About me

Hello my name is Julian and I was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer that had spread to my lungs in January 2015, at the age of 26. I have always been a very keen athlete and participated in many sports but my main passion is rugby. I studied Exercise Sport Science at college and then degree level at the University of Exeter where I also played a high standard of rugby and pursued my other passion of strength and conditioning.

Since I was old enough to understand health and fitness at school I have been passionate about it and always lived a healthy lifestyle, so getting diagnosed with cancer knocked me back and I had trouble accepting it. My life took a massive U-turn and was unrecognizable to what it used to be. As well as the gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy I have also had a major operation to remove the primary tumour in my right shoulder and a prosthetic humorous bone put back in. This year has been the hardest year of my life but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and I am happy to say the treatment has gone very well.

This blog will be about my journey this year and it will develop into my passion of health and fitness and my return to training. I will have to learn to accept my new limitations, although I will always be challenging them, and adapt a lot of things I used to be very capable at. I’m hoping it will be interesting for some, help anyone that can relate to the stories and selfishly help myself. I’m going to try and include as much humour as possible but this blog wont be winning any comedy awards, after all cancer isn’t funny. I’ve tried to cover everything in the hope that someone else going through a tough time will benefit from it or anybody just interested! So thanks for reading and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.