Our daughter quit her job to care for us. Now I'm giving her a future

A MAN battling cancer is spending his life savings on a fishing lake so his daughter can build a life after he has gone.

Anthony Scott, 50, was diagnosed with cancer in September last year.

Mr Scott's wife Gail, 60, was seriously injured in a car accident five years ago.

He had a stroke at about the same time and the couple's daughter Hollie quit her job to be a full-time carer for them both.

"Hollie has no social life – everything revolves around what we do together at home," Mr Scott said.

"She gave her job up to help look after me and her mum and I told her when the time comes she will have a business to run.

"Gail had horrific injuries. She was in a wheelchair but she's had surgery on her legs."

Mr Scott was diagnosed with cancer of the kidney and bladder in September last year.

He had part of a kidney removed in February in an operation lasting 13 hours.

"The cancer grew and grew and started spreading everywhere," he said. "I was losing lots of weight and couldn't eat anything."

He decided then to make sure his daughter had a future.

"After surgery I was sat about for three months, so I decided I had to do something," Mr Scott said.

He applied for planning permission for a tearoom and farm shop next to his home in Wyton and to dig a fishing lake 140m long, 44m wide and 3m deep.

"We've had 25 people come round looking for a job in the tearoom and the shop," Mr Scott said.

Planning permission was granted on September 3.

Since then, a team of six people have been working to dig the lake and landscape the field around it.

Mr Scott doesn't know how much time he has left.

But he hopes the project will be completed before he dies.

He said: "I've still got to have bladder surgery.

"The doctors won't say what the outcome will be but if I hadn't had the surgery in February I wouldn't have been here by Christmas.

"There would be nothing nicer than my last day sitting out with a bit of breeze on the lake. That's the way I want to go, not in a hospital."

Hollie, 26, said the last five years have not been easy.

"I've been doing everything for them," she said.

"It's difficult when they're in and out of hospital all the time.

"I don't really have a life out of it."

She hopes the tearoom will become a social hub for people from Wyton and the surrounding countryside.

"It's a good idea," Hollie said. "It's good for the area and we've had a lot of support locally.

And she is grateful for her dad's support.

"I will be running the business from the start," she said.

"My dad is doing it for security, so if anything happens to him and my mum there will be something left behind."

It will provide Hollie with a welcome distraction after years as a round-the-clock carer.

"I'm looking forward to doing the pond," she said.

"It's something to keep your mind off it."