About

My name is Susan and I hail from New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada.

I began blogging in January 2009 as a way to chronicle my first triathlon and life maintaining a weight loss. I then created “The Great Balancing Act” in July 2009 as place where I could share my journey to find a healthy balance with daily blog posts. I wrote about healthy food, not-so-healthy food, exercise, and fitness,  but mostly just my life and how I lived it.

I graduated from university with a degree in journalism and communications in 2009. I worked as a radio and television reporter in New Brunswick but decided I needed a change of scenery and jumped to working as a personal trainer in Toronto in July 2010. Unfortunately, I had to leave that job and the city after shattering my left elbow skating on the Rideau Canal during a trip to Ottawa in February 2011. After a five hour reconstructive surgery and many more hours spent in physical therapy, my arm still refused to heal or move normally.

It wasn’t until June 2011, after a couple months of living back home in the Maritimes, that I started experiencing pain in my neck. I thought it was a regular kink, but after a few days it hurt more, became swollen, and the veins in my chest and neck were quite noticeable.

A CT scan showed a blood clot in my jugular vein, however it was a second CT scan that showed a 14 cm mass in my chest was causing the restricted blood flow. I was immediately admitted to the hospital’s oncology ward. Four weeks and three biopsies later, I got the official diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma stage 2a, bulky and undesirable.

I received chemotherapy for six months and appear to be cancer-free as of January 2012. I am back to work as a writer/researcher in my hometown and blogging much less as I spend time doing the things that are truly important in life. This mostly includes being with loved ones, relaxing, cooking, and walking my dog.

Oh yeah, I got a dog. His name is Buster. He is more well-known on the blog than me.