Candy Cornish

Candy has always loved being active in some shape or form, be it with her hands or with sports. She gained a love of carpentry from her father, who taught her how to work with wood when she was just a kid. Candy spent several years working as a master craftsman for a company that outfitted restaurants with custom-made pieces. In fact, if you’ve ever been in an Outback Steakhouse, you’ve probably seen some of Candy’s work. She made the boomerang for just about every Outback.

Candy got involved in roller derby, a hard hitting, high-intensity sport played on roller skates, in February of 2006. In 2007, she had a fall that blew out the cartilage in both of her knees. Her adrenalin was pumping so much that she didn’t feel the pain right away and even tried to get back up and skate, but her legs wouldn’t hold her.

Knee injuries are always hard on an athlete and Candy’s were in bad shape. Not only did she blow out the cartilage in both knees, she also hyper-extended her ACL and MCL, the knee ligaments that connect the thigh bone to the shin bone. While Candy chose to not have surgery, she was resigned to wearing hinged knee braces 24/7 and continued to have a dull ache in both knees, which was often aggravated when she skated.

In 2010, Candy was introduced to the cactus juice by my daughter, Jennifer. Always the skeptic, Candy began drinking the juice in secret. After a few days, she realized that her knee pain was gone and she admitted to drinking the juice. Since then, her knee pain has been kept to a minimum, skating has become easier, her knee braces less needed, and she began running, a feat that would never have imaginable before.

Candy’s pain-free knees keep her in the game, skating with the Tampa Bay Derby Darlins and Candy’s big smile and can-do attitude keep our offices a friendlier place.