A FITNESS instructor who has been battling cancer for 12 years is calling on people across Sussex to back World Cancer Day today.

Despite her gruelling treatment, Karen Ongley-Snook continues to stay positive for the sake of her family.

Mrs Ongley-Snook, who is married to Gary and has a son Jake, 26, said: “Life is precious. It is hard for my family to see me going through treatment. I have always been the one who copes and I have to stay strong for them.”

The 55-year-old from Bosham, near Chichester, is asking people to pick up a specially created fundraising unity band, which will raise funds for four cancer charities.

Mrs Ongley-Snook had been feeling under par for a couple of years before she was diagnosed but her doctor could not find anything wrong.

It was only when she returned exhausted after a holiday abroad and developed a lump in her groin that tests were carried out and she was found to have non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Doctors operated but were unable to remove all of the tumour in Mrs Ongley-Snook’s groin and she started the first of many chemotherapy treatments.

She responded well to treatment but six months later the cancer returned and further chemotherapy produced the same disappointing results.

The cancer had spread to other parts of her body and she was offered a place on a clinical trial.

Although Mrs Ongley-Snook again responded well, the cancer came back again.

A stem cell transplant gave her 18 months in remission but when her cancer returned two years ago, Mrs Onlgley-Snook had no option but to try another trial.

The trial, run by Cancer Research UK’s Centre for Drug Development, was testing a new antibody drug that blocked a fault molecule on the cancer cells for the first time in patients.

Mrs Ongley-Snook said: “It was fantastic. There were no side effects. I felt really well all the way through but I was not in remission at the end of the trial and I am now having further chemotherapy.”

She is now hoping for a long period of remission so she can carry on working at Goodwood Health Club where she teaches a variety of exercise classes.

Mrs Ongley-Snook said: “Who knows, by then doctors may have found something else for me to try.

“So many things have changed since I was diagnosed. That is what keeps me going. All the time there are options, there is hope.”