EP49 Jennifer Broxterman - Cross Fit

This is the Empowered athlete podcast, episode 49, Jennifer Broxterman. You may not know the name now, but I guarantee by the end of this episode, you will not forget it. Jennifer was an incredible athlete growing up. She competed in multiple sports and university and eventually fell into CrossFit where she dominated. She went to the Canadian CrossFit regionals four times. And to get there, you're representing.11% of all the women in Canada competing in CrossFit competitions. That says a lot. She's also a nutritionist, so health is always top of mind and she takes incredible care of herself. So imagine, if you will, being this type of an athlete and waking up one day with your right leg paralyzed and being given a cancer diagnosis and little chance to survive. What happens next for Jennifer is nothing short of unbelievable. We are thrilled to have Jennifer on the show today, but before we get to that interview, we want to remind you about our 12:30 challenge, which has been going on all year long. It's 30 day challenges every month and for September. Perfectly fitting for this interview. It's no sugar. We're cleaning up our diets just a little bit and getting rid of the sweet stuff. The timing of this is important because it's going to set you up to have incredible willpower. When the sweets arrive at Halloween, Thanksgiving, and finally Christmas, it's the big three and they're tough to get through with mental fortitude. So take our challenge, join the Facebook group below in the link and get some support from our team. We're looking forward to seeing you there. And now we're looking forward to talking with Jennifer Broxterman.

Welcome to the Empowered Athlete Podcast, created to support athletes in their pursuit of excellence and inspire. Inspire others toward their best lives. Hosted by Kari Schneider, coach to top performers in sport and life, and Paul Durden, former national and professional volleyball player.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Empowered Athlete Podcast. And as you know, we are thrilled to welcome Jen Broxterman to the show. Jen, thank you so much for making the time and we are so excited to dive into your story and learn all about you.

Thanks for having me.

Our pleasure.

This feels like such a. Almost like a. Like we already know a lot of your story because we have a history with you with Lululemon from years ago and you're a local person in London, Ontario, but there's so much to your story. You've been such an incredible athlete over the years, between rowing and hockey and CrossFit and just having this competitive nature. Can you take us back how you got started into sport? And what that looks like for you.

So I think it goes all the way back to when my mom was pregnant. She said it felt like there was a soccer player stuck inside of her womb, just punching and kicking her constantly. So I came out, I had one of those.

I totally had one of those.

I came out ready to move. So I was always just a happy kid that loved being active. I think I tried so many different sports in the most wonderful way that my parents didn't try to make me specialize, which I'm really grateful. They let me play soccer and T ball and figure skating and dance. And it actually came down to we had a backyard skating rink, so very Canadian hockey style. And one day it came down to do I play in the neighborhood hockey match or do I go to dance lessons? And I asked my parents if it was okay with them if I could stick around and play hockey. And they said, you know, absolutely, whatever makes you happy. So I ended up skipping dance practice that night and it was tap, jazz or ballet, one of the three. And just had so much fun playing with the backyard neighbors that I asked them next year could I try hockey as something different? And I go back far enough that girls hockey wasn't really a big sport at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I jumped right into a boys like hockey league and played that all the way up till age 18.

For.

My last year that I switched over playing with the girls and then I actually lucked out and was sort of a accidental walk on on the Queen's varsity hockey team. So I had injured myself in the summertime with a stress fracture, didn't go to tryouts because of that. And then a few months later I was healed and just playing in an intramural league. And the coaches came by to do some scouting because I guess the varsity team had some injuries and they plucked me off the ice and said, do you want to come to practice this week? So I did. And then my very first game I got a goal and they invited me onto the team as a walk on. So that was my. My accidental venture into varsity sports was a complete accident.

Oh, crazy. Because I mean, ultimately you're at school, were you taking phys ed or nutrition? What were you taking in school?

So I started off by taking life sciences, hoping to kind of work in the healthcare field, but not sure if it was gonna be in maybe sports medicine or physiotherapy or something health related and preventative related. And then I took a third year foods and nutrition course and fell in love with the Content. And that led me down the path of becoming a registered dietitian.

Amazing. But I mean, it's crazy to think you think of most kids going to university and I think of our kids as well, they're planning on what they're going to do for school. They for sure know whether they're going to play a university sport or not. So it's kind of crazy to think that, okay, you're in university and suddenly you're playing varsity hockey and it's like not at all anticipated from yourself, your parents, anyone, that way. Was it one of those amazing experiences or was it one of those things that you're like, holy cow, I'm not sure if I'm, I'm ready for all of this.

No, it was definitely one of those amazing experiences. So I still have that puck up on the wall from my, like, very first varsity goal. I just, I was always just an open minded kid. So I loved exploring new things and definitely very committed. So I always tried my very best in every sport I played. But I was one of those hard workers that could get within the top, you know, top five. But I was never the best and I was always okay with that. I just kind of honored that if I worked hard and had fun, sports were enjoyable. I didn't try to make them my whole life. And I think because I tried so many different sports in my background, from gymnastics to hockey, to dance to baseball to, you know, swimming, I just loved being fit. And so the fact that it was this huge honor to be able to play at the varsity level was really amazing. And I was like, why not seize the day? Obviously this opportunity was meant to fall into my lap. The way that it worked out did.

That's incredible.

I want to ask at what point or was lifting and training a part of your regimen at that point or when did you get introduced to the weight room?

So I have to thank my absolute best friend in the world, Jeanette Larue, for this. So I was more of an endurance junkie kind of through my high school years with cross country and running and soccer and sports like that. And in the hockey arena, obviously strength really plays to performance on the ice. And I was cool, quick, but I was little. And so my best friend, her dad was actually the chief of the firefighting department of all of Kingston and he had been working with her in the weight room. So she was quite comfortable, even though I was very overwhelmed. And my best friend just kind of took me under her wing and started to show me what to do to Lift weights. And even though I was still very intimidated in those early years, she helped me fall in love with weightlifting. And 15, 17 years later, we're still best friends and we actually have a pact to try to do burpees on our 80th birthday together. So. Yeah.

How many burpees are we talking?

Okay.

Oh, if we can get down enough once, I'm happy. But I think we're both competitive enough to try to hit like 20 or 25 when we're 80.

Sweet.

So we'll probably be 90 at that point. So we'll interview you and film you as as like 90 year old interviewers. Yeah. You'll be in a wheelchair. I'll be pushing your wheelchair.

Deal.

That's incredible. So how, how did that. First of all, did you have a story about a coach?

I did. So again, fate was at the university. Yes. So I won't name names. I don't need to, you know, be vindictive or out anyone. But again, I'm very grateful for some of the harder moments in life because sometimes the hard moments force you to reconsider or maybe do a serious pivot. And so I loved playing hockey as a kid growing up, I still loved it at the university level, but it was really tough. And kind of two things came out of that experience. One was actually from my teammates. So other than my best friend the first three months of playing hockey, no one on the team would talk to me. They were annoyed and upset. They were mad that I didn't try out. And I basically came to a week of practice and then got to be on the team. So it's really hard to play.

You didn't have all the suffering that they had.

It's really hard to play a team sport when your teammates won't talk to you. So that actually made it quite difficult in terms of like camaraderie and the ice and like that team chemistry. And our coach didn't really help feed into it too, too much. Unfortunately, he did have a bit of a drinking problem and would get really angry and sometimes come to practice intoxicated, which is a concerning issue in itself. But if he was frustrated or having a bad day, he would pick up pucks and throw them at us and specifically aim for our head as hard as he could, thinking, okay, we had helmets on, no big deal. It's a pretty big deal if you're throwing pucks at your athletes. And after two years of really giving it my best and, you know, not getting a ton of ice time, even though I worked really Hard. I just kind of sat down and, you know, had a good long cry over it and was like, as much as I love hockey, I think my heart is telling me it wants to try something different or, you know, to experience something else if this isn't really fulfilling me the way I thought it would. So I took a chance and did a Learn to Row program for fun that summer and, and then ended up becoming a varsity rower after sort of accidentally stumbling into rowing. And from there that changed.

Did you skip tryouts this time around as well?

Sort of. So rowing, you have to do a novice year where basically it's all beginners who are learning to row. So you're just in a boat with beginners and it's hilarious. And I ended up getting, getting invited to train with the varsity team that winter because they saw some potential. And after that winter I worked really, really hard. And rowing is definitely a sport that rewards hard work. And I'm a grinder, I can do that. And in tryouts I basically got the second best time right after the athlete that was on Team Canada. And so they let me kind of walk onto the varsity team with not a lot of rowing experience. So again, I was very fortunate, but athletic and working hard and open to opportunities and it just, again, a bad situation kind of led me to a much, much better athletic path.

That's incredible. There's, there's two things that, I mean, first of all, you're following your heart, you're staying positive, but the work ethic comes through over and over again. Another thing that I'm not sure of whether it was present at this time, but do you think compared to your teammates, do you think that maybe nutrition decisions were helping you at that time or were you eating in a way that would have supported your performance yet?

So that's a great question. If I could go back and show you a picture of university Gen in the early years. I was quite overweight in first year university and I will openly admit that that freshman 15 hit me really hard, harder than 15 pounds. And there was some depression and anxiety in first year with being a little bit homesick and with my teammates not talking to me and with the coach being very stressful. Our meal plan at Queens allowed us to sort of swipe in and eat whatever you want, which is a pretty dangerous meal plan if you don't have a lot of nutrition knowledge. So I went from being really active in high school with parents that did great home cooked meals, to being on this meal plan and being away from home and a Little bit depressed and having teammates that weren't talking to me. And I definitely use food for comfort. So I wasn't in great nutritional shape my first few years, but rowing started to give me that sense of confidence back and I started to actually see the link between proper nutrition and better performance. So it really was around my rowing years that I started to get a little more interested in nutrition, which led me to take that foods and nutrition course as an undergrad student, which then started to really open my eyes to healthier eating because I took for granted what my parents were doing for me in high school. And I definitely didn't have those food skills and that food literacy that I probably should have had going off to live on my own, plus with the mental health and the depression that did negatively affect my eating habits.

Being being a registered dietitian and what you've gone through in that scenario, what is your opinion on the university food services? Like? It's, it's almost like suddenly young adults or older kids get this access to an all you can eat buffet or in some schools it's almost like you're going to restaurants all the time. There's no real home cooked food or even skills for them themselves to prepare their own food. So what's your take on all that, being a professional in the field?

Well, I think it's multifaceted. So I will give the universities credit that they are starting to really think about student health a lot more conscientiously and having more vegetable options, vegan, vegetarian options, you know, gluten free for people that have food sensitivity. So I think the food environment has definitely improved from all those years ago when I was an undergrad. But what I would say as a healthcare professional is the movement of healthy eating really starts in childhood, in those teenage years at home. So parents have a super important role to be gatekeepers in terms of what they allow in and out of the house. But more importantly, they have a really important role to role model and actually take the time to teach their children how to cook and have basic food skills. So there's this awesome movement in Ontario that's starting to gain some traction and it's called six by 16. And what the hope is is that by age 16 your child knows, or your teenager knows how to basically cook six balanced, healthy meals from scratch all by themselves. More is obviously better, but that's sort of the basic competency that we're looking for of 16 year olds. And I look back and I know at 16 I could maybe make like grilled Cheese or toast or something really basic. But I certainly wasn't able to cook six healthy meals from scratch. What I'm so go ahead.

Yeah, I'm grading us right now because we've got, we've got four kids who are 16 and above. So I'm sitting here going, okay, can, yeah, can she do it? But I think out of, out of those four I think for sure two can for sure, maybe three. And, and the fourth one could definitely direct. Yeah, direct how to do it if, if it wasn't done themselves.

So I mean the way I learned was through good old trial and error. So I had again through social support. I think your social environment is really important for positive habits. I just had a friend that I would study with for our exams. So what we started was a Sunday routine where we'd get together around 3pm we'd study for a couple hours, then we'd take a break and go to the grocery store, find a recipe online, go buy the fresh ingredients. We would take a break and cook together for 30 minutes to an hour, sit down, have a proper, balanced, healthy meal, distraction free, take home our leftovers in our own container and then we do another like hour on the other end of studying. So it became this really awesome ritual of getting some study time in getting our groceries done, doing some cooking, actually having a sit down family style meal. And we failed a lot. We definitely burnt a lot of food and didn't know what we were doing. But we self taught together how to cook through this year of being study buddies and cooking buddies. And it was a really fun ritual.

But it was, it's. I was gonna say it sounds fun. It doesn't sound like, you know, it sounds like it's, you know, you're, especially when you're picking meals that you're curious about or ones that you've always wanted to try or I wonder if I could do that. And yeah, that sounds really neat.

So we had some flops. But definitely it developed our food skills and food literacy. And I think that was the turning point where I actually started to learn how to batch cook and feed myself better. I would say from a performance standpoint I definitely got faster and stronger and I could recover with my rowing practices and nutrition started to make a really big difference in kind of climbing up in the ranks of university athlete.

And tell us about that from your rowing career. What was that like for you?

Rowing was a really special time in my athletic career because it completely rewarded me for the hard work both on, on the water and off. So the nutrition piece, the training piece, the team piece, the self perseverance piece piece. I'm very grateful to my coach from the rowing team. One of the best things he did was the way he did team goal setting. So we would sit down at the beginning of each season, we would develop individual goals that would support the overall collective goal of the team. And then we would set team goals that were based within our control. So it was never about winning, it was never about medals. It was what would we like to accomplish as a team. So it was maybe be on time for every single practice, you know, put in this many workouts on the erg and in the weight room. When we go into race day, we want to do this kind of a prep and warm up as a team. What can we do collectively as individuals and as a group to be the best we can be? And our coach did a really good job about making sure we had our priorities and our head on straight. So I'll never forget this piece of advice. But he's like, you can do three things well as a varsity athlete. You're here first and foremost for school. So I hope school is in your top three, otherwise we can't even consider you being on the team. If you're committed to being a varsity athlete, we need that commitment to the varsity team to be strong. And then he goes, we're going to give you space for one more thing. So whether that is your relationship or doing more stuff with your friends or volunteering or a part time job, you can't have five or six pots cooking at once. So in season we want you to narrow in on your top three. And we had to basically list out what they were. And he said of all of them, school still has to come first. So you are here first and foremost to get your education and set up your career. And we will make sure that, you know, we support you with that. And it was so great that there wasn't pressure to, you know, skip important exams or get behind in school just to win. Winning and doing well was important, but it wasn't everything. And I'll never forget that coach for his guidance to think about goal setting that way.

What a culture shock compared to the hockey environment you're in.

Oh, night and day couldn't have been any different.

Believable. That's so different, you know, across the way.

Yeah, he was a true example of servant leadership. I mean, he's been volunteering for more than, I think 40 years at the rowing team and is first there. He's at every Regatta drives, you know, the team boat everywhere he can possibly take it. This was a man that just led by example. And I'll never forget the example he set. He did set an unbelievably high bar for all my future coaches.

And such a true passion he was displaying.

Wow.

Excellent. Excellent. So how. So did you finish university rowing? Is that you finished your schooling?

I did. So I rode for both Queens and Western University. So again, I'm grateful for those little blips in life that feel like crises in the moment, but they actually turn out to be blessings in disguise because they open other doors. So with rowing, I knew I wanted to go into nutrition and be a dietitian. So after that really fun elective that I took, I met with a guidance counselor and said, how do I do this as a career? And they told me, basically, you have such great passion, but you're in the wrong school. Queen's isn't accredited as one of the Dietitians of Canada approved programs. So I was given three choices to go to Ryerson, Guelph or Western. And so I checked out all three schools programs. I checked out all three schools varsity rowing teams. Western had the best, you know, best of both worlds with a really strong nationally recognized rowing program and a really strong foods and nutrition undergrad training degree. So I thought that's where I'm going to go. And that's how I ended up meeting, you know, my husband was by being at Western and meeting him through my connections here in London. And that eventually obviously opened the door to cry as he owns CrossFit London. So all those little kind of fate, chances of had this gone one way, my life wouldn't have turned out this way. Some of the best parts of my life have come from heartbreak and disappointment. So I'm really grateful for that with, you know, hindsight being 20 20. So yes, I did end university as a rower, which then ultimately led to CrossFit next.

And what an amazing school to have that rowing experience with, with Western, since you'd be around such incredible rowers. And at the same time, what you're continually grateful for is some of these experiences that honestly, like, we've heard a lot of stories and been around a lot of different athletes and a number of athletes would have used those moments as defining moments that were negative and not really seeing how they led to the next thing or how they led to something that is just the best.

Thing in your life.

So, you know, such a, such a gift you have in really appreciating what the good that came out of all the scenarios that you've gone through.

I think that's one of the best ways to deal with hardship. Because if you expect life to be easy, you're in for a rough go. So life is never going to be easy. Let's just, you know, get that on the table. But if you can look for things to be grateful for or appreciate, that there might be a bigger picture that you're not fully seen in the moment. If you give things enough time. Ultimately everything is impermanent. So it's good to have life get ruffled up. It's good to have change. It lets you evolve and become better and develop different skills. So I think trying to not focus on the negative too much, even though you're allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be frustrated. I've definitely shed a lot of tears as an athlete, but it's a great way to kind of listen to what does my heart need now? And it's okay to evolve and pivot and adjust and become different and bigger and better in new ways that you didn't even know that was going to happen in your future.

Yeah, it's what you can't see coming that really. Yeah, you just never know. So I'll bet you never could have predicted what CrossFit would be like for you. Was that a natural transition for Moen?

It was so, again, vary by accident. Accident, but in the coolest way. So I had started dating my husband as a varsity rower, and I knew he owned this gym, but I didn't even really know what he did. And I didn't take it too seriously, the poor guy. And so that summer, I was like, hey, do you want to send me some workouts I can do? I've got like, dumbbells and an erg, but I can only go up to 25 pounds because that's all that my set has. So he was kind enough to actually program some workouts. And I would. I lived with a house of younger rowing boys. They were like my little brothers. And I would try to make them do these CrossFit workouts with me. And then they quit halfway through and be like, this is too hard. This is too painful. I can't do it. I was like, oh, my gosh, you guys. So I was having a ball, not even really knowing what CrossFit really was. I just knew it was short and intense and heavy and was getting me out of breath. And it felt horrible and wonderful at the same time. And I was like, this is a ton of fun. So again, I just continued to get faster on the water with these really interesting off water workouts. And then it wasn't until my final varsity year was done that I was like, I actually don't know what to do at a gym all by myself. I've always had a coach, I've always had a team practice. So my husband was kind enough. My boyfriend at the time was like, well, why don't you just come out to my gym and it's these group workouts and I write all the programming. You just have to show up and do what's on the board. But you know, if you don't want to get a good life or membership or go to the Western gym, come on out to my gym. And it's very similar to kind of team practices, but you get to show up at whatever time of day you want. I was like, yes, no more 4:45 alarm clock, wake up, I'm down for this. So I would like train at 7 in the morning, which felt like a huge sleep in. And there were these quick, intense, under an hour workouts. And I was just having fun. And so it just kind of became this natural progression to ultimately compete in CrossFit because it's just learning new skills like how to handstand, push up or do a clean and jerk or what the heck is a pull up or you know, all these different movements. I had no idea what I was doing. He, like any team sport, he just taught you the skill, little step by little step. And then it's fun to watch yourself get better. So it became this natural addiction.

Can you explain for the listeners kind of how far you went? Like what CrossFit regionals is where that fits in nationally. Just if you can, quick summary of how it kind of works and how you compete at CrossFit. Because I'm sure a lot of people heard about the workouts, but don't realize that you can actually compete as a CrossFit athlete.

Yeah. So kind of in a nutshell, CrossFit has three phases. There's this giant large open that then leads to a national or regional kind of competition that then leads to a world, or almost like the Olympics, kind of a global competition. So the Open is open to basically anyone. Hundreds of thousands of people sign up for this. And then you're basically slotted into an age and gender category. So there's kind of like a women under 30, women 30 to 35, 35 to 40. But obviously the most competitive category is the under 30 where most of the top athletes are you do five weeks of online workouts that are then videotaped and judged so that it's legit and there's no cheating and the reps are all done to the highest standard. And from there I think it's like 0.1 or 0.01% of the population moves on. So if there were say six to eight thousand women in my division in Canada, the top 40 would move on. So for four years I battled hard to be in that top 40 and got to represent basically at the Canadian level, some of the top fittest crossfitters. And then from there, only two Canadians in the years that I competed had slots to move on to the national comp or the global competition. So I was never a full time athlete. I wasn't sponsored. I didn't train all day long. I still worked a full time job and you know, actually worked two jobs as both a university Prof. Teaching nutrition and as a dietitian. So I did really, really well for the amount of time I had to train. But I knew I didn't have it in me to drop my whole life to be a full time like professional athlete. So I'm really proud to kind of have competed at the Canadian level four years in a row as it got even more competitive as it got, you know, globally huge.

That's amazing.

That is, that is amazing because it's, it's, it's such an intense sport as well. And it really speaks to your level of dedication and the quality of your training too, because you're in a scenario where you have to be very efficient. So your workouts have to be that much better in order to get the most out of it and then have the training results that you, that you had. So that's incredible. Now you've had your life been, your life has been basically turned upside down. You've been dealing with something that I think everybody is terrified of and everybody dreads. And you have been dealing with this with your head held high no matter what you've been going through and just kept the same kind of positive nature that you've been displaying this whole chat that we've been having. Can you tell us a little bit about what's been happening in your more recent days?

So the last six months I've been on the wildest ride of my entire life. So I'm 34 years old and a week after my 34th birthday I got the worst phone call in the world, which was a doctor telling me I have stage three cancer. So they, I was found through a Colonoscopy only because I was having GI problems. And they were like, oh, you've got ibs. Maybe it's celiac, maybe it's Crohn's. What it actually was was a tumor that grew all the way through my digestive system into my large intestine that started off as ovarian cancer. So very quickly with the pathology, it was indicated that this was a really rare form of ovarian cancer, and they weren't quite sure what the origin was. But the current working hypothesis, because it's basically been through London health sciences pathology, McMaster pathology, they escalated it to Ottawa pathology. All of Canada's kind of taking a look at these cells. What they think I might have actually had was an embryonic cancer that developed when I was in utero inside my mom that they think has been slow growing my entire life, which I had no idea, obviously. And my really healthy lifestyle has, is actually what's kept the cancer at bay for a long time. But I was always battling immune issues, and I would get sick for like 120 days of the year where my lungs wouldn't work correctly. So that was always a challenge as a rower and a crossfitter. But I just, you know, kind of dealt with it on the side and didn't make too much of a big deal about it. So I'm especially proud of my athletic accomplishments if I've had cancer my whole life. But, yeah, basically in late October, I was told, like, we need to go for emergency surgery. You got cancer everywhere in your abdomen. When they opened me up, I ended up losing a total hysterectomy. So my whole reproductive tract. I lost the end of my small intestine, my ileocecal valve, the beginning of my large intestine, my appendix, the other section of my large intestine. Most of my momentum, which is the fat layer that hangs over the intestines, and just cancer, it grows like a spider web. So it was this long, delicate kind of nest that had sort of spread. And what's I think, fascinating as a scientist is they had to take all my body parts out connected to not break the cancer web. Oh, and I lost a third of my bladder. So I have a teeny tiny bladder now, which makes me have to go pee more frequently. So all of that was taken out. I Woke up with 30 staples down my belly. And then upon waking up, it took me a couple hours to realize my right leg was basically partially paralyzed. So my femoral nerve got crushed in the operation. From the position I Was put in for hours under anesthesia and you're not awake to tell them like, hey, I can't feel my leg. So when I woke up, I realized I couldn't wiggle my toes, I couldn't lift my leg. My leg had no response to my. What my brain was telling it to do. And my fear was they attempted an epidural in my back just before surgery and they couldn't hit the right spot of my spine. And I was actually terrified that they paralyzed me from the epidural gone wrong. And I was never going to be able to recover my ability to walk. But with lots of hard work, I have taught myself to walk again. So I had to use a walker and then a cane and then walking sticks. And then eventually I started to regain the control over my right leg. And very unbelievably amazing, positive good news. Even though I have two ovarian cancers at the same time, one really aggressive and one more slow growing. Five months after my operation, I paid for a PET scan out of pocket and found out I'm in full radical remission, which they have never seen a case where that's basically happen with the kind of cancer that I have. So really unbelievable.

That is, there's. Okay, there's so much that you've said there that, I mean, I. There's a couple of things. You are saying it with such ease and grace because you've been living it and going through it, and at the same time, you have the anatomical and medical knowledge because you've been researching it yourself. You have a background in this as well. So it's flowing out of you so easily. But for listeners and for us to really hear and absorb what you've just said is. It's mind blowing. This is the kind of thing that, that people really are terrified of For a family member, for themselves, for, you know, a spouse or loved one. It's just. It's really, really profound what you've experienced and to hear you be able to relay your story with such almost happiness and confidence and grace is. It's. It's amazing. Like you're. You're clearly embracing and appreciating life and, and just eating it up for everything it possibly can give you.

Yeah, cancer is the absolute worst, but also equally absolute best thing that can happen to you. And I know that might sound hard for people that are struggling with cancer. At least this is my perspective. So this isn't to diminish anyone else's experience with cancer, because as I'm learning, it is so Unique and so different for each person. But for me, maybe it's the lens I always wear. The way I try to look at life is, although it's been awful and terrible and I've been in incredible amounts of pain, you know, with the incision, the femoral nerve wound, having your intestine sewed back together. Oh my gosh. Does food hurt going through those first couple of weeks? Because it feels like raw sewage on a raw wound.

That's the question I was going to ask what you were eating. Yeah.

So terrible. I can get into that in a second. But very much impacted from how much abdominal internal changes that have happened. But for me, the reason I say it's so positive is because I've seen the best possible side of humanity in the way that I've been loved and supported and cheered on. I called my friends and my followers, my family, my little Care Bear squad. I feel like I have a thousand plus people putting all their best intentions, hopes, prayers, wishes, energy into me. And it really shows you that when push comes to shove, people are so kind and so loving and they go so deep to help you. And it's made my life better, it's made me a better person, it's made my family better. It's really made me say all the I love you's I need to say and you know, the gratitude I need to, you know, give to life for the good things that are still helping me through this. So it's awful, but it's also incredibly positive in the way it transforms your relationships, your outlook. Every day is such a gift and not a single second of any day is taken for granted with, you know, being told I had a 9% chance of being alive two years from my diagnosis date. That was the prognosis I was given. I am not taking this radical remission or however this journey happens to unfold, none of it's going to get taken for granted.

I love that. I absolutely love that. Because I think that what you're saying right now, more people need to hear because when somebody is in a position of like yours, where they've been diagnosed with something, but they've been diagnosed from a physician who's in a position of power and the physician is doing the best they can to give them the information that they have, but that information might entail like, oh, you don't have much of a chance to live beyond X amount of time. But for most people when they hear that, that is almost like a death sentence because the way their brain receives it is that, oh, this is the authority figure who knows this information. And they're telling me this. And then so the patient has the tendency to believe that whether they realize it consciously or not, they have the tendency to go, oh, well, this is my fate now. And I think it's so, so important for you to be sharing what you are and your approach to things, because it doesn't have to be that way for everyone there. People, people do have way, way more control over their own lives and their own destiny than they are willing to really take responsibility for or accept. And you are just this incredible example of that, of really embracing and taking the utmost control over your destiny.

I will give my medical team credit though. They were so wonderful about, for the most part, not squashing hope. So that that 9% actually wasn't a physician being like, it's over, you know, things are done. What actually scared me is the first month or so because my pathology was so confusing in this really rare double ovarian cancer at the same time was quite a confusing presentation. It was freaking me out that no one would have the real hard conversation with me. Everyone was kind of dancing on eggshells and it's quite obvious when there's no mission. So no one was like, don't worry, we caught it early. It's not a bad cancer. Like most people survive. Like, not a single one of those sentences was uttered. And I was like, there's something people aren't telling me going on. So after about a month, I was like, I need, I'm a scientist, I need to research this. So I went into PubMed. You know, I'm very grateful that I have a master's degree, that I know how to read the literature and interpret it. And as I started to go deeper into this kind of rare double ovarian cancer, that's when I started to read the studies on, you know, the average life expectancy is, you know, most people are dead within 70 months of their diagnosis. With the more aggressive kind I have, there's a 9% chance people are alive sort of at the two to five year mark. So as I'm reading that, it's like, you know, the blood's almost drained from your face. And then I was like, okay, I have two choices. I can believe this and be sad and then that hope's going to be crushed. And I believe that my body's going to follow what my mind tells it to do. Or my mind says, why can't I be in that 9%? Why can't I do the very best I Can to control the things I can control. And then whatever will be, will be. And the day I got my cancer news, I promised myself I was going to do this with as much grace and determination and hard work as I could. So I said, I can't control if I'm going to live or die, but I can control how I manage my cancer, how I manage my mind, how I honor and take care of my body. And that's my skill set I can bring to this. So I'm going to just do the best I can there and then be very accepting of however it unfolds, is how it's meant to unfold.

That's amazing. That's amazing. And you probably. Your physicians were probably basically running around looking for answers the best that they could. Meanwhile, there wasn't the answer at the time because it was so rare. And when you look up research and you're looking up. There's probably so few studies on what you were looking at that the controls or the actual. There's just not. They're not going to be the same demographic as you.

That's the point I want to make, is that it doesn't matter how many studies you're looking at. I can almost guarantee you that none of the patients being studied would fall into a category of health that you're in.

Exactly. So I was like, I'm a sample size of 1. Yeah, let's see how this experiment goes to that.

Yeah.

So what did you. So what did you. So first of all, you're trying to eat food for the first time. Were you on a liquid diet for the first little while?

What.

What was that like coming out of all the surgery and trying to walk again? Like, what were you. Your day to day must have been such a smack in the face.

It was. Do you want the nitty gritty details? They're kind of funny and kind of.

Embarrassing, like going through a straw. We're okay with that.

So, yeah, I woke up and I was told I'd have a 50, 50 chance of having a colostomy bag. So I kind of woke up and felt my stomach and I was like, okay, like, no bag. They kept colostomy bag, all of it inside. But what they wouldn't do is they wouldn't feed me until I could prove I could pass gas. So I basically.

So you're trying to.

I have never worked so hard for a fart in my entire life. It took me a week and my stomach was actually becoming distended and bloated. They actually thought they were Going to go in for emergency surgery. Day four after my huge cancer operation, because everything was getting more and more distended and they thought I had a really bad intestinal blockage. So I had to go two days without food before the surgery because they want your intestines as empty as possible. And then I was given a student. I didn't eat for a week. I was starving. My hair was falling out in clumps. I actually was like, send me the dietitian on the surgery oncology floor. Like, someone better start feeding me protein in my veins. I know how important protein is to recover from surgery. Like, I'm a dietitian. I can't get any food in orally or they won't give me food orally because I can't fart. So it was seven days to work out that fart. And then it was the worst smelling thing that's ever exited my body. And then I almost died because it made my husband laugh so hard that I started to laugh. And then because I couldn't.

And you're.

Because I couldn't sit up with my abdominal, like, 30 staple incision. I'm like, leaning backwards and like, oh, my God. I'm choking on my own spit. Laughing at myself at how badly this smells. Oh, my God.

But it's like Halloween.

Exactly. And then they brought me breakfast. It was the best earned breakfast of my entire life. So what did. What did. It was a half slice of French toast. And I think I got about five bites down. And that was all I could handle. And I, like, couldn't touch anything else. And then, unfortunately, because the wounds, like, I had two sites where my intestines are sewed back together, those wounds were so raw as food touched them, it was literally 100 out of 10 on the pain scale on the inside. So within, like 10 minutes of eating, you could feel it just go through your whole intestines. Felt like raw sewage, like fiery pokers on the inside. And then I couldn't walk, so I'd need someone to be like, emergency. Like, get me up. I have to go to the bathroom. It's not going to stay inside of me. So I would have these really urgent bathroom runs because I couldn't really digest and absorb it.

It's going right through you.

But I was like, you have to make food touch your intestines. They have to get stronger. You need this nutrition to heal. But the first month, every time I ate, I was immediately sick. Afterwards, I think I lost like £15 in a week and a half to two weeks, because I wasn't absorbing anything. And obviously I didn't eat for an entire week. So I was incredibly weak to the point where, you know, my husband had to, like, gingerly carry me up the stairs and, like, help. Help me stand up, because I would pass out if I even just stood up by myself. I was so malnourished and so weak. And definitely the first couple months, he's like, well, you're getting a little better. You scream less when you go to the bathroom. So I was like, I guess that's a sign that things are starting to heal. But digestion was absolutely awful the first two months. Now it's its recovery.

What kind of meds were you on for the pain or what were you doing for pain?

That was rough as well. So I'm very holistic. I don't like to take pain meds even if I have, like, a back problem or, like, a little minor injury. Obviously, you can't go through a surgery like this pain medication free or I would not advise it. It's. It's so severe, the pain. I mean, I've broken my finger sideways out of my hand, and that's nothing compared to what this surgery was.

Yeah.

So it was rough in the beginning. They attempted to give me because the epidural didn't work, the epidurals for, like, local pain management after surgery. But because they couldn't get the needle in my spine correctly, I woke up with a pain pump iv. So you can basically administer your own, like, morphine or ketamine or something like that. But my reaction is I actually would dry vomit every time I had to administer the pain med. So because the wound is so severe on your abdomen and you're, like, heaving as if you're gonna throw up, I was like, it's more. It was like, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Because I was like, if I push this. And then I was, like, dry vomiting into, like, a cup in the hospital and, like, crying because it hurts so much. And I was, like, apologizing to my bedmate. I'm like, I am so sorry. This is gonna sound awful. I can't stop my body from doing this. So after two or three days, the hospital team came in and said, your pain is not well managed. This is not working. So they switched me over to hydromorphone, I think, which is one of those pain meds by orally. And I think ketamine was another pain med. They gave me orally. They sent me home with some of those pain meds. I had to go on other pain meds for my neurological pain because some pain meds can't touch nerve pain. So I was having. It felt like just an ax pick as my nerve was starting to wake up and like, the most severe pins and needles. So, you know when your foot falls asleep, Basically my leg felt like my foot was asleep, but from my toe to my hip for three and a half months was that intense. Pins and needles in my leg, so very difficult to sleep. I tried a couple times to pull myself off the pain meds really quickly, and my biggest regret was I had 30 staples pulled out of my stomach where I wasn't overly medicated. To have that happen, that was awful. But I would say within probably four to five weeks, I had weaned myself off the pain meds. For the most part, other than the neurological pain meds, I took at night for the pins and needles. And I just wanted to be like myself as quickly as possible because they make you foggy. I couldn't really think, you know, I didn't want to become addicted. I was really adamant that I wanted to be, like, in control of using them. So I probably erred on the side of under medicating. But I did get off the pain meds pretty quickly. And again, I think I have a pretty good pain tolerance. So I just was like, I'd rather just deal with it and start to progress towards my brain warming up and up. It was just so fuzzy. I couldn't think on the pain meds.

Plus, you're so malnourished, it's hard for you to get the calories that you need. Your body is in emergency mode to try and heal and do what it needs to do to manage just your survival. So. Oh, my gosh, so much there.

And.

And did you. How were you being the professional that you are, how were you managing your nutrition, and were you using other methods? Like, I. I can only imagine that you just dove into every possible green, this and that, and, you know, whether it's.

What.

What kinds of protocols did you use? Did you use different foods than you'd been exposed to before? Were you adding in essential oils? Were you trying different teas? Like, what was going on for your approach?

It kind of progressed in phases. So the first phase was purely survival mode. And that was like, really almost like mushy baby food, like, consistencies, because I couldn't handle anything that was, like, even remotely required a bit of digestion. So I just was like, I'm gonna assist my body. And I basically drank, like, Smoothies and soups. And then from there it was, okay, I need to get protein in. So I was like having my husband make up huge batches of scrambled eggs because I was like, okay, that's a softer protein. And even though scrambled eggs hurts my insides, I know I'm getting some protein. And I would do like smoothies with protein powder and eggs and then from there because I was like still dropping weight like a rock. And it was like scary how fast my weight continued to go down to. I was very underweight at a certain point. Then it was the high calorie soft phase. So this is so not registered dietitian nutrition or how I would advise people to eat on a regular day to day basis. But when you're in survival mode, you do what you have to do to get calories. So I think I was eating like boxes of after 8 mints because they were soft and they didn't cause too much pain. My mom made me a few really high calorie cakes. And I specifically remember this one day it might have been like late January. And I was like, okay, you've got to get it together today. So I had no appetite, it was really difficult to eat. So I was like, okay, today, Jen, your to do list is you got to eat lunch, you got to take a shower, you got to try to walk for five minutes and practice walking. And I think I had one email I had to send and I'm like, you got to send an email. So it was like 5:45 and I still hadn't eaten food because I wasn't hungry and my intestines hurt. So I was like, okay, Even though it's 5:45, eat some lunch. So I had the smallest sliver of cake and I was like, okay, that counts. That's lunch. And then I was like, you gotta walk. So I like walked like three minutes, took a break, and then walked for two minutes. And I was like, okay, cool. You walked with your walker and you're out practicing with your leg. You walked today. And then it was like 8:45. And I was like, okay, I'm so tired, but you got to take a shower today. So I took a shower at 8:45. And then I was like, okay, I don't have the energy to send the email. But I was like, okay, that's 75% of my to do list. I had cake for lunch at 5:45. I walked for five minutes and I took a shower. And that was a huge victory for how weak and malnourished and in Pain I was. But I distinctly remember that phase which was just like any nutrition is a win and don't judge yourself on the quality. As long as it's soft, as long as it doesn't rip you apart on the inside, you just have to start eating. And then from there that progressed to nutritious foods that were very soft. So like minced meat, minced greens, minced sweet potatoes. Like healthy food, but very soft. And then I think it took about two months before I could even tolerate a little bit of fiber. And then I started back with probiotics and you know, I do diffused essential oils and drinking like tea and water and getting my fluid balance, you know, back into play and then eating, you know, more harder to chew foods again. So my digestion started to pick it up. So I'm six months post op. I now eat the perfect healthy, you know, really nutritious diet I've always kind of followed as a healthy eater as an adult. But the first month was like almost no food because it hurt so much to eat. And then it was a phase of just like whatever's high calorie that doesn't hurt. And then it progressed to more nutritious but soft. And then eventually it progressed to healthy eating. So it's been interesting.

That's such a journey. And now you have opted for. Because now you can correct me here if I've got this wrong, but my understanding is that there was just no way they could get every bit of cancer based on the spider like spread and just how many areas. And at the same time they were recommending chemotherapy to really rid your body of that, but you opted not to do the chemotherapy. Is that, was that for a better life and lifestyle? Is that because you really felt confident that you could make a go of making a difference without chemotherapy? What. And another part to that, I guess, is that do you think your positive outlook has played a big role in your healing?

So yes, yes and yes. So my cancer, I'm not anti chemo. I think if you have the right kind of cancer that responds to chemo, I'm very pro. Western medicine meets as much preventative, proactive, self care, as much of that as you can throw first, because it's obviously not going to be a toxic way to treat your body, but sometimes you do need to rely on chemotherapy and medications and radiation and treatments like that. So first and foremost, because so many people that are touched by cancer have to face this choice, I don't want anyone to think I'm anti. Follow your doctor's advice in my individual case, I had two ovarian cancers to sort out. First one, it looks like healthy cells, so it hides in plain sight. And because it's very slow growing, chemo can't specifically target that cancer very effectively. So as I dove into PubMed and I started to read studies on that particular cancer, the women who chose chemo with that type actually died faster than the women who didn't because it didn't change the outcome of the progression of their disease. Then I had this little patch of super aggressive high grade ovarian cancer that's a different type of ovarian cancer. So it's really rare to have both at the same time. Chemo can treat that cancer, but because that was just the small patch that was in my colon tumor and that was basically entirely cut out, I had to take this gamble of do I put chemo in my body to only impact that high grade aggressive cancer that I think has been cut out, or do I not do chemo? And at that point, because the prognosis was so bad and so serious, and when we sat down and talked about the side effects of chemo, the drugs they wanted to use have a major neurological poison effect. So basically they're a neurotoxin. And one of the risks if I were to do chemo was I might never have my leg injury recover from the nerve damage if the chemo starts attacking the nerve as it's trying to heal. And I just, I'm about health span over lifespan. So my personal viewpoint of health and longevity is I want to live as long as possible with the highest quality of life. And until that high quality of life gets diminished, I don't want extraordinary measures taken. Like I don't ever want to be on a ventilator or have a machine keep my heart alive. I don't want to have a breathing or a tube feed or anything like that. So I made the decision about chemo to basically say it's not looking great. The main cancer I have doesn't really respond to chemo. I don't want to lose my ability to climb mountains and lift weights and be active. And if I don't have a lot of time, I want to be as active and as healthy as I can in the time I have left. And I don't want to compromise those last couple years or what I thought was going to be those last couple years being sick and bald and cold and, you know, in this little isolated bubble because I couldn't get germs around.

Me, no immune system.

So I actually read a book called Radical Remission. And that book was so helpful because it looked at qualitative research on people that have had really extreme cancer diagnoses where they weren't supposed to beat it. And what kept coming up was how you take care and nurture your immune system. So if you can get that parasympathetic activation, if you can really let your white blood cells rest and attack and do the work, if you can be in a positive environment with good positive thoughts, be around supportive people, eat nutritious foods. You know, I've done a bit of supplement research. So personally I now add ginger and turmeric in high amounts to my diet. And those are known, you know, powerful anti cancer agents. I diffuse some essential oils that had some research behind it, but it was a. I have a list of like 50 things I got from the book. And basically it was about being positive and happy and hopeful and nourishing my body with good whole foods and being in a clean environment. And I got lots of plants and just wanted to make my environment super awesome and positive. Cancer aside, it's a nice way to live. And I just every day, this will sound maybe corny. I sent love to my body and I tried to accept love from other people and said, I want my cells to get better through love. And I just kept pouring meditation and positive energy from myself and other people and said, I believe in you. I trust that you can do this. And I kind of talked to my body and said, let's give it your best shot. And if that failed, chemo was always still on the table. It wasn't like I was no to it forever. But I told my oncology team, let me try it this way first. Let me just see if this is going to work. And so then I.

And how long did you consciously go through that method?

That debate was probably a good three weeks in my head. And I went back and forth and back and forth and ultimately that little intuitive voice inside my heart, every time I lean towards saying yes to chemo, it would get upset and start to scream and yell and I didn't feel good. And then every time I started to even, you know, play with the possibility of saying no to chemo, I just felt more relaxed and relieved and my body just started to give me clues that that felt right. So I believe a lot in like, intuition and trusting what your heart and mind are trying to tell you. And that it was a very difficult decision. But my husband was on board, my family was on board. They basically Said, whatever you think is the right way to do this. We'll love and support you no matter what, and we're not going to judge you whether it goes well or not. Well. We want you to be happy and do what makes sense for you. So I'm so grateful for that support because it made making that tough decision much easier.

That's amazing. That is amazing.

Wow. Wow.

Okay, so now you. You went and paid for your own testing and how long? Like what? How did you know when to do that? What was your time, and what did you do?

Bit of an accident to find out I was cancer free. That was actually supposed to be my baseline with how much cancer is left inside of me after surgery. So I had asked my oncologist for a PET scan because, again, a very weird, uncommon situation. All the markers for cancer pre surgery were negative other than my colonoscopy, where they actually stumbled by accident on the tumor and then did a pathology scrape. I had a negative CT scan because the spider web doesn't show up in a ct. It's not a hard, solid lump. And most people who have cancer have this CA125 blood marker that's elevated. And I was one of the rare cases that I didn't have an elevated CA125. I told my team, I'm like, how am I supposed to track if this cancer is coming back? As you tell me, it always grows back inside of people. If I had a negative cancer marker in my blood work and my CT scan was negative, like, how the heck am I supposed to know what's going on? And what scared me is they said, well, you know, you'll feel it. I'm like, I didn't feel it at stage three. I didn't feel it when I was competing. If I feel it, I'm going to be dying from, like, cancer in my liver and my brain, and I'm going to be stage four. So again, I went into PubMed and I started to do research on cases where it couldn't light up on a CT scan or blood markers. And so that's where I discovered a PET scan uses radioactive sugar. And because cancer cells eat sugar at a faster rate than the other cells of the body, they inject this radioactive sugar and then you glow under the scanner where cancer might be. So I basically was pushing to get this baseline PET scan because I was like, I'm going to check it once a year, and I just want to see how it's growing, how it's changing. So my oncologist gave Me the impression that this cancer never goes away. It's like a weed that. Like dandelions. You kind of pull them out, but they come back. You pull them out, they come back. And most people, I was like, I need to have a hard conversation. Tell me, how does this take people down? And basically, they continue to do what's called debulking surgeries, where they pull the cancer out until you run out of internal organs that the cancer has grown on and they can't remove any more of your organs. Like, that's how this kind of cancer gets people.

Yeah.

So I said, okay, if that's. That's this fate. I'm a data person. I like to track numbers. That's how I improve my performance. That's how I, you know, did well in school. So I said, I really feel strongly that a PET scan is appropriate here. So we applied to OHIP for a PET scan under the basis of the CT scan's negative, the blood works negative. I was deeply stage three. It was everywhere. So let me have a tool to test this. And OHIP rejected it because I don't have the right kind of cancer on their approved list. So they only fund certain strains of cancer. And the kind of ovarian cancer I have, they don't. Because I should have tested positive for the blood work and the ct. That's like. But I was negative. How am I supposed to know? So I said, for my own mental health, I need to just put a baseline amount. And then my oncologist was like, I don't know why you want to do this. You know, there's a 99% chance there's cancer in there. You're only going to feel defeated when you see that. And I said, I'm prepared to see cancer. And I'm like, it's going to be three scenarios. It's going to be a radical remission, which I'm mentally prepared. That's not the case. You've given me the facts. B, there's a little bit of cancer leftover. That's the most realistic possibility based on your experience as an oncologist, or C, I made the wrong choice not doing the chemo, and the aggressive one has come back really fast. And at least then I know, do I put away money for my RRSPs? Do I go travel? Do I go back to my job? If it is aggressively growing? In scenario C, at least I have closure about what I should do with my life choices. So I said, no matter what it tells me, you're going to give Me, clarity. I said, it's hard to fly a plane with no dials and no controls. And I recognize I can't control this cancer, but I'd like to keep my pulse on what it's doing. And shockingly, it was scenario A. I came back with zero cancer in the scanner. A really unbelievable result for what they typically see.

And what was your reaction?

I think I was in shock at first. Really happy, really elated, but a bit of disbelief. It feels like I've just been in this terrible nightmare that it's like, is this real life? Has this really been what my last six months have been, like, surreal? I see a social worker to help me with the mental component of all of this. And surreal is the word I would use to kind of describe how it's feeling right now.

That's. It's. It's such a full circle. It's like you've had your life ripped away from you and given back to you within less than a year.

I kind of say, like, the front end when you're finding out you have cancer and you're waiting for surgery. Those few weeks I had to wait for surgery is like sitting in a car that you know is going to crash into a brick wall, and you're just waiting for your car to smash into that wall and everything to fall to pieces. It was really hard to try to be at work those last couple weeks waiting for surgery. And then on the other side, I feel like I played this exhaustive mental chess match against cancer, and I'm trying to figure out what the right move is and, you know, what move to play and what pieces to kind of implement. And I feel like I'm playing the game of health chess really well. And I, again, I'm very open to the unfortunate possibility that this could take a turn for the worse. But I know that everything that was under my influence and control, I've done as good of a job as I was able to. So I feel this, like, relief and this confidence and this peacefulness that I've been living in alignment with my core values and my health outlook. And so far, it's working. And it might not work long term, but for right now, things seem to be clicking the way that I hope that they would. So there's this sense of, like, peace and relief that I'm making good decisions.

I wish that. I wish that everyone could hear this. Your story, just. Just from an overall health perspective as well. Like, not only the grit you're able to take into this journey because of your sport. Background, but then also your educational background, your science background, everything you know about nutrition and being able to really among the heart, the spirit, the soul, love, your nutritional choices, what you surround yourself with, all of these lifestyle choices, be able to quite literally turn this boat around in your favor. And now, fortunately, more and more science is pointing in that direction that anything from heart diseases to cancers to any of the inflammatory diseases can be quite literally turned around. And I think more people need to hear that and know that, that even something as seemingly, you know, life changing or perhaps life ending as what you've had, can we have influence. We as individuals have power over that. So, you know, this is just, it's amazing what you've, what you've been able to do.

One of the most powerful conversations I had with my social worker and I'm so glad. I like, she's wonderful, she's helped me so much. But she kind of said, you know, do you feel betrayed by your body because you've taken such great care of it and it's failed you? And I said, I don't know, I need to go home and think about that. And then I came back and said, you know, I actually really respect my body and I'm grateful because I actually think it could have been much worse. And I don't feel betrayed because I have been so healthy. I have made such good, you know, exercise and sleep and nutrition and mindset and social support choices. I actually think my body's been hanging on pretty well all these years not knowing that I was fighting this massive cancer battle on the inside. And, and I said, I can't lose hope that lifestyle matters because when I first chatted with my oncologist, he said, I see this in young women all the time. They go down really quickly. They're these awesome athletes, triathletes, and their healthy lifestyle makes no difference. And I sobbed after that appointment, sobbed. And then I came back and said I might be wrong and that I'm okay with that, but I need to continue to believe that lifestyle matters in fighting this cancer because if I lose that hope, a, I'm not going to be a mentally okay person and B, I don't want to fail on the healthy lifestyle that brings me joy. Cancer or not, this is who I am. This is my self identity. But three, if I have any chance of beating cancer, I need the belief to be strong that lifestyle and healthy choices do impact the disease progression. So he's like, okay, yep, we can work with that. And he's like, that tends to be what I see. But I can get on board and continue to help you believe that. So I think not losing that belief that lifestyle really contributes to genuine deep health, that was really important. Yeah.

I just have to say that his comment, I feel, is. Has to be. I don't know from what I believe everything I've ever heard or read in the last few years learned through Kari or other ways that it was somewhat ignorant in that I know I competed as an international athlete for 17 years, and I can tell you that 90% of the people I played with ate like shit. And these are elite athletes who are extremely fit. So that comment that he made, I believe he might believe that, but doesn't actually know what those athletes that he believed to be healthy and fit were eating. And the eating component.

Yeah.

Is all that matters.

Yeah. And I mean, I've been whole food for. For so long now, and I feel so fantastic all the time from the way that I eat. And I'm not, like, orthorexic or, you know, compulsive about it. There's definitely healthy balance of some treats, but I feel really good eating real food, and I eat a little bit of everything, and I'm not picky, and I love just cooking from scratch. And that's a really important ritual in my family that we cook dinner every night. We sit down, we eat it mindfully. I would never give that up. And I think that's been deeply powerful medicine inside my body. And why not? Like, nature knows what it's doing, so why not trust the food nature's given us to feel better? Preach.

I love it.

Yeah. Seriously.

Yeah, that's.

We're.

We're all about that.

All about that when we. I want to be able to wrap up here with maybe a few more personal questions here before we finish. And this one, near and dear to all of our hearts here. What's your favorite food or dessert?

Oh, that's a good one. I am a die hard chocolate chip cookie fan because it brings such positive memories. My mom would make them every Friday, a fresh batch. That was kind of our, like, weekly treat. And I just have such, like, fond memories of my mom and her active love for us that I think chocolate chip cookies, if they're well made, are my favorite.

Awesome. Paul is like, yes, cookies. He loves them. And what about. Do you have a favorite movie?

Ooh. I'm more of a book reader than I do watch movies, so I feel like I have a good book suggestion at the top of my head. More so than a movie. If you're up for my favorite book? Yeah, I love the book essentialism by Greg McEwen about like knowing what your priorities are and basically it can be summed up with less but better and identify what's most important to you and eliminate everything else. So deep clarity on what matters in life.

I love it. And it aligns completely with your more, more life to your years versus more years to your life and.

And what your rowing coach preached to Queens as well really that you know.

He realized that picking your priorities, keeping.

It simple on the big three.

The top three. Top three. Sweet. And how about right now, at the stage you're at right now, do you have a favorite workout?

I am really happy to just be back lifting weights and this will sound funny, but I really love walking right now. Maybe it is because my ability to walk was taken away, but hiking in the woods, just going at a gentle walk, it is not to be competitive, it is not to win anything but to just appreciate your surroundings and take in nature and going for a walk with my dog in the woods or I guess technically that's called hiking, weirdly that is my like super happy place at the moment.

Oh, one of my favorite things. And plus from that health perspective, you get good lymph drainage as well from just that gentle kind of movement. And then nature, when you have the trees, you get all kinds of extra amazing phytochemicals from them. So amazing.

And I think, and I think I'm just, I've gone. That embracing gentleness has been really enjoyable in this phase of recovery.

Yeah. It's interesting from being, when you're such a hardworking, extreme athlete, sometimes that's the other side of the hand and going okay, some, some of the, the softer side of, of life or it's almost the flip side.

Yep.

What would you say as a tip to young athletes that might be coming up in rowing or maybe hockey or other sports that you've experienced? Do you have any little tips out there?

I think in any sport, obviously working hard is really important. But just being open to how things unfold. As you heard from my story, it was often the darker or not so fun moments that opened the door or provided a silver lining to something better. And so with that hindsight, I can definitely say that allowing yourself to pivot, allowing yourself to evolve, being open to the fact that your, your role as an athlete or what you think of yourself as an athlete might change. I promised myself after hockey I would never put all my self identity eggs in one basket because I was a hockey player. That's how I saw myself. And that was devastating when that came to an end. And then I was like, no, I can be a rower and a, you know, university don and a good nutrition student and someone's girlfriend and I'm a great person. And so your identity evolves into more than just I am this type of athlete because I think if you get hung up in one sport or even just the identity of an athlete, especially with injuries which can be so defeating and crippling, it really takes a toll on your health mentally, physically, emotionally. So allowing your self identity to branch out besides what you are in your sport is really important for I can.

Tell you personally that's fantastic advice that I needed when I was younger for sure. It's really great that you shared that. And I want to make sure too before we sign off Jen that we mentioned Jen's fight gone right your GoFundMe.

Yeah, GoFundMe.

We're going to be putting the link to it in our show notes for you. But why don't you tell everyone what it costs to get a PET scan because you're obviously paying for that out of pocket because OHIP is being wonderful.

Yeah. So they're like the cost of a nice vacation. So they're anywhere between 25 to kind of four or $5,000 to go. Have this scan done again because this is something I know OHIP will continue to reject because I don't have the air quote right kind of cancer. For me it's something I know I'm going to need to monitor kind of on a yearly basis so that my friends created this fight gone right to help me when I was off work and couldn't walk. And they supported me in getting a walker and then a treadmill for my recovery and then some of it went in to help fund the PET scan. So there that I now I'm just mentally allotting the cost of a nice vacation every year to be able to monitor my cancer for the rest of my life. So I think it's what I need to do. But doesn't make it fun that it's such a high priced egg.

And if, if someone is just diagnosed with cancer, you know, what advice would you give them?

My advice would be A learn and read about your particular cancer but with the mindset of hope and optimism that you can be in that positive percentage that does get better. B cancer needs a lot of rest and recovery. So everything you can do to sleep and heal and just deep rest, rest more than you've ever rested in your entire life so your body has the ability to fight it. And I think c ask for support and read about stories that give you emotional support that inspire you and show you that it can be done. Because I think to feel like you're at this insurmountable wall, that there's no hope, that's probably the scariest and worst place you can be mentally. So look for stories of hope early on in your diagnosis.

That's amazing. And how can people reach you if they have questions or want to follow up with you and your journey or are looking for an amazing sport based registered dietitian? How do people reach you?

So I am pretty responsive on social media. Facebook is where I tend to tell most of my storytelling. So it's just my name, Jennifer Broxterman or my business site is NutritionRx Canada Instagram. I'm terrible. I post and abandon. I'm gonna sound like an old folk. So it's NutritionRx. It basically parallels what I tell on Facebook, but I'm not the best about checking inbox messages and I love writing back to people via email and that's also how people connect with me if they're looking for a sports dietitian. So that is infounutritionrx ca and I'm super responsive that way so that's where you can find me hanging out.

Amazing. Well, we can't tell you how much we appreciate having you on and just being so frank about your whole story and being able to be so transparent with people. You've done an incredible job at taking true care of yourself and setting an example for what people can do and how positive people can be no matter what the circumstances are. So thank you. You're an incredible athlete, an incredible human being and we're so appreciative to have you on.

Thank you.

Hey everyone, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. Remember, you can find Jen's fight gone right her GoFundMe page in the link down below. This show help support the show Share this episode with your friends. Snap a screenshot, post it on your social media outlets and get the word out about the Empowered Athlete podcast and get the word to me about what you want to hear on this show. Your questions, your queries and your comments. Fire them to pdpowerconditioning.com we'd love to hear from you and know what you think about what we're trying to do here. Talk to an athlete nearby. Let them know about this podcast, a coach, a friend. Spread the word. We can't thank you enough. Have an incredible day.