Catherine Gladwyn, 42, on how illness has changed her life – and how her income has doubled

Name: Catherine Gladwyn

Age: 42

Occupation: Virtual assistant

Income: £36-£42,000

About eight years I started experiencing severe memory loss. I was managing a team of administrators but I couldn’t remember things. I’d have meetings but I’d forget what was said. My periods suddenly stopped and I also felt fatigued. It was a nightmare.

I couldn’t manage my day-to-day life very well. After a year of going back and forth to a GP I was eventually diagnosed with a pituitary tumour.

Doctors removed it but it grew back again. I couldn’t have surgery again so I underwent gamma knife radiotherapy, which removed the tumour but also destroyed the pituitary gland itself, meaning I could no longer produce various hormones. This is called Addison’s disease which is chronic, fatal and gives me extreme fatigue.

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Sometimes I can sleep for 15 to 20 hours day. I used to be an avid runner but I can’t really do that much now. Everything has to be planned. If I was to go for a long walk I’d have to make sure I had nothing planned for the next two days.

It’s taken a lot of adjusting. It meant I couldn’t hold down a normal job. I couldn’t commit to working 9-5 every day in a busy, stressful office. At the time I was working full-time and the fatigue and stress got me down. I thought I can’t keep this up but I didn’t want to go on benefits.

I thought maybe I could do admin work remotely and so I Googled it. I found out it was possible. So in 2015 I set myself up as a virtual assistant. Now I help small business owners, consultants and entrepreneurs with content creation, social media, Mailchimp, admin and bookkeeping from my home office in Swindon.

I work about four to six hours a day and have about 20 clients ranging from a VIP travel agent to a web designer. My income is about £3,000 to £3,500 a month. It’s double what I was earning as an employee and I have a better quality of life. Last year I even self-published a book on how to become a virtual assistant.

I’m lucky that I paid off my mortgage a few years ago. I was on the TV show Deal or No Deal in 2006 and won £21,000, which helped. I don’t have a pension and I haven’t got life insurance as given my chronic illnesses – it’s too expensive. I’d rather put money into property anyway.

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I’ve just bought the house next door. I didn’t want to have noisy neighbours – this way I can choose who lives there. I plan to rent out next door. In the meantime, myself and my partner are slowly doing it up. But we’re being thrifty. I bought floor tiles for about a fifth of their value through Facebook Marketplace. The only new thing I’ve bought so far is the toilet. I’m keeping the peach bathroom as I reckon it’ll come back into fashion one day. The mortgage there is £520, which I pay myself.

Together we pay about £600 a month on bills, including food shopping. I spend most of my money on holidays. We tend to take about three breaks in the UK every year. We always go to a remote cottage either with coastal views or in the hills in Wales. We’ve just returned from a week at Pebble Coast Cottage in North Erradale in Scotland. As we live in a town it’s nice to get away from the noise and smell of dog shit. The more remote it is, the cheaper it tends to be. I spend about £1,200 myself on holidays.

I don’t tend to spend much on anything else. I’ve become really tight because I’m doing up next door and I’m saving like mad to secure my future. I don’t know when another hormone might drop off and deplete me; I want to be ready for the worse-case scenario.

Apart from putting 30% away for the tax bill, I try to save £250 to £500 a month in another account.

My five-year plan is to buy a holiday home – somewhere for me, my other half and my daughter, who is at university, to relax in.