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This is Battle Ready. I’m Ciara Morrison. It’s the 26th of May in London. And well, probably everywhere. Well, yeah, you know what I mean. But it’s a bank holiday weekend here, which means I have a little bit more time to think about what I want to talk about.

And I had a really interesting conversation with somebody recently. And I thought, actually, it might be good to focus on what their question was really about, which was returning to sport and activity following a serious illness. I’m going to share my journey. That’s really my journey. It’s not advisory for everybody. It might not be suitable for everybody. This is not saying that you should handle your situation this way. This is the path that I chose. And everybody’s different. And everybody’s treatment, everybody’s experience is going to be very personal to them.

So if you are alongside somebody who’s trying to find their way back into sport or just get up and walk, because actually at a time that was really difficult for me, then the best thing you can do is leave them at it. And we’re going to talk about that in more detail, because that was one of the things that I really struggled with was a lot of noise coming from outside.

So anyway, today we’re going to talk about getting back to feeling good about your fitness or your hobby or whatever it is that you do following a serious illness.

So if you don’t know me, although I talk a lot about karate in these podcasts and HR and all sorts of bits and pieces, I was actually diagnosed two and a half years ago with ovarian cancer. And if I’m being honest, on the run up to that, I knew something was wrong.

I am a great believer in recording your workouts. I am one of those people that will tell you that if you didn’t record it, well, then the workout probably didn’t happen. I know that’s bad, but that’s how it works in my head. I like to look at the data that’s generated. So I am both a whoop and of late a Garmin user. I have been an Apple Watch user. I’m kind of basing a lot of my workout metrics at the moment around what I’m finding from whoop. Whoop seems to be the best so far that I found, but I am open to negotiation on that. And actually, I might do a podcast comparing them all.

But essentially, I was feeling pretty grotty for a while. And, you know, my cancer didn’t throw up any sort of major queries. I had done all the scans that you’re supposed to do as a female and nothing was standing out. And then I really started to go downhill. My interest in training fell away and every single training session was difficult.

Now, I don’t just do martial arts. I’m also a great believer in working your whole body. So looking at things like monitoring power zone levels or, you know, pace targets if it’s bike or running. And I also throw weights around. And essentially I was feeling terrible. There is another word for it. I think you all know, but I was feeling that word.

And there was one training session in particular where I had cycled to work. I had cycled to the training. I started the training and I had nothing. And it was not a tiredness I’ve ever encountered before. I literally was bandaxed. I was properly I was sweating a lot, but I just had nothing. I ended up with my head out the door of the dojo and nothing. There was nothing.

And there was a lady in the dojo at the time who had trained as a nurse. And she just said to me very quietly, I think you should go see a doctor. That was the start of it. And I’m not going to talk about the whole finding clinical pathways and trying to work the NHS. Again, that’s probably another podcast worth of conversation.

But essentially, wind the clock forward about a month and I’m sitting at four o’clock with a doctor who is an oncologist telling me, yes, we are concerned and what you have is cancer. I kind of knew this with all the tests that we were doing up until that point, but nobody ever talks about it. Nobody says the C word when you kind of would just do with them saying, look, we think it’s cancer, but they’ll say everything else except that word. Oh, it could be something nasty. Look, I know it was cancer. You could just say it. Let’s just get on with it. But they have their way of doing things.

So anyway, the next question she asked me was, how do you want to handle this? Because you’re going to need to do an operation. And she gave me loads of dates and I straight away in my head, I just thought, let’sproject manage the hell out of this because that’s how I deal with things. I’m your good in a crisis girl. OK, and so they booked in the operation. And, you know, at that point I had put on about 22 litres of fluid waste. So I had a CTs, if that’s how you pronounce it. And so even just moving around was very difficult. I was joining classes remotely because I couldn’t do them. I was doing a little bit of bike work, but everything was hard. And in my head, I wasn’t in a really good place. I was worried and I kept thinking, oh my Lord, how am I going to handle this? I hope I wake up from the operation because at that point, the only thing on my horizon was the operation. And so I needed to gather all of my strength together in order to get through this operation.

And you have all of the checks and tests that you have to do beforehand. And my anaesthesiologist was the person who stood out through all of this. I mean, my doctors have been fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but I was waiting to meet him because you have to do a meeting with him before the operation. And this gentleman came running through the hospital and the thing I noticed was that he had odd socks. And it looked like as if he was getting in a run during his lunchtime, which is actually what it turned out to be. He was this really tall guy, Eastern European, absolutely fantastic. And he was really interested in me. And this was the key thing. He asked me what I did and there was loads of questions. And then towards the end, he said something really interesting to me. He said, you’re Irish. I said, yes, I am actually. He said, look, I know you’ve got purple hair, which I did. He said, do you have a red gene in your family? Do you know? And I thought this was him making sort of banter, but it wasn’t really. It turns out people who have the red hair gene need to be more carefully monitored when they’re under anesthetic because they could wake up easier.

And he asked me a couple of questions. So his questions were:

1. Do you have the red gene?
2. Do you get car sick?

To which I said, well, actually, yes, I do get car sick. And we do have the red gene in our family. And if you look at it now, it’s because my sisters are having kids, et cetera. Yeah, massive, beautiful red hair. So yes, I do. And he said, well, we’re going to have to monitor you. You’re going to need more anesthetic. And this was news to me. I’d never heard of this. The operation gets done. I won’t talk about that. I don’t really, obviously, I don’t remember anything of it, but I do remember the run up to it and being really nervous. And then you wake up.

Now, I had a basically, oh, there’s a helicopter going over if that’s what you can hear. I basically had a foot long, probably more than a foot long scar right through my center. To this day, I am very, very, very glad that my doctor who knew I was into sports didn’t cut me transversely. It was a straight up and down scar. And I woke up and I just remember for the first few days being completely out of it. I was in ICU. I had a terrible time. My whole digestive system shut down. I now know that it’s good to bring chewing gum with you in these situations because that can actually help your system come back. But essentially, when they put me to sleep and everything got shut down, never mind the pain of the scar itself. So every time I would breathe, cough, laugh, anything, I was in horrific pain.

The other thing that they tell you at that point is keep taking the painkillers. I wanted to tough it out. My nurse came up to me at one stage and said, look, your recovery is going to be way harder and slower unless you get your pain management under control. So yes, that was one of my first learnings, which was, you know, don’t try and be the big, strong person that you think you are. Just go with the flow.

Coming out of hospital, one of the first things that had been in my mind the whole way through this recovery phase was how soon can I do things? My doctor had been explicit. She said, you fit firmly in my criteria for people who are going to throw a hernia because you’re going to try and do too much too fast, too soon. Her words really echoed because she said, then I’m going to have much more problems actually stabilizing your core. She said, I’ve just cut through the whole thing. I really need you to spend the first six weeks doing nothing. Now, if you’re a karateka or a sports person, if you’re out there listening to this, I’m sure you appreciate how difficult that was. It was horrific. But in my brain, I said, fine, I can use my eyes, I can use my intellect, and I can be in the dojo.

Week after my operation,about a week and a bit, I was getting out of a car, dropped as close to the dojo as we could get because walking was difficult, standing was difficult. I was sitting on a chair in the back of the dojo. For me, that was really important. It was a big step towards normality.

Here’s the thing, the whole way through this, I kind of saw it as an inconvenience. And in my head, it was very much, this is an annoyance. I really need to get back to the dojo. I really need to get back to feeling strong again. Little did I know that would take two years. Two whole years. And this is where the planning comes in. This is where the patience comes in. And this is where it’s really important to reset yourself.

So as soon as I was allowed to, now look, bear in mind, it was very difficult for me to sit in the back of the class. I was told I wasn’t allowed to visit anymore if I started to do things, which I did. And just using my arms would send me into convulsions of pain. I also was seeing things that I thought, oh, actually, this is done that way. Really bad. You know, I really had to control myself. But the other thing was I had to reset all of my goals. So once I could train, I reset everything. I deleted all of my pre-existing fitness levels and basically went back to the drawing board. That was good. I mean, it felt horrible at the time, don’t get me wrong. But that was good because then I started to look at how I would capture my gains.

So, you know, let’s be honest here. The first thing was sitting on a bike because a bike was one of the first things that I was allowed to be on. But I was in zone one. I was, you know, zone two was a chore, a big chore. But gradually things started to get better. And then I started chemotherapy. And so you have this whole other piece of information coming into your fitness regime, which is I was having tingling. I was having massive fatigue. I didn’t feel sick, which was great because we filled me full of anti-sickness because of this whole red gene and more susceptible, et cetera, et cetera. The good side of chemo, and I was very lucky in that I didn’t have many side effects, was my hair fell out. But yeah, we can deal with that. Was that I was also taking a lot of steroids, a lot of steroids. And actually, as I started to get everything back, I really started to feel OK-ish. I mean, that level of OK was very different to what most people would feel. You know, it was, yeah, it was OK for then. Let’s put it that way.

And then I started adding in what I had before, which was the strength training, which was looking at working more into higher levels of fitness. And I did OK. At least that’s what I thought. But then I’ve looked back on various gashikus I’ve gone to and how I’ve performed and how I felt. It wasn’t great, but I was there. And that was the key thing. So it really didn’t matter to me how I was doing at that particular moment in time. The fact was I was there.

Now, coming out of chemotherapy, because it kind of kills away an awful lot of your white blood cells and all sorts of things. And there’s various different things that you become very good at actually looking at from the results of your blood tests before chemo. Once I got over chemo, it was then straight away into immunotherapy. And this is where I really struggled. Now, I had tried to look at my fitness at that point from, you know, how is my cardio fitness? How is my strength fitness? I was on the run up to going to a trip to Okinawa. I was being very specific about working zones two and three and then pushing up into like the higher zones to increase on my cardiovascular rate. Immunotherapy put me on my arse. There’s no other way of saying it. It was one of the hardest periods I’ve ever been through. And I actually thought many times, what if this is it? What if this is going to be as good as it gets and I’m not going to improve at all? So the things that were really affectedwere the tiredness. The tiredness on immunotherapy, I would wake up in the morning, I would hear my husband, and I couldn’t open my eyes. Physically, I lost any flexibility I had. I lost the ability to touch my toes. I lost the ability to lift my knees.

And I remember going to Okinawa because I really trained hard on the run-up to Okinawa. And I was in pain every single day of Okinawa. I was in pain every single training session. I was in pain even in just the recoveries. I was in pain. I was in pain all the time.

Now, I also went to see various different people about this. One of the things that was massively affected was my shoulders. And it didn’t come on gradually. I remember being in one class, I was teaching, and I pulled out somebody and I just said, you know, throw a roundhouse punch to my head. And I went to block it, and my shoulders were in agony.

Now, this isn’t a podcast about how things were bad. This is just sharing some of the reality. I came away from Okinawa thinking, oh my God, what if this is as good as it’s ever going to get? And then there was a huge confusion as to when I was going to actually finish immunotherapy. And then by the time we had finished, I’d actually done my last session. They just messed up on the timings. So there was a bit of a letdown.

I went to Denmark last weekend. And here’s the thing, you don’t see the gradual gains along the way. I’ve been working really hard on my flexibility. I’ve been working hard on my fitness. I’ve been working incredibly hard on my strength. Because I lost so much muscle mass during this whole process. And when you’re going through treatment, even though you’re training, because you’re taking like the types of steroids I was on, they were leaching away muscle mass as well. So it was a huge two years of battle. We’re not out of the woods yet, but here’s what I want to say:

• If you’d asked me if I could survive it before I went into it, I would have said no.
• I mean, who out there wants to go through something like that? No.
• It is a huge test of your character.
• And it was one that broke me many, many times.

So my character is not something that came out of this singing or swinging. There were many, many, many dark times. And there still are. I remember being in Okinawa thinking I was doing okay. And then people said to me recently, oh yeah, but you look terrible. You look so much better now, but you look terrible then. And I probably did because as I said, I was in a lot of pain. I was still trying to do stupid things like go out and run in the morning and try and keep my focus.

But it comes down to how you manage every single thing. For me, knowing my body, knowing where I was and knowing how bad I felt was what motivated me. I didn’t feel comfortable in my karate or in my training at all until very recently. And actually, it was Denmark that gave me a sense that we’re actually on the right track because I felt okay. I didn’t feel that I couldn’t lift my knee up or kick roundhouse kick.

In actual fact, we were at a fight night recently and Sensei said, oh my God, that’s impressive because my splits were coming back, actual box splits. I mean, they’re still terrible. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still terrible. But I think they’ve made a step forward. And that only comes from being completely dogged.

So I am the boring person that will go to the gym after a gashku because I need to. I’ve decided that. Nobody else has decided that. I’m not judging myself by anybody. I’m just doing my own thing. And I wanted to share that because that’s how I got through this.

Don’t get me wrong, I still worry every blood test. I still worry every time I feel a bit tired. My doctor said to me, look, it’s not going to be the tired you feel after a run. Now, the thing about her is she runs ultra marathons. So she absolutely knows what it’s like to be an athlete and to be training. She said, no, this is going to be the tired that doesn’t go away for like a week and a half. And every time you rest and try and train, you’re going to feel terrible.

So I havethat little kind of buffer of comfort, but it doesn’t stop the brain. But I’ve had to really quieten that voice inside. So yesterday, for example, as I say, it’s a bank holiday, and I had this run that I wanted to do. It’s new on the Peloton platform, and that’s kind of what’s guided a lot of my training. It’s a two-hour run, and I just thought, two-hour endurance, set it and forget it, it’ll be fine, I’ll watch a few movies. No, no, no, no, no, thanks Bex Gentry. This was a pace targets run, it had elevation, it had speed bits. Oh, yeah, okay. I’m not walking very well today, but I did it. And for me, it’s another step forward. And that’s all we can ever do in life. I’m a real believer in living with cancer, and that you can.

What I will say, though, is know yourself. So many people tried to limit me. So many people told me I should be taking it easy. It comes from an absolutely good place, but it wasn’t for me. And if I had taken it easy and done the lying around, I don’t think I would have gotten back as strong as I have. I feel strong at the moment. That might all change. I’ve got a blood test before the 16th of June of this year, which we, of course, were nervous about. But I went and did the training. I pushed myself. That’s what I wanted to do. I got lots of advice along the way, but I listened to the key people.

I used to be a gym instructor, so I created quite a challenging process for me to get back to fitness. I tested it all with people who are specialists in this field. And I was told, yeah, do what you’re doing. It’s the right thing. Work on the soles two and three. Add in the stuff above it. The strength training, my surgeon has been so happy with. And she said, look, you’ve had this incision. It’s going to be with you your whole life. There’s going to be things that are going to be sore. But actually, we can’t really fault what you’re doing. It’s all going in the right direction.

Along the way, though, I should share this. They asked me if I’d like to be part of a piece of clinical research. And you just had to share some of the data from your Apple Watch and all of that kind of good stuff. So I did. And I was really curious. So I found the nurse who was running the study. And she had shared the results with my doctor. And we met at one of the visits. And I said, you know, how are you doing? And they said, yeah, it’s really interesting. But this study is kind of for people getting back up and moving after really invasive surgery that you’ve had. But you’re statistically insignificant because you sit so far outside the curve. And I was a bit disappointed. But actually, that’s a really good thing because it means, yeah, I’m on following my path.

I must admit, last couple of weekends ago in Denmark, I mean, I love the Danish course. It’s absolutely fantastic. It’s a lot of training in two days, but it’s so good. And they always have really interesting instructors and a good length of classes. And everybody trains together from a certain belt up. So I think it was third down and above training together. So it’s just a great course. So I’m going to give them a plug because I think you should go to that, Gashkoo. It’s really good. But I felt the best I felt at a Gashkoo in an awful long time. And for me, that validates my thinking process.

So that’s where we are. I don’t know if you’re still with me. It’s like 22 odd, 23 minutes of me talking, which is probably never a good thing. But I wanted to share because the key thing for all of this in me was little gains over time add up. I monitored them. I focused on them. I celebrated them online. Sometimes you’ll see me put up stuff and it’s not been a great ride. It’s not been a difficult ride, but I got there.

Yesterday’s run wasn’t pretty. I made a video, right? Here’s the thing. I do not know how people who run and record themselves end up looking so good. I have no makeup on. I’ve got my hair tied back. I’m in my pain cave. The lighting isn’t great. If you’re going to be a little bit all about me sort of thing. And yet these people look amazing. I don’t, but I got it done. And I got it done in time for the Formula One starting, which is what made my day really.

So yeah, so it was, I basically project managed this the whole way through. And in the back of my mind, if I’m being honest, I only eversaw it as an inconvenience. There were lots of people along the way who were, you should take it easy. This is really bad. This is terrible. There were lots of people along the way who were, you should take it easy, or this is really bad, this is terrible. I didn’t listen to any of that. My focus was get back to the dojo. I really want to take my next grading as soon as I possibly can. You know, I really want to get back on it and make up for the time that I lost. That was my mentality. It worked for me most of the time. There were some pretty dark moments, as I said earlier, but that is what I chose to do. It was my journey.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for all of you who have been alongside me and adding comments and just liking some of my posts. That actually made a huge amount of a difference. And give me big hugs at Gashukus when I see you because that meant the most.

So thank you for listening. This has been Battle Ready. And I think the title today means more now maybe to you and why I chose it. But yes, this is Battle Ready. I’m Ciara Morrison. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or comments, yeah, reach out. Speak to you soon. Enjoy the bank holiday weekend if you’re in the UK. And if you’re at a Gashuku, see me, come and say hello.

Thank you very much. Signing out. Have a good one. Ciao. Thank you