Name: Nikki Shipard

Current age: 35

Age at diagnosis: 28

Cancer Type: Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia

Time in remission: 5.5 years

Favourite quote: life's too short – go surfing!

Favourite colour/ music/ book/ food/ hobby:
I am always reading…. usually big FAT textbooks and journal papers for uni, but I like a good light biographical book to send me off to sleep. Right now I am reading 'Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert as she is a mid thirties gal who is searching for the meaning of live travelling in 1 year throughout Italy, India and Indonesia.

mmmmmmmmm…. I love quality food, I love to cook, I love veggie gardening to grow my food and I love having a glass of red while I water my garden in the early evening.

I love surfing and being near the ocean… taking long beach walks with my partner and chocolate brown kelpie- Jackie Brown. Oh yeh I want to try the new craze of Hawaiian stand-up paddle boarding cause I think it would be a good core strength workout

I love all colours, particularly the natural colours and light that throws off the landscape in the early hours of the day and night. (I was a landscape & ocean photographer in my previous life before getting sick). I love to paint BIG abstract flowers and making intricate grass wall hangings

I love taking time out to just sit and be. I love yoga and pranayama (breath work) and the compassionate ways of Buddhism

My top three tips for healing… balance, balance, balance

What I would have changed about my hospital experience... I wish that just once while I was in hospital for my one and a half years of treatment, I had a qualified staff member that I could talk to about the emotional issues surrounding my cancer experience. And I wish the doctors could have done something more to help the young adults patients I became friends with in hospital so they did not pass away. Oh yeh and I wish they had fresh juices on the menu and chocolate mud cake!

The things that help/ helped me get through treatment... chocolate mud cake and fresh vegie juices, my mum and 3 brothers, my compassionate and understanding female haematologist, morphine, friends, laughter, Centrelink payments, our public health system, meditation, TCM, yoga, good food, sleep, exercise and when the nurses would smuggled Jackie Brown onto the 5th floor and would put her on my bed in my room

If I had a million dollars I would...have a whopping BIG website like this one to connect Young Adults with all types of cancer across Australia and run retreats for us all here in my home town of Byron Bay.

Happiness is... made by you…

Thanks Nikki for your time!

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