Gill's Journey to Where She is Now

Good afternoon, and Welcome to my life! 

 I hope you all go away with a bit

more information about how your body works

and what you can do to help it.

​

My name is Gill Bradshaw-Murphy

For myself I had been doing competitive training

in swimming and dance. Firstly, ballet and tap

then swimming and lastly ballroom dancing from

the age of 6 till 35.

But let me take you back I little further.

At the age of 9, I was given the honour to bathe

my Nan each night who came to stay with us

whilst she was convalescing from major heart

surgery, one of only 6 women to have the first pig

heart valve transplant at Hammersmith Hospital

in 1960’s with a 60/40% risk of failure.

I became fascinated with my nan’s scar when

bathing her, it went from mid spine to mid

sternum and they had removed one of her ribs. I

began to become curious as I watched the scar

change colour and shape as it healed, my nan

went from unable to get undressed or dressed

without help to helping herself and as I saw more

scars on her body, I ask more questions and could

see that the very old scars were the same colour

as the rest of her skin.

Later I was very fortunate to go to my secondary

school (your intermediate & high school) from age

of 11 – 17 where instead of biology we did only

Human Biology along with the other normal

subjects.

I was lucky that my teacher was so passionate

about the subject too. She would bring in visual

things with reference to the subject or body

system that we could touch and feel like a lung

from a smoker and non-smoker. One day she

came back to work after Haemorrhoid surgery

and brought in her little orange rubber ring to sit

on during class and was proud to tell us all about

her sugery and that she had named with rubber

ring too, which made us all laugh.

I remember like it was yesterday, she organised a

school trip to a sewerage treatment works. In

those days it was all open so you could look inside

each container during the processing. It was of

course very smelly, but I was fascinated at how it

changed and noticed around the plant all these

tomato plants with these dinner plate size

tomatoes, apparently no matter how much

processing the human body did, and the

processing the waste went through at the

sewerage plant it could not destroy these tomato

plant seeds!!

Later in life my daughter was born diagnosed as

Bronchial Asthmatic and from 9 months would go

blue. I spent so much time with the

physiotherapist learning how to help her I decided

to start learning. But I became despondent at the

restrictions around treatment and diagnosis that I

looked at alternatives. Very quickly learnt that at

3/4am I could bring her out of an asthma attack

using reflexology. As a mother you feel helpless,

and this gave me something to do also. You can’t

cuddle an asthmatic child in the middle of the

night trying to breath, but I could get to her feet.

My journey then encompassed may qualifications

in the field of alternative medicine and of natural

supplements that worked so well for my family

and my clients. Improving and feeling the

improvements from supplementation.

Later in life having lived, trained and worked my

own clinics in the UK, often travelling overseas to

USA, Europe and Thailand to enhance my

knowledge or training in 2006 I moved to New

Zealand.

With many therapies and years of clinical practice

I was becoming more and more curious in Chinese

Medicine so in 2010 I started studying a Bachelor

Degree in Health Science and Chinese Medicine

for 4 years. For 4 years I travelled to and from

Wellington weekly as I still had my clinic here in

Napier which I worked in on weekends.

At the end of the final year of my degree MY

world came to an abrupt end in the Pak n Sav car

park in Tamatea in 2013!!

The phone rang and it was someone to tell me I

had the signs of BREAST CANCER!

I was at that time feeling the happiest I had ever

been, was madly in love with my now husband

and feeling so fit????

After biopsies, 3 x lumpectomies it was spreading

too fast so we decided to have a Mastectomy with

tram-flap reconstruction. Then breast & nipple

reconstruction. Fighting many surgical infections

along the way. I took 2 years away from work to

help my body cope, plus deal with the fact that 6

weeks after my Mastectomy my now husband had

a triple heart bypass, also out of the blue with no

classic signs or symptoms prior and no heart

attack!

My saving grace was having done 4 years of Western medicine and Chinese medicine studies I was

able to make informed choices about my body for the rest of my life! I am now 7 years clear.

My life has made me more passionate about people, more passionate about life and more

passionate about helping people be informed and make their right choices with better

understanding of their health. You think your body is working ok but COULD IT BE WORKING

BETTER??