I’m Shelley. I’m 46, a fitness instructor and rowing coach and I live a simple life helping others achieve goals, get fitter and stronger and learn about themselves. I enable the more daring to do extraordinary things like row across the channel, round the Isle of Wight and for the few madder folk, to row London to Paris.
I am also a #lifer. Stage 4 metastatic cancer of unknown primary, a type of cancer that can be treated but not cured (barring miracles or developments in medicine).
One day in mid March 2015 I experienced an excruciating pain in my right side. I was unable to walk or breathe properly it was so painful. I thought I’d pulled a muscle in my diaphragm (doctors had been telling me for months that I was doing this) but fortunately a new doctor thought it needed further investigation.
And so I found myself in Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth for a two week stay.
During that stay I found out that my right kidney is non-functioning and that my liver was full of some sort of infection.
A lot of scans and tests later (including a horrid liver biopsy) I was finally diagnosed on 10 April: Secondary tumours in my right lung, my liver, lymph system, left shoulder. Original cancer type (the primary) unknown.
I’m young, I’m fit, I’m strong. I win races and set records, this doesn’t happen to me?!
But it is happening. I'm recording my thoughts and moments in a blog www.shelleycook.co.uk.
This is both my account of my experience with the disease and stories from the amazing life that I have been fortunate enough to enjoy so far.
Shel x
