I never celebrated exercise, until I was in hospital thinking I might never be able to again

June 7, 2026 — 5:00am

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I’ve cancelled a few gym memberships in my time. You may recognise how it goes. Sign up. Get a program done. Work out. Ache in new places. Go back. Feel better. Start to feel great. Think to yourself, wow this is wonderful, I really should have done this before.

Then, it gets busy at work. You catch a cold. It’s raining. You miss a few days. Somehow the missing of those days makes it easier to skip a few more. A week passes. Then two. The gym is, of course, still charging you, and paying for nothing starts to hurt. This hurt reminds you of the pain in store when you finally drag your withering muscles back. Three weeks pass. A month. You see your bank statement. You cancel your membership.

OK, so I’m back at the gym again. But it’s different this time. No, really it is.

In April last year I did the bowel cancer screening test sent out in the mail. To my shock – I had no symptoms – it came back positive. A colonoscopy followed, revealing a two-centimetre tumour. Within two weeks I was in surgery to cut out a decent section of my bowel. Still in a post-surgery daze, I was given the diagnosis: stage 3 bowel cancer. I was 54. This wasn’t part........

© The Sydney Morning Herald