped James is if he'd normalised his cancer more.
"What he thought was best was not talking about it and pretending like it wasn't happening, so people couldn't talk about it. You had to kind of pretend it wasn't happening, up until he died.
"I remember him saying to me, 'I've got three months', and he had less than that, he had weeks. I said to him, 'Okay, you've got three months, let's normalise what's happening, let's normalise the fact that you're going to die'. I didn't want him to be afraid."
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