It was a year ago yesterday that I received the devastating news that I had cancer. May 13th 2011 I remember walking out of the hospital in a daze, numb from my waste up and frozen with fear. Fearing my diagnosis was untreatable and wondering how much time I had left, I went through my phone and broke my heart (and many of the people’s I love) as I shared the awful news. The mental pain was immense and my heart ached continually. I couldn’t look at my children without crying and wondered how they would get along without me. My life came to a standstill and another pathway opened up before me leading to a stream of continuous hospital visits, injections, scans, blood test and examinations. My parents had to take care of the school runs as I attended my appointments and Carl’s clients had to be rearranged as he stayed by my side throughout the ordeal.

And throughout the journey and along the way there have been more twists and turns than a rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. My spirits have been high and low and to say rock bottom at times doesn’t even come close. Expressing my deepest fears of leaving my children behind, I’ve poured my soul out to my closest of friends and allowed them to comfort me through their own tears too. I’ve melted into my husband’s arms as we’ve feared for what the future may bring and turned off many a sad song on the radio that has been far too painful to listen to.

But throughout all this I never gave up the search for why I had it in the first place. Doctors don’t know, specialists don’t care and all they want to do is treat the symptoms, very well in some cases even though it comes at a price. The loss of my hair, lashes, eyebrows and immune system became far from important to me at the time of my treatment and getting well was my only priority. But I don’t just want to get back to good health I want to get back to better health as I don’t want the bloody thing back again. And even though many people dealing with cancer don’t understand why it’s happened to them, I was determined to unravel the cause of mine and treat that whilst my chemo dealt with the symptoms.

If it hadn’t been for my ‘need to know everything’ nature I wouldn’t have gone down the self-discovery route and changed my life for the better. I wouldn’t have learnt the theory of why we become ill and how we can bring ourselves out of a diseased state. I wouldn’t be pestering the Warrington Guardian now for a health page in their weekly paper to allow me to share my information to help others. I wouldn’t change any part of my healing journey but I really want to help other become aware of the alternatives to medical treatment and the hope that comes with it. Hope has eased my pain, mended my heart and given me a future to look forward to. After my review at the hospital this morning, the nurse expressed how fit and well I look and how my treatment hasn’t damaged my heart (side effect) and my aches and pains will disappear in time. So a year on, I am working on the person I truly want to be and whoever that may be she’s going to be just fine because there’s no way this cancer will ever want to come back to me, not with all this hope!

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