AARON GOILE – Waikato Times

Shanel Cornille is going to enjoy Christmas a whole lot more this time round.

On December 23 last year the Hamilton woman was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

But after fighting through the disease, the 29-year-old is back to full fitness and is set to prove her oncologist wrong when she returns to triathlon again sooner than she expected, starting with the Port of Tauranga Half Ironman in two weeks.

Dr Herman van der Vyver had told Cornille she probably wouldn’t be competitive for two years and that she should take it easy while recovering. But a determined Cornille told him she was out to prove him wrong, which he was happy to hear.

Cornille registered for the Tauranga event on the day entries opened, just three months after she finished her treatment with the race date adding to her motivation.

But it’s a been a long road since that first diagnosis last December.

Home no more than a month after competing at the Long Distance Triathlon World Championships in Perth, Cornille, who was living in Tauranga at the time, got a massive shock when delivered the news that she had cancer.

Her initial reaction was “disbelief”‘.

“That I was supposedly so fit and healthy and that that could happen to me.

“It shows you that cancer just doesn’t look at who you are, it doesn’t miss anyone out. I hadn’t had any symptoms, I don’t smoke and I have a really healthy lifestyle, so it hit home that this can happen to anyone and it’s pretty scary.”

Cornille moved back to Hamilton and had to endure six weeks of intense chemotherapy and radiation at Waikato Hospital.

Last Christmas was spent in Christchurch with family but they made an effort to ignore the cancer topic because Cornille didn’t want it to dampen the festive spirit.

“My sister had just had a baby and that was all exciting and so I didn’t want to bring down the enjoyment of Christmas with the family,” she said.

being single and going through the ordeal by herself was tough, but Cornille’s family, which includes three sisters and a brother, played a huge part in getting her through.

“They all had turns sitting with me at chemo and coming to my specialist appointments. they took time off work when they could to help support me.

“I think it brought us a lot closer together as well.”

Another person who she absorbed motivation from was rower Fi Paterson, who also went through cancer and returned to sport.

Cornille was introduced to Paterson through a friend and they met in Cambridge for coffee a few times.

“It was just really nice to have someone to talk to who had so many similarities to me,” Cornille said.

During her treatment Cornille managed to get some work as a physiotherapist a couple of afternoons a week at Lisa Hansen Physiotherapy, and now she is there fulltime.

a month after her treatment started in February she began running again to maintain some fitness. But some days she could hardly find any energy as she lost a lot of muscle mass and her red and white blood cells, which are used to transport oxygen around the body, were down at low levels.

“I’d try and go for a little jog some days when I was feeling good. Some days I felt really good and other days I felt crap.

“I’m not one to sit back and go `I can’t do that’, I always think I should be able to do it.

“I probably did underestimate the effect it had on my body.”

and the severity of Cornille’s condition didn’t completely register with her initially and she never feared the worst.

“Even right from the start it never actually crossed my mind that this was something I could die from. I always had the attitude that I was going to beat cancer and not the other way round.” Now she has to have six-monthly MRI scans with her specialist and it will be another five years or so before she can be considered clear.

“So I guess it’s always a bit of a scary thought to think `will it come back’ but I’ve taken the attitude that you’ve got to live your life to the full and have no regrets. This process has shown me you never know what’s around the corner.”

The harshest outcome of the illness for Cornille is that her fertility has been greatly affected and for someone wanting kids, she is going to find it a lot harder.

She has visited fertility specialists and had some of her eggs harvested so they can be implanted later when she’s ready to start a family.

Cornille’s race on January 8 will be her fourth half ironman and she has also been accepted as part of triathlete Sam Warriner’s Sweat7 team made up of seven women of various abilities, who Warriner will coach toward the national triathlon championships in Wellington in March.

Last time at Tauranga Cornille was fourth in the women’s 25-29 years age group and she has ambitions to again be in the top five.

“I’ve got to appreciate everything from here,” Cornille said. “I am just lucky to be out there competing.

“But I’m still very competitive by nature and I don’t want to be out there just to race, I want to be out there to do well.”

Cornille said the key message to other cancer sufferers was to stay positive.

“I think that is a huge thing. your state of mind is so important through treatment.”

Now she is helping to raise funds for the new Zealand Gynaecological Cancer Foundation to help prevent other women from going through what she did.

See fundraiseonline.co.nz/shanelshalfironman to help her cause.