One day Nicola Tennent walked into the beautiful Pilates studio and bluntly asked, “Do you see overweight people with cancer?”
She had just finished a rehab session in a “humdrum” clinic and it did nothing to improve her outlook. She pined for a studio that uplifted her during treatment and helped her feel like she would get through the horrible time she was experiencing, rather than bringing her down.
“I was wearing a headscarf because I had no hair and I’d lost my eyebrows. They had a couple of Reformer machines and I got a lot out of it, but it was humdrum.
“I came out and looked across the road and I saw this gleaming black-and-white studio. It just looked lovely, but I wasn’t sure if they were going to take someone like me.”
They not only accepted her as a client, Studio Pilates helped Nicola improve her range of movement after surgery to treat a rare and aggressive breast cancer.
“I couldn’t lift my arm above my shoulder with all of the scar tissue,” she confides. “Plus, you have to be really careful when you’ve had your lymph nodes out because you can get lymphedema really easily and that can cause a lethal infection.”
Within three months of starting at the studio, Nicola had full range of movement – but it would be a few years before she realised it was the beginning of not only a new lease on life, but a complete career change and a move back to New Zealand.
Nicola and her partner were living in Brisbane when she was diagnosed and treated.
“I was actually misdiagnosed twice by my doctor. She said, ‘There’s this really rare cancer, it sort of mimics mastitis.’ And I said, ‘I’ve never had children. Why would I have mastitis?’
“She gave me antibiotics. I suffered for a week, and got to the stage where I could not wear a bra because my breast was so hot and large. I went to a second doctor and she said, ‘Go to the hospital right away.’ They did a core biopsy and diagnosed me, and I was in chemo five days later.”
The main tumour was 7.5cm and had not shown up on Nicola’s mammogram six months earlier. And it had spread to the lymph nodes on the same side. She had a unilateral mastectomy and had the nodes removed.
After losing her partner, Nicola needed a new passion.
Because she had a pacemaker, Nicola’s oncologist – who was also a cardiologist – said radiotherapy was too risky, so instead she had targeted therapy and chemotherapy for a year.
“I was born with a congenital heart block,” the 49-year-old explains. “And I had at that stage a life expectancy of 21 without the pacemaker. So I was one of the youngest people in New Zealand to
have one, when I was 13.
“I’ve just had my fourth – a bi-ventricular pacemaker, which is a bit more of a heavy-duty one.”
Nicola had been five years cancer-free when the couple returned to New Zealand in 2019. She was working in a high-powered corporate role as a litigator and risk lawyer when tragedy struck again – her partner of nine years took his own life.
“He was an amazing person,” she shares. “He was a traffic engineer, very highly qualified and doing multibillion-dollar projects. But severe depression got him. He started to take medication just before he died, but it was too late.
“I had to get out of Auckland. He was really a big city guy and I’m a country girl. I left in two weeks.”
Serendipitously, Studio Pilates was expanding and remembering how much it helped her, Nicola bought the Dunedin franchise and opened for business in April.
“I’m the misfit who doesn’t belong in a gym and here I am bringing people in here,” she laughs. “How good is that?”
Nicola with her Pilates studio crew.
She gave up law for running a studio but sees synergies in her old and new working worlds.
“I love solving problems, especially gnarly ones. Some of these people are coming in here and they feel like they don’t fit anywhere else. I can give them a real opportunity to enjoy this and actually feel like they’re getting stronger whether they’re 50-something, 60-something or 70-something.
“You do get a lot of people that are very fit and very agile. The rest have a bung shoulder, they can’t put pressure on their wrists, they’ve had ankle surgery or a sore back. She adds, “We’re not a rehab. We’re not medical practitioners. But we are anatomy trained. We look at what we can do as an alternative. We try to get everyone to give something a crack and if they can’t do it, we just try them on something else.”
While she is stretching her business acumen, Nicola is also flexing her social life too. “I’ve dated, I’ve had a bit of interest but I’m still trying,” she jokes.
“I’m in such a good place now. I am in control of my own destiny in my spiritual home, Dunedin.”
If you’re struggling with your mental health, text or call 1737 at any time to speak to a trained counsellor for free. For the Suicide Crisis Helpline, visit 0508 TAUTOKO. In an emergency, dial 111.
