Jemma Walton spoke to her about her battle with the disease – and getting the all-clear.

TEN years ago, Sandra Nugent was fitter than most of us could ever hope to be. But just before Christmas, doctors told her she was facing gruelling treatment to deal with the cancer attacking her body.

But she fought the cancer and won, and her story will give hope to anyone being treated for the disease that affects one in three people at some point in their lives.

Sandra is now 37, and in 1998 she was as fit as anyone in Peterborough: she was named the World Kickboxing Association champion in Toronto.

She got into the sport when she was 18 and her brother took up a kung fu class. But after taking her title, she retired from competing on a high and started helping out at a city gym instead.

"I was 28, and didn't want to be competing against people who were 10 years younger than me," she said. "And so instead of starting to lose, I decided it was better to walk away from it.

"But, at my peak, I was training four or five times a week for a couple of hours at a time. I was the fittest I'd ever been."

Sandra has been helping to train amateurs at Phil Prout's Arena Boxing gym at the old boys' school, in Lincoln Road, for the past three years. She trained as an assistant instructor, and took amateur boxing classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.

She trained with Phil between the ages of 18 and 25, and he helped get her in the condition which saw her take her title, and she had been his first black belt student.

And after retiring, she enjoyed helping him and his pupils out, and balanced her work at the gym with working at Deeping School as a PE assistant.

But in December 2006, her mum was diagnosed with cancer. And then in November last year, so was she. She was just 37 years old, and a single mum to Brittany, now 11.

"The hardest thing about having cancer is keeping positive," she said. "And I think, in a lot of ways, my sport helped me with that. To succeed in any sport you need a positive mental attitude, and I think the same is true if you're ill.

"You just have to concentrate on getting to the end of your treatment and getting better. You can't think 'why me,' or feel sorry for yourself: you just have to focus on beating it."

Sandra, of Neaverson Road, Glinton, also said that her training helped her through her illness physically. Although her treatment – radiotherpay every day for seven weeks and a 24-hour chemo drip for two weeks – left her physically weak, she always pushed to get out of bed and do something, keeping as active as she possibly could.

She was give the all-clear in June, and is back at work part-time, and down the gym training again.

"I'd like to get back training other people by September," she said. "I want people to know that it's not all over when they've been diagnosed with cancer.

"And it can happen to anyone – I was really fit and I got it, lots of younger people get it. When I walked on to the ward in Addenbrooke's Hospital, in Cambridge, I thought I had come to the wrong ward because it was so full.