One night, while Natalie Whiteside was pregnant with her second daughter, things went terribly wrong.

She woke up sweating and in pain in the middle of the night after suffering a seizure. "I got out of bed and fell to my hands and knees," she remembers, "it felt like I'd run a marathon. I bit through my own tongue." Her sister rushed Whiteside to the hospital to find out what was wrong.

She was having trouble speaking, and scans of her brain quickly revealed what was causing the trouble. Whiteside had a tumor in her brain, but not just a small, harmless growth. It was Glioblastoma, the most severe and deadly kind of brain tumor. Doctors guessed she had just 5 years to live.

Like any woman facing down this diagnosis, Whiteside was forced to think about her life and the choices she had made. She was a successful businesswoman, but it dawned on her that she had been putting her professional life before her kids for years.

"I was under too much stress and pressure," she remembers. "I pushed myself too hard. I wasn't looking after myself. I used to be harsh. You could catch me at the office until 2a.m. [...] Now I understand it's much better to get things out, to share, to let it out, to let people help you and support you."

But while we can all agree it's important to spend time with your kids, another choice Whiteside made has proved to be controversial: she ditched her husband for another man.

Despite what you might think, Whiteside says it was actually an easy choice to give up on her marriage, which she explains was already "on the rocks."

Two years after her diagnosis, she left her husband and reconnected with her childhood crush David Brown. She calls him "amazing" and "her angel," and defends her decision against other women who say she was wrong to leave her husband.

"I thought we shouldn't be fighting each other, I should be fighting to live," she says. "If it wasn't for my tumor, me and my husband probably wouldn't speak to each other now. I want my children to have a good healthy relationship with their dad. Now, we get on better than ever."

While her life is happier and more fulfilling now, time is running out for Whiteside. She's beaten every doctor's expectations by living for 6 years,  but she's starting to go blind in her right eye. That symptom could be a sign of something worse to come.

But Whiteside is still optimistic about the natural cures that she has chosen over chemotherapy. Like her other decisions it could be risky, but she wants to live life on her own terms. "You can't get back time," Whiteside explains. "It's as simple as that."

Share this story and tell us if you would make the same choices as her!

[H/T: Manchester Evening News]