Despite enjoying her job, Isla felt that time off was important to help manage her family.

Transcript

I love my job but I needed to be away from it. I’ll be very honest about that, but I was also happy when it was coming time to come back.

You’re too occupied with your kids and your illness and the appointments. Just taking away the stress of having to juggle everything was really valuable for me during that time period. I’m grateful for paid leave, which we pay into as employees. And which your employer pays into too and which we take when we get sick but that’s what it’s for, it’s an insurance.

This was all very manageable, so for anyone else facing it, it is manageable. I kept teaching until Christmas and at that point, I stopped teaching because it was a little bit harder, plus, I had kids. So as I said to my employer,” I could do kids and cancer or work and cancer but I couldn’t do kids, work and cancer.” I took a leave of absence during the heavy lifting part of chemo but I was able to maintain a fairly normal life. I was cross-country skiing. I don’t say this like a badge of honour because not everyone’s going to feel like doing that. But, for me, carrying on a normal life, trying to get away for weekends, keeping up with cross-country in particular which my husband and I really enjoy, remaining active trying to eat well, was very important to me and was all doable during that time.

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