Interview
2012 Olympics, during which she spent
much of her time in London.
In her leisure time, she was playing
touch rugby for local teams on the
mainland, as well as swimming and
working out in the gym.
By 2015, she was ready for the next big
step forward in her career, and in June,
launched her own gym, Wight Fit: a huge
achievement for a 26 year-old. However,
within 10 days of its opening, she was
facing another unexpected health crisis.
Emergency
With her new business less than a
fortnight old, Victoria found herself in the
A&E department with pain and swelling
to her legs, which she assumed to be an
injury from all her exercising.
Tests however revealed a deep vein
thrombosis - a condition that’s more
usually associated with inactivity and
obesity than a super-active lifestyle - and
she left the hospital on crutches, with a
prescription for blood thinners.
“It was an incredible shock, particularly
as a fit and healthy individual” she says.
Further tests revealed a genetic blood
disorder that was causing the clotting,
and by October, it became
apparent that Victoria had a
major hormone imbalance,
and had developed a breast
lump.
“It was a bit of a bummer”
she says with typical
understatement. “I had
no idea – I hadn’t even
contemplated that it could
be cancer”.
“All I recall asking was the
question: ‘Is it treatable?’ –
and the answer thankfully
was ‘yes’.
As she contemplated
undergoing the initial
treatments for the
cancer, Victoria was also
concerned about the
impact on her future
ability to have children.
As the cancer was so
advanced and quite
aggressive, there was
no time to freeze any
of her eggs, so she was
one of the first few
patients to undergo
a groundbreaking
procedure at
the Princess Anne Hospital in
Southampton, to remove and
freeze one of her ovaries for
possible future use.
With the ovary safely
preserved, Victoria almost
immediately started on her
first round of chemotherapy,
which continued every three
weeks for seven months. This
was followed by lumpectomy
surgery, and then 25 daily
sessions of radiotherapy.
During that time the
team at her fledgling new
gym business kept things
running, with Victoria going
in whenever she felt well
enough.
Incredibly, she still
managed to go out on 10
km runs - as she puts it, “to
keep me sane”.
“As long as I wasn’t putting
myself at risk, I would just
go and run, and it really did
keep my brain going”.
Brother Anthony also kept her going:
“He’d come and make sure I stayed alive,
driving me there and back” she says.
“Then he’d be there with me at A&E,
cracking jokes about my bald head”.
Coping with loss
In fact Victoria, who had previously had
long, dark hair, was bald for nine months,
and wore pretty headscarves for part of
that time – although now she says: “Hair
is just hair – I do wish I hadn’t bothered
with the scarf, and just embraced my
baldness”.
She recalls being laughed at by a group
of teenagers in Tesco’s when she went out
wearing her trademark headscarf – but
not surprisingly she lashed out and “gave
them what for” about it!
She also recalls attending a business
awards dinner (at which she won one of
her several awards for business enterprise)
minus her hair and eyebrows, but says that
the photo taken of her at that occasion
remains one of her favourites.
As she says, hair is just hair and it grows
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