After years of advising others how to live heathily, Hampshire trainer Pat Sawyer had to reassess her own lifestyle to fight cancer...

WHEN the diagnosis finally came in 1999, Pat Sawyer, pictured, was not surprised when the consultant told her that she had cancer.

Immediately she knew she had two choices - fall apart and let herself be swept away by self-pity or decide on the practical steps she could take to overcome the cancer in her lymph system. She chose the latter.

Rather than handing responsibility over to the medical profession and agreeing to traditional treatments such as chemo and radiotherapy, Pat, 52, decided on an alternative path.

She drew together a team of people she wanted to help her fight the cancer - including homeopath Dr Julian Kenyon, whose Southampton practice she visited regularly, and therapist John Cassell, along with a handful of close friends.

"I had had the lump on my neck for two years and when they told me I had cancer. I suppose it just confirmed what I already thought.

"They told me I had aggressive Non- Hodgkins lymphoma and it was in the intermediate stage. They were surprised it hadn't spread but it was confined to the gland in my neck.

"When I got the diagnosis I was 80 per cent certain I was going to go down the non-traditional route. I already had a lot of knowledge through my work and by the time I went for my first appointment with the oncologist I was 100 per cent certain," recalled Pat, who lives with her partner Frank at Port Solent.

Rather than totally rejecting the NHS, she explained her wishes and they supported her choice throughout her recovery.

"I set myself some key targets - and really there were two triangles of themes that I worked towards.

"The first three aims were to stop the cancer, boost my immunity and lower the toxicity in my body.

"I knew I had to do this holistically by addressing the spiritual, physical and emotional parts of me," she said.

Using homeopathy and a range of other natural treatments, Pat set out on a journey of recovery that was to see her body go from strength to strength.

"The first six months I was very unwell and extremely tired. But within a few months the lump had begun to shrink and by six months it had disappeared.

"By a year there was no active cancer in my body," she said.

Throughout her alternative treatment Pat continued to be monitored by her oncologist at St Mary's Hospital, Portsmouth, and was given regular blood tests to check her progress.

"Now there is officially no cancer in my body. The medical team haven't really said much to me about it . I had a check-up recently and they confirmed then that it was no longer there," she said.

During her treatment Pat started to write about her experiences, and her book Coaching Through Cancer has just been published.