Corinne Truslove was exhausted after working a 9-to-5 corporate job for 25 years when she decided to put away her laptop, at age 48, and surf the world, but little did she know that an impending cancer diagnosis would ruin her. plans.
The Western Australian woman, now 52, affectionately known as Cozzy, told FEMAIL she bought a boat with her partner in May 2020 even though neither of them had sailed before.
“We had our own events business – we organized food and entertainment for children’s parties, a bit like a traveling food circus – so we knew that if we had our laptops we could work from anywhere,” he said.
Western Australia Health requires all residents turning 50 to be screened for bowel cancer, so when Cozzy sent in his sample he pointed out other problems he had had with his stomach, such as cramps and bloating.
Those small symptoms turned out to be signs of something much more sinister: Cozzy was soon diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer, requiring surgeons to remove an 8cm tumor along with 50 percent of her liver.
Corinne Truslove was exhausted after working 9 to 5 at a company for 25 years when she decided to put away her laptop and surf the world.
Cozzy and Mitch had spent two years sailing around Australia and as far as Indonesia before she started to feel strange.
The couple regularly posts vlogs on their YouTube channel. Navigating the life of the ocean.
“I thought my cramps might have been IBS or the result of not taking proper care of myself and my poor diet,” Cozzy said.
‘But after my sample results came back, my doctor wanted me to have a colonoscopy as soon as possible and I was terrified.
“Not only because of the thought of having cancer, but I had never undergone such an invasive medical procedure before.”
The colonoscopy found 14 polyps, which are small groups of cells in the lining of the colon that can eventually develop into colon cancer.
Cozzy’s doctor wanted him to have another colonoscopy to see better, but he soon returned to the ship. He didn’t do it again until he was 51 years old.
She shared that she kept putting off the appointment because it wasn’t a high priority.
When Cozzy’s results came back, doctors told her she had developed cancer because she had been taking birth control pills for too long.
The couple went to the Montebello Islands to visit some friends, which poses a radiation risk because the land used to be a British nuclear bomb testing site in the 1950s.
Cozzy and Mitch couldn’t buy food there, so all they had for the month was what they brought with them.
‘The fresh food ran out and we were left with instant noodles, which I hate. But I loved being on the boat and with my friends, so I pulled through.”
He added: ‘I had rescheduled the second colonoscopy so much that I needed another referral from my GP, and that’s when I called her about three months later.
‘He asked me how I was feeling and I confessed that I was a little swollen. I thought it was because of all the garbage I ate on board, but I just wasn’t used to it.
“My doctor scheduled me for an ultrasound just in case, and I went for it the next week.”
Cozzy recalled sitting and chatting casually with the ultrasound technician while he scanned the left side of her stomach.
But as soon as he moved the probe to the right, the technician’s face paled.
She instructed Cozzy to sit in the waiting room while she talked to the doctor, but what she didn’t know was that Cozzy could hear the duo talking from outside.
“I could hear them talking about an injury and they kept saying the number ‘six.’ I didn’t know if it was millimeters, centimeters or inches, but I was trying to look things up on my phone.
Doctors revealed it was a 6cm lesion, but weren’t sure if it was in the liver or lungs, so Cozzy had to return for a PET scan and another follow-up appointment.
Cozzy spoke to a surgeon after they confirmed the mass was in his liver in January 2023 and that they planned to remove it in March due to pre-arranged plans.
‘My partner’s sister, her husband and her children were supposed to come visit us. We were going sailing, so I couldn’t have the operation until afterwards.’
Surgeons discovered that the mass was actually larger than expected (8cm) and were required to remove 50 percent of Cozzy’s liver.
The months flew by and soon it was time for mass to come out. Cozzy wasn’t too worried: The doctor originally said that since the mass was 6cm, they only needed to remove 19 percent of the liver.
But that didn’t end up happening.
Instead, surgeons discovered that the mass was actually larger than expected (8cm) and required them to remove 50 percent of Cozzy’s liver.
“I woke up terrified in the ICU,” she recalled. “The cancer had grown outside my liver and had attached to my diaphragm, and was covering my lungs.”
He came very close to suffering from lung cancer, a diagnosis that would have been fatal.
When Cozzy’s results came back, doctors told her she had developed cancer because she had been taking birth control pills for too long and the excess estrogen in her body caused cancer cells to develop.
‘I was told it had been growing slowly for 15 years when they found it.
“He hadn’t given me much trouble, but when he gets to the size he was, that’s when he starts to get a little more aggressive.”
“If we had waited even weeks longer to get him out, it would have been much more serious and I’m terrified to think what could have happened.”
Cozzy marveled at the fact that he never would have known until it was too late if he hadn’t had the colonoscopy.
The mass was the result of well-differentiated cancer cells, which look and behave more like the normal cells of the tissue in which they began to grow.
However, tumors that have well-differentiated cancer cells tend to grow and spread slowly, and in Cozzy’s case, this had taken 15 years.
While he didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation, Cozzy needed to take it easy and rest due to the amount of liver he needed to regenerate.
Cozzy spoke to a surgeon after they confirmed the mass was in his liver in January 2023.
He needs to have MRIs every three months for the foreseeable future to make sure the cancer doesn’t come back.
“It scared me a lot,” he admitted. ‘Every time I feel a little bad, I get scared. But I just need to remind myself that I had an MRI recently and I’m safe. There are also other diseases.
“The doctor was sure he had removed all the cancer and took samples from the area around the incision, which came back free of cancer cells.
‘But it’s hard to be sure you’ve got it all when you’ve been through it. “It’s a little scary, but I’m doing my best to do my due diligence.”
Cozzy immediately returned to sailing once his surgeons gave him the all-clear.
The couple had to return to work full-time in January 2023, but are currently building a business that produces high-quality boating equipment.
“We really just want to get back out there and go around the world,” he said. “We want to see as much as we can on a sailboat and on a cruise; it’s an amazing lifestyle.”
