Although I’m Canadian, I lived in the UK for over 20 years.
I went to law school there, got offered a great job with a huge firm in London, got married, had kids yadda yadda ... You know the drill.
I was an international banking fraud litigator working insane hours with an equally stressed husband and two kids.
I didn't sleep well, was probably 15-20lbs overweight at various points (and have lost those same pounds and regained them more times than I can count).
I had years of stress balancing a demanding career and home life. Eventually I tried the stay at home thing for a few years and I loved it.
Over time, though, I craved something more challenging so I set up my own business. Balancing a new business and home life brought back a lot of stress.
I thought I knew what stress was but realised later that I had no idea.
We suffered a family trauma in 2014 which meant an unexpected and quick move back to Canada.
I was suddenly a single mother of two children and starting a new life.
I was not prepared for what came next ...
One day, shortly after our move, I went for a nap because I was exhausted. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital having had emergency abdominal surgery to remove a piece of twisted intestine.
My children had found me unresponsive in bed and called an ambulance. The surgeons could find no obvious reason why this had happened to me and told me it was just 'one of those things'.
It wasn't ...
A phone call two weeks later from my surgeon revealed that it was cancer. I was told that I had neuroendocrine cancer which is not common and that it was very likely that I had more tumours in my body.
This started an intense period of testing which was incredibly stressful, especially as a single mother. They found two more tumours.
Nothing prepares you for a cancer diagnosis but after the shock wore off I focused on just getting through it and looked forward to getting back to normal.
That was the start of my fight.
I lived treatment to treatment, scan to scan - I was in survival mode.
At the end of active treatment, it was decided that the only option was surgery to remove the remaining tumours but they were too small to guarantee success.
"We'll just wait for them to grow" I was told and in the next breath my medical team gave me details of my next scan in several months time.
I was relieved it was over for a brief moment. Until I realised that I'm living with cancer so nothing is over.
Now what?
I couldn’t go back to living the way I lived before.
I wasn't just going to sit around and wait for my tumours to grow. I need to take back control of my health.
I knew I needed to change my lifestyle for myself so I could be there for my kids. I am all they have.
I tried to do the research on my own but I was overwhelmed by conflicting information, got frustrated and it would have been so easy to give up.
This is why I went back to school and ultimately qualified as a cancer coach and gave up going back to a legal career.
I learned all I could and worked and researched relentlessly to find answers.
I discovered that my lifestyle had made me so vulnerable to cancer that I was essentially a sitting duck. I decided that I couldn't go back to the lifestyle I had before cancer if I wanted to do all I could to avoid a recurrence.
It became my MISSION to figure out
what that looked like.
I found the answers and put together
The Get Your Fight Back Method ...
So many people asked me what I was doing as they could see the results of the changes I had made to my lifestyle and if I could share with them how I did it.
