A woman says she's "grateful" for her cancer diagnosis after it led to her finding the love of her life - and now the pair have had their first child. Monika Kozlowska, 33, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in January 2020 and says she felt "alone, anxious" and "worried about dying".
The business coach was living alone in the UK while her entire family was based more than 1,000 miles away in Warsaw, Poland. Having mistakenly assumed her enlarged thyroid was down to Hashimoto's Disease - an immune system disorder she'd suffered with since she was a teen - a routine check-up showed she actually had cancer.
Despite an "awful" six months - Monika ended up meeting her long-term partner, Andy, 46, a content designer, on dating app Hinge - shortly before the first Covid lockdown in March 2020. She had just undergone a thyroidectomy - surgery in which the thyroid is removed - and was "constantly going to doctors' appointments".
