Everything that she needed to be a good fighter pilot, such as discipline, focus, commitment, determination, and confidence are the traits and the characteristics she needed to survive the worst depths of her illness and to thrive today, even though she still lives with chronic symptoms.

When I was a fighter pilot, when we would go into combat, which in a lot of ways is what we are in against this disease and the medical system that doesn't support us," she said. "I would say to my wingman before we would launch, "No matter what, be a help, not a hindrance. Ask yourself, is what I'm about to say or do going to be helpful? Or is it going to be a hindrance?"

But suffering from a life-threatening disease also helped me have a different attitude and perspective. It has given a new intensity to life, for I realize how much I used to take for granted-the love and devotion of my wife, the laughter and playfulness of my grandchildren, the glory of a splendid sunset, the dedication of my colleagues. The disease has helped me acknowledge my own mortality, with deep thanksgiving for the extraordinary things that have happened in my life, not least in recent times. What a spectacular vindication it has been, in the struggle against apartheid, to live to see freedom come, to have been involved in finding the truth and reconciling the differences of those who are the future of our nation.

All of those characteristics and traits apply to every single patient. You all should be proud of yourselves. It has been harder to be a tick-borne illness patient than it ever was to fly in combat. I found the Lyme disease community to be as courageous and even more so, in some cases, as honorable and noble as the fighter pilots and the men and women that I went to war with,”

People think that fighter pilots aren’t afraid of anything, and yet that’s not true,” she says. “It’s that we’ve learned and developed the ability to work through fear, and flip it, and make it actionable, so that it works for us, and not against us.”

I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?

The resilience that I had to show to learn how to walk again after my leg was amputated to then become an athlete when nobody would even have me on high school teams. So taking that resilience and turning it around and saying how can I give that resilience to other people?"

Without cancer, I never would have won a single Tour de France. Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things — whether health or a car or an old sense of self — has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.

I wanted to show people that although I had cancer, was not ill. I was still able to add value and do things in spite of the chemo and the damned tumours it was desperately fighting. This was important to me because a cancer diagnosis often gets one marginalised.

I used to think my destiny/legacy lay in having been an officer and fighter pilot,

I know how to advocate for them because I feel like I basically lived through it

I believe we are all here to help each other and that our individual lives have patterns and purposes. My illness turned out to have a very special purpose -- helping save other lives, and I am grateful for what I was able to do.

I learn that day just how someone can use their privilege to champion others and help them rise too.

I survived for a reason.