A Scottish woman who lost both her parents to cancer while also being treated for the same disease has decided to stop checking her watch - so she can live her life to the fullest.
Gill Duffus-Simpson, 44, lost both her parents - Eric Duffus, 76, and Elizabeth Duffus, 72 - to cancer while dealing with her own diagnosis, reports the Daily Record.
All three family members were diagnosed with cancer within three months of each other, at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011.
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Gill, a mature student from Moray, has now said that she doesn't want cancer to define her entire life, so she has taken a rather unusual step to make sure that doesn't happen - by not wearing a watch.
She said: "When I got my diagnosis I was catapulted out of this world - I went into a bubble. I was present on earth but I didn't feel like I was present. It felt like my world had paused.
"I live my life in a positive way now - we can't change the past. But we can develop resilience and coping mechanisms to how we respond in life.
"Now I go to yoga, I go to the gym. But before my diagnosis I would say, 'I don't have time for that'. But what is time? None of us know how much time we have left on the earth. I don't wear a watch - because what is the point?"
Dad Eric was the first to discover he had the disease, when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Gill was then diagnosed with breast cancer two months later - and mum Elizabeth discovered she had the same form of cancer as her daughter just two weeks later.
Gill moved back home to be with her parents - and they renamed their home Ward 17.
Elizabeth, a retired social worker, beat her original diagnosis, but when she went in for a hip replacement, was told cancer had got into her bones. She passed away in November 2016, aged 72.
Gill said: "The triple diagnosis was horrific. It was like something out of a movie, you cannot prepare for it. I moved back home to be with my parents for moral support and we organised our diaries around who was getting chemo and when.
"My mum did really well with her chemo, I didn't do so well. I would pick up any infection so I had to go into isolation. We renamed the house Ward 17. We have always been a positive family.
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"We always try and find something good in everything. We renamed the house as community nurses would come in and we would ask which patient they were looking for."
Gill met partner Derrick, 61, after getting the all-clear, and welcomed their son Maitland, now seven, in 2015. The couple tied the knot in 2017, a year after losing Elizabeth.
In 2021, after rebuilding their lives, both Gill and Eric were given the horrible news that their cancers had returned.
Gill have to have a double mastectomy - a surgery in which both breasts are removed at the same time. And Eric sadly passed away from stomach cancer in September 2021, aged 76.
Gill said: "I went for a shower one day and I found an inverted nipple. I contacted a GP and they told me it was nothing to worry about but I wasn't convinced.
"My dad then paid for me to go private and a few days later they found I have multiple tumours in both breasts. It was like 'how much more can we take' we were great believers that you are given stuff in life that will test you but it will be nothing you can't handle.
"This was really difficult, there was nothing to blame. My dad passed away in August 2021, six days after he was diagnosed with stomach cancer."
Now, nearly two years on, Gill is living with cancer and will require checkups for the rest of her life to keep the cancer under control.
Following her double cancer diagnosis, Gill has stopped wearing a watch permanently, and said she is now in control of her life.
She said: "It makes you re-evaluate life, you re-evaluate everything. You stop worrying about things that you would use to worry about. I have started going to yoga and I do fitness classes.
"I hope stopped saying I don't have time to go to things as none of us know how much time we have on this earth. I don't wear a watch anymore because what is the point, I am my own person I will do my own thing."
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