Hi Lindsay, It's great to hear from you again. I don't resent my cancer. It changed me and has helped make me into who I am today. If I resented the cancer, then that would mean that I resented who I am today, and I can't spend the rest of my life resenting or hating myself. These experiences make us who we are today and we grow as a result. Life rarely goes the way we want it to. In my late 20's I had a hobby that I really enjoyed. Riding and racing motorcycles very fast (just club racing). That was who I was. I was a motorcycle racer. One day I had a very serious accident doing something I had done many times before. But I made a simple, but catastrophic mistake. I came out of the corner accelerating too hard, and holding too much speed (speed started with a 2) for my lean angle, which resulted in a high side (OK, so it's not that simple, but will suffice for here). I spent the next 2 months in acute care of a major trauma hospital with a severe TBI, in a pretty bad way. I was lucky to survive. I can remember the day that it was broken to me that I wasn't going to be racing a motorcycle again. I was mortified. But I'm a motorcycle racer. How can they do this to me? Prior to the accident, I was overweight and unfit. Literally just weeks before the accident a friend had introduced me to a book "Training for endurance" by Philip Maffetone, and I had got a couple of 2 km jogs in. When I was learning to walk again after the accident, I remembered this book and the training. I started to jog 1 km very slowly on the treadmill and increased my mileage gradually. After a few years I'm running 120 km a week and I love it. I'm no longer a motorcycle racer, I'm a runner. Fast forward to a couple of years ago. I'm planning to complete my first ultra marathon later in the year. But then I was diagnosed with bowel cancer and they want to completely remove my large bowel. I'm no longer a motorcycle racer because of the head injury. I over came that (sort of) and redefined myself as a runner. Can I still run long distances without a large bowel? I was shattered. Who am I now? Probably the longest distance I've run since the surgery is probably 6 km. A mixture of a lack of fitness, kids and work has made it hard to build up my aerobic base again. But I'll get there. It's another hurdle to over come. But I don't resent what has happened. I wouldn't take back the head injuries or the cancer, because the experience has made me who I am today. -s
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