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In the midst of a global pandemic, where many  were scared to go to hospitals I didn’t hesitate to get this unusual  lump checked out. Covid had just taken the life of my father in law, we were grieving and talking about the good times we had with him when suddenly there was something quite not right with me. I noticed my breathing was laboured on my runs, I had a bad back and neck pain (WFH symptoms??) 

Within 2 weeks I got my appointment. It took under just 3 hours to become a statistic. 1 in 8.

My question wasnt why me? It was how have I , mariam , a healthy, relatively fit and an instructor who looked after herself , ate well, and had a healthy balanced life  become a patient, a client , a statistic? How am I sitting in the other side of the table when I have educated, understood and worked with so many people of different health conditions and illnesses for 20 years?

What did I do wrong? What did I eat bad ? What should I have done not to get cancer. But as we know cancer doesn’t choose. It can happen to anyone. 

At that point, a new me emerged, I was upset and confused but as every test in life I vowed to get  through this personal journey of mine and emerge stronger, more hopeful and fight it. But first I had to break the news to my loved ones. 

With the fabulous help of the cancer care specialists, consultants and nurses a plan of action to treat me emerged. I had lots of questions and queried what didn’t make sense. 

The blessing in disguise was the fact that we were in lockdown, we were not seeing people on a daily basis and I wasn’t working. This made it easier to handle and accept my illness and focus on this with the current support of my amazing husband and also my friend Fran May , family and my very dear and other close friends around me. This also gave me a new and an interesting focus on my new way of training of how to keep fit and healthy and train with cancer. I opted to have an alter ego and crazy as it sounds ‘Farah’ was born. This was my lockdown cancer patient , my client. 

The impact on my body, my physical , mental and psychological health was initially huge. 

As weeks went on, and I was getting used to how my body was reacting to chemotherapy I started to experiment with different methods of keeping my mind and body healthy and this was working. I listened to ‘Farah’ and plodded along in discovering how amazing our bodies are. With the hope of farahs long term goal of staying happy, fit and healthy during and after cancer treatment, I am hoping this will give me the determination, motivation and the drive to continue my own training and live a happier stress free life in doing what I love the most .