Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/85232
116: yourjourneys Making the Most of a Short Life WORDS BY: Jenny Short I was a bored housewife in small town Kawerau, with two children, a degree and teaching diploma going to waste. If I heard someone say 'potty training' or 'Nappysan', I wanted to scream. There weren't a lot of things for women to do in Kawerau in those days, so I pulled out the Massey University calendar and chose to study Japanese extramurally. Four years later, I accepted an offer to study at a university in Japan and took my family to Kyoto for 12 months. When we returned, I got a job teaching Japanese in a secondary school. Twenty years later, I was still quite happy in the life of the classroom and life seemed settled… or so I thought. It was during my third routine mammogram that they picked up the cancer. When I was 35, I had had a lump taken out at Whakatane Hospital but it turned out to be benign. I have read since that if you've had lumps, you're more likely to get a cancerous lump later on. I'm not sure if that's true or not. Soon after the routine first mammogram, they wanted to do a second, but all the while I still thought there was nothing to worry about. I put it down to the scar tissue from the earlier lump that had been removed. Next thing I was being told I needed to have a lumpectomy… then a mastectomy… and suddenly I was told I had secondary cancer on the liver. People say, "That's terrible. How did you cope?" When my GP commented once on how positive I am, I replied, "What am I supposed to do? Go home and cry? " I decided then that if my life was going to be shorter, then I was going to have a damn good time. I originally went from having a lumpectomy and thinking, "This is nothing. I can do this", to an oncologist telling my husband, Rod and I, that we better go and do whatever we want to do while I still feel well. That was a much bigger shock. Since then I've been spending the kids' inheritance travelling and have loved every moment of it. I gave up my job when I was going through chemotherapy. I tried to work through but I got very tired as teaching is very demanding. In 2008, Rod and I went on a two month trip around Ireland and Europe and the following year we cycled the Otago Rail Trail. This set up the idea for me of holidaying whilst cycling. When my life changed I tried to eat right and exercise more. I hadn't always been very good at that. While attitude helps you to have a good time I don't think it necessarily helps you fight cancer. But diet and exercise do. I used to be very athletic when I was young. I'm pleased to say I now have excellent fitness again. Rod and I took our cycling to the next level in 2011 when we rode 877 km through Europe over 50 days. Our original intention was to go from Bordeaux along the Canal du Lateral (Garonne River) to Toulouse where we would join the Canal du Midi and cycle to Sete. Then we decided to go down the Danube first from Regensburg to Vienna and cycle the Midi route later. In between we were able to visit friends in Tuscany and Antibes. I didn't know if the trip would work. We did the Otago Rail Trail for four days but cycling down the Danube River and along the French canals was going to be much more strenuous than that. I didn't know if I was going to throw the bike in the canal