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 humility and inspiring sense of positivity.
“My illness has been a great adventure,” he says in a gentle tone that is completely shorn of sarcasm.
“There have been so many instances that should have claimed my life... and yet I’ve lived through them all.”
His daughters were born two months prematurely. At the time, Mr Borg started vomiting and losing weight, but attributed it all to the stress of the situation.
Upon their birth, Mr Borg and his wife Emma were called for blood tests.
“The twins had barely spent a week at home when I received a phone call asking me to rush to hospital. The doctor informed me that my white blood cell count was 360,000. I told him it sounded like a jackpot of the Super 5 lottery.
“The doctor replied that he wasn’t joking – he told me it could be serious.”
When Mr Borg arrived at hospital, he was immediately whisked into a ward where he was surrounded by medics who took blood samples.
He was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukaemia, and spent the following months travelling to The Royal Marsden Hospital in the UK. His wife, who works as a cobbler, would try and join him for a few days while the twins remained in Malta.
When he was told that the hospital had located two fully matched bone marrow donors, Mr Borg took it as a challenge.
“I wanted to live for my daughters. It broke my heart that I was barely able to see them,” he says.
But it was not to be. He spent the next six months at the Royal Marsden after his body rejected the transplant at Christmastime in 2006. His condition rapidly deteriorated.
The treatment was aggressive – Mr Borg felt as if his body was being lifted into the air and slammed on to the ground.
His kidneys started failing and he became delirious, rambling incoherent sentences to his wife.
Doctors warned the family that Mr Borg was living his final days.
“I was administered the last rites by a Maltese priest at the hospital. Suddenly, my condition took a drastic turn for the better.
“Technicians rushed into my ward to check the monitors – they thought they had developed a fault!”
If I could afford an electric scooter, it would allow me such independence
Doctors decided to operate and removed a record 10 kilos of spleen from his body. Mr Borg awoke on New Year’s Day.
He returned to Malta but, following a protracted cold, he ended up in Mater Dei Hospital, where he walked his final steps.
He spent 18 months in hospital after the radiotherapy affected him badly, and paralysed him from the shoulders down.
“That was a horrible time. If Mater Dei’s windows could be opened, I wouldhave jumped.”
With time, movement returned to his arms and torso. He was allowed to spend a few hours with his family, which soon increased to weekends.
“I started to believe in work and in my children. They were rarely brought before me as my immune system was very weak.
“But those few hours when I could go to visit them and have dinner with them was my cure.”
After he was discharged, Mr Borg went to live with his mother, while visiting hospital every day.
“I longed to live with them as a family. One day, I told my physiotherapist I wanted to return home. She was reluctant as we had no lift at the time.
“I proved to her I could use my arms to lift my body up and down a step.
“After that, my wife, children and I returned home as a family.”
Mr Borg is very active within the community, having organised various fundraising events for Puttinu Cares, as well as volunteering with NGO Daqqa t’Id, which cares for sick people.
Mr Borg’s wish is to purchase an electric mobility scooter, which costs €3,650. The family’s earnings go towards ensuring the eight-year-old twins are able to pursue the hobbies they love – Amber attends ballet classes while Alayah practises football.
“If I could afford an electric scooter, it would allow me such independence. I would even be able to go up steep hills,” he says, eyes shining.
Yet when asked for an account number which people could use to donate, Mr Borg humbly replied he did not know what it was.
“It was a couple of my friends who decided to help me raise money for the wheelchair. I would never have done it for my own self.”
Help Mark Borg purchase the motorised wheelchair by donating to BOV account number 16714804010. On the transaction comment, write ‘Donation to Mark Borg’.