This week it arrived in the form of two old friends from the Highlands, Ewan McCarthy and Brian Fishpool, bringing laughter, stories and that unmistakable feeling of belonging.

Living so far from Newtonmore, and facing the challenges I do, visits like these mean more than I can properly explain. For a few hours I was not thinking only about the wheelchair, the cancer or the uncertainty surrounding my future.

I was a boy from Badenoch again, remembering the people and places that shaped me.

Ewan and I sat watching a YouTube documentary about shinty in Newtonmore. It brought back a flood of memories.

Shinty was my first sport, long before the Paralympics, cycling or any of the adventures that followed. Like generations of children before me, I learned that sport was about far more than what happened on a pitch.

It was about community.

In a Highland village, a shinty club is not just 12 players chasing a ball with wooden sticks. It is parents standing in the cold, volunteers preparing the ground, older generations passing down stories and children dreaming of one day wearing the same colours.

It is a shared identity stretching back hundreds of years.

The rivalry between Newtonmore and neighbouring Kingussie is fierce, of course. There are few things quite like a match between those two villages.

But underneath the rivalry lies something deeper: a mutual understanding that shinty belongs to both communities, and that the game helps keep their history alive.

As we watched, my thoughts travelled further back than my own childhood, to a man whose story deserves to be remembered: Dr Johnnie Cattanach, known as the Prince of Shinty.

Born in Newtonmore in 1885, Cattanach was an extraordinary athlete. He trained with the dedication of someone who understood that natural talent alone was never enough.

Stories tell of him running towards the Eilan, the village shinty ground, keeping the ball moving on his caman without letting it touch the earth.

In the 1909 Camanachd Cup final, Newtonmore defeated Furnace 11-3. Cattanach scored eight of those goals.

Eight goals in one Scottish Cup final. More than a century later, nobody has equalled that extraordinary achievement.

Yet shinty was only part of his remarkable life. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, represented Scotland in hockey and distinguished himself in athletics.

When the First World War began, he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving as a doctor in uniform.

In 1915, after being wounded during the Gallipoli campaign, he died aged just 30. A life filled with promise, ended far too soon.

I find myself thinking about him not only as an athlete, but as a human being. Did he ever imagine that more than a century later, someone from the same little Highland village would be speaking about him?

That his story would still bring people together?

In quantum physics we hear the language of entanglement, of things remaining connected across distance. I would never pretend physics proves some invisible bond between people, but as a metaphor it captures something I feel deeply.

We are intertwined through family, friendship, memory and the places we call home.

I never met Dr Cattanach. We lived in different centuries, faced different challenges and followed different paths.

Yet we knew the same Highland landscape. We belonged to the same sporting tradition.

In a small way, I feel connected to him, and to everyone who picked up a caman before me.

Facing the possibility of death changes how you look at those connections. The medals and achievements that once seemed so important become smaller.

What grows larger is the kindness of a visit, the laughter of an old friend, the knowledge that you belong to something that existed long before you and will continue long after you are gone.

Over the past months, I have often wondered how much more life I will be given. I cannot answer that question. None of us can.

But the visit from Ewan and Brian reminded me that, even when my body cannot travel freely, stories and friendships can carry me home.

So I have set myself another goal for next year. If my health allows it, I want to return to Newtonmore and watch my village play Kingussie.

I want to feel the Highland air on my face, hear the crack of the camans and be among my community again, even if these days I will be watching from a wheelchair.

I don’t know whether I will make it. But I can picture it clearly.

And sometimes, when the future is uncertain, having something beautiful to picture is enough to keep you moving towards tomorrow.