Fearless project - Tongariro Crossing

I am a 35 year old female living in Wellington. I completed a bachelor of counselling at the end of 2012 and moved to Masterton for my new job as a graduate working for CareNZ. I was 30 then and only 6 months into this role when I was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. The next harrowing 6 months was spent in treatment, which worked and I went into remission after the first of four rounds of chemotherapy. Slowly, I regained strength and while battling anxiety and depression on top of finding my 'new normal' as a cancer survivor, I slowly returned to full time work. Once I had been working full time for 6 months, my cancer relapsed. This was almost 18 months after treatment had finished. This time it was 2 heftier rounds of chemo, the first of which saw me in ICU with a life threatening infection, and consolidation or total body irradiation (TBI) chemo before receiving a stem cell transplant from a German matched unrelated donor (MUD). It was mutually agreed I would be medically retired. The transplant was done 3 years ago.

I found Whole Lotta Life Foundation (WLL) a few months after I had first finished treatment, and was able to attend their first ever retreat. This was at a time when I was so lost, confused and traumatised and trying to make sense of what had just happened. I met so many people, similarly aged, who were going through cancer also. It was life changing for me. I began volunteering as a blogger for WLL just prior to my transplant, and a year later began working for WLL. Not only do I want to do the crossing for myself, I want to raise funds while doing it for this incredible Foundation I am so passionate about.