Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. If in a story a woman with five brain tumours and just weeks to live had miraculously recovered it would be considered far fetched.

Especially if that story included a mysterious stranger who in the dead of night offered her husband two religious medals with a promise that they would make her well.

But that is Carole Budding's story.

Neither she nor her husband were or are churchgoers and they were at a point where Carole's condition seemed hopeless.

She had received all the medical help she could be given and had been sent home to die. She had even begun to plan her own funeral.

So how can we explain her recovery? Was it the result of faith, of resilience, of love or of the treatment she received?

Well, probably it was a combination of all of them.

By carrying those medallions she and her husband had put their faith in a higher power. By refusing to stay in bed and die Carole had shown she still had fight in her.

Add to that the love of her husband and the radiotherapy she was given – and they made a potent mixture.

But perhaps the most important thing of all was that Carole and Ray had hope – they never gave up.

Maybe for them it made the difference and perhaps reading their story will give others fresh hope.

No one is pretending to have discovered a cure for cancer, but it is a disease which can be beaten.

Not in every case of course.

In time we will overcome it. But for now even one victory in what is a dreadful and prolonged war is worth celebrating, isn't it?