Cancer survivor Thea Wilson was the picture of poise in a demure pink dress as she gave her inspirational speech to a House of Commons audience.
But in the next moment she stripped off her smart outfit to reveal her sports pants and bra in matching cerise.
To gasps all round, she jumped on to a specially installed metal bar and gave the audience of smartly dressed women a pole dancing performance none of them had expected.
A standing ovation followed as she proudly took a bow. It was an unforgettable finale to her courageous story.
“There was no better way for me to show I’d beaten leukaemia than with a full-on pole-dancing routine, letting everyone see how alive I was,” she says.
Thea, 45, believes her pole-dancing passion helped her to show cancer who was boss. She adds: “I was on such a high, I just wanted to do it all over again. That was one of the best days of my life.
“I was the last of six speakers, each of us talking about our own personal vision for making the world a better place. After I’d finished I whisked off my dress like Superwoman and jumped on the pole.”
When first diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukaemia, a rare sub-type, Thea was warned that the disease was at an advanced stage and she may not have long to live.
“Being told I was just days from death just didn’t seem real,” she recalls. “I’d assumed my age and fitness meant cancer wouldn’t hit me, but the doctors and the test results couldn’t have been clearer.”
A keen runner, Thea first suspected something was wrong in September 2014 when a trail race up Mount Snowdon left her covered in bruises.
She was often in hospitals as part of her work for a medical equipment firm and a consultant who noticed the bruising encouraged to see her GP.
Blood tests showed a low platelet count of 90 (the safe range is 150-400). But she was still active and seemed healthy, so no action was taken. Thea explains: “I was still running and doing lots of exercise so I didn’t tick the leukaemia boxes that would normally flag up cancer.”
After her symptoms worsened, a bone-marrow biopsy on December 3 at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital revealed she had AML. “I just felt so incredibly weak,” she says. “Results from that biopsy basically showed I was a dead woman walking.
“My blood platelet count was nine, so far below the safe minimum level of 150 that there were no blood clotting factors in my blood. If I’d sneezed and haemorrhaged, I could’ve easily bled to death.
“I was told if I’d come just one day later I ‘wouldn’t have had many tomorrows’, was how the consultant phrased it.”
The charity Blood Cancer UK says AML is diagnosed in just 160 people a year in the UK. It develops quickly and needs treatment straight away. Fortunately, it is highly curable and has a two-year “event-free survival rate” of 75-84%.
Thea immediately started the first of 16 rounds of high-strength chemotherapy, combined with blood, platelet and plasma transfusions. “My life hung by a thread, but I knew I had to stay strong,” she says.
With her immune system at rock bottom, Thea had to stay in hospital and was allowed only one visitor at a time. At first the treatment wasn’t working. Her liver wasn’t processing the drugs properly.
“I really had to cling on mentally and physically, but with amazing support from the doctors and nurses, very slowly I started to improve,” she adds.
By mid-January, Thea was able to leave hospital and move in with her mum, returning as an outpatient for the rest of the treatment. On February 23 she was told she was in remission, with just one more round of chemo to go.
But for Thea the hardest part was yet to come. “Being told, ‘Go and live your life’, knowing the cancer could come back at any time, outside the protective care bubble I’d been in for months, was simply terrifying,” she says.
“Every tiny bruise I got, every sniffle, I thought the leukaemia was back.”
Finally, five years after her diagnosis and treatment, she was told in December 2019 that she was in the clear.
“Instead of being delighted, it was a massive anticlimax,” she says. “I’d wanted to hear those words for five years, I’d prepared to celebrate, but I didn’t. How could I celebrate being alive when I was only in my early 40s?”
Then, one day she saw a poster which would change her life. It was advertising a pole-dancing studio near her home in Bridgnorth, Shropshire.
“It was my ‘Aha!’ moment,” she says. “I called the number and the first thing I said was, ‘Will I get bruises?’ The owner said, ‘Yes my darling, you will’, and I replied, ‘Great, when can I start?’”
After 16 rounds of chemo, 23 bone marrow biopsies and a swathe of other medication, Thea was ready to get bruises again without worrying that every purple mark could be leukaemia.
She had her first lesson with owner Sally Thomas at the Liberty Dance Academy a week later and was instantly hooked. “I soon became part of the ‘pole sisters’ community and simply loved how empowering the movements were,” she says.
During the Covid lockdowns that began a month later she installed a pole in her back garden, practising for at least an hour a day and joining online classes.
“Pole dancing became my passion, my obsession, a way to confront and control my fears,” she adds.
Then, when the world was reopening in September last year, she was invited to give a talk about her cancer journey to around 80 women at the House of Commons dining hall. Her demo came as a complete surprise to the audience of industry-leading women from all over the world. But as Thea did her full range of choreographed moves, twisting and turning to the soundtrack of The Purge by Within Temptation, they started whooping and cheering, then gave her that standing ovation.
Thea recalls: “It was completely surreal. There I was pole dancing in the House of Commons!
“Even now I can’t quite take in the enormity of what I did!”
And she didn’t stop there. Single since her treatment, Thea now lives life to the full. She is a keen marathon runner and has now completed her first ultra-marathon covering over 30 miles.
She has also qualified as a pole-dancing instructor and two weeks ago she competed in the live finals at the sport’s pinnacle – the British Pole Instructors Championships in Birmingham.
“Somehow, I made it to the final of just five female instructors,” she says. “To be there on that stage in front of the UK’s best, I honestly had to pinch myself. I danced to Adam Lambert’s track Superpower, because this was me showing my superpower. Pole-dancing became my saviour, my way to silence those demons in my head – but also to be part of an amazing community.
“I also hooked up with a simply inspirational personal trainer called Kelly Vee, who helped me to grow.”
And having gone through a chemical menopause at 37 due to her chemo, Thea is keen to champion exercise in all forms for women going through hormonal changes.
She says: “An MRI scan last summer revealed a small mass on my ovaries. I didn’t tell anyone as I was terrified it was cancer again. But it was a cyst.
“I opted to have my ovaries taken out in December, prompting the same horrible menopause symptoms all over again like I had during chemo. Going back into hospital also triggered feelings of PTSD.”
But she had an easy solution to make her feel like Superwoman again.
“I used pole dancing,” she adds. “I know its healing powers.
“We all face challenges that seem insurmountable at times, so to discover the thing that helps you to find yourself again is just amazing.”
Thea is supporting the charity Leukaemia Care. Find out more or make a donation at leukaemiacare.org.uk
