“Have you ever envisaged paradise?” asks Joe Thompson. He imagined it as a walk along a beach towards sunset, listening to the waves with clarity of thought and no distractions. He experienced it at the Crown Oil Arena on the final day of last season, shortly after preserving Rochdale’s League One status with the winner against Charlton and surrounded by more than 5,000 jubilant supporters. Less than a year earlier the 29-year-old had undergone chemotherapy plus a stem cell transplant to survive cancer for a second time. Saved, and now the saviour; he broke from the celebrations on 5 May to absorb a truly extraordinary comeback.

“Everything went silent, like white noise, and time stood still for me,” the winger recalls of the realisation that his goal, combined with Oldham’s failure to beat already relegated Northampton Town, had kept Rochdale afloat against the odds. “It lasted 10 to 15 seconds and in that time I was just flying. It was the beauty of football, the power it can have and why everyone loves it for those magical moments. Then I remember there was just noise. I’d never heard noise like it at the Crown Oil Arena. People who lived a mile up the road heard it and said it was incredible.

“It was weird because I’d been promoted with Rochdale the first time I was there and they had been promoted again since but the lads were saying: ‘This feels better.’ It shouldn’t feel better but we were celebrating because they had all been in it and seen what I had overcome. It was a perfect present for them. I knew the effect it had on finances for the club and for the players. It goes a long way. We don’t have the security that there is at the top end of the game. I know they are all thankful for the goal and I am just blessed that it was me.”

Blessed. It may be a fitting choice of word from a young man “and proud father” who has twice survived cancer to resume his career as a professional footballer but it does not describe Thompson’s life story. His outlook, yes, but not the experiences that shaped him and are explored in an emotional, harrowing and inspirational autobiography. A run-of-the-mill footballer’s tale this is not.

As a child Thompson witnessed his father abusing his mother physically and verbally, his younger brother Reuben being struck by a hit-and-run driver – he remembers the tyre mark on the face of Reuben, who made a full recovery from his injuries – and his mother suffering a breakdown when he was eight. Football offered a release, a recurring theme in the book, when the family moved to Manchester. He thought it would also bring a career with Manchester United. Deemed too small, he was released from their academy days before his 16th birthday. The many setbacks, including his father’s absences and imprisonments, pale in comparison with discovering he had Hodgkin lymphoma aged 23 and that the cancer had returned three years later.

“The book came from a sad place,” Thompson says. “I started writing notes while I was in hospital because I wanted my family to know where my head was at if the worst came to the worst. I wanted them to know what I thought of them and how proud I was of all of them. My agent [Gary Lloyd] said I should write a book with everything that had gone on. He sadly passed away last year and that was gutting for me because he was more than an agent, more than a friend; he was a father figure who gave me guidance.

“I spoke to my mum and brother about doing a book, too. Once they and my wife gave me the green light I thought this is going to help people. Even if it is not about someone with cancer and is just the general point about being resilient and seeing the positive side then, if that helps someone, it is helping someone who I hadn’t helped the day before.”

Thompson’s positivity and indefatigable spirit are striking in print and in person. They are qualities he attributes to his mother, Michelle. “She has suffered from bipolar throughout her life,” he says. “It usually gets triggered when something traumatic happens but when I got ill first time around she stood on. She has a mental illness, that is the uncontrollable, but she found that inner strength to stay stable for me because I was going to have to lean on her, and others as well.”

The others include wife Chantelle and daughter Lula but also the support network that football provided. From messages from fans around the world to Pep Guardiola, Mauricio Pochettino, Bryan Robson and Stiliyan Petrov offering help and advice, unprompted, Thompson found their backing invaluable.

He recalls: “I sat down with a gentleman while waiting for an x-ray one day and asked him about his situation. He had been made redundant, he had no family and he had to wait three hours for the ambulance because he had no transport to get to hospital. In that moment I thought: ‘You have nothing to feel sorry about, you need to know that all these people are behind you.’ I knew if it did go wrong I would have given it my all and they would know that too. It was tough during those times. I was thinking: ‘I can’t have my brother carry my casket down the church. It can’t happen.’

“There was a moment in the isolation unit when I was being violently sick. My missus was rubbing my back, my auntie was holding my hand and my mum was speaking to the doctors because she was concerned I wasn’t eating and I just had a lightbulb moment. I just felt that was the last time I was going to be sick. I got out of bed and decided it was about time I had a shower. I’d paid my dues and now I just wanted to get ready.”

It was fitting Thompson’s goal saved Rochdale from relegation – 336 days after his stem cell transplant started – given the uplifting response of manager Keith Hill, chairman Chris Dunphy, club staff and teammates to his illness. The former Old Trafford prospect played on for three months after his cancer returned. Everyone at Rochdale knew but kept the news out of the public domain until it was unavoidable.

“I broke down in front of them when I told them,” he says. “We were honest. Everyone knew in-house. Everyone would check how I was doing every day. After a while I was like: ‘I’m doing all right, just leave me alone’ but it showed the morals, the ethics and the etiquette that the club has. I was totally transparent with them. I told them we don’t know what the outcome will be but just stick with me.” Thompson pauses. “Karma comes around.”

Darkness and Light: My Story (Pitch Publishing) by Joe Thompson with Alec Fenn is out on Monday