Fitness, Fortitude, and Fitz Koehler: A Story of Survival

Transcript

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And welcome back to another episode of Life Changing Challengers.

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Again, I'm your host, brad Minus.

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As always, I am so honored and so humbled to have Fitz Koehler on the podcast today, and you have no idea how much of like a fanboy I am now.

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She's a fitness innovator, she's a race announcer, she's a speaker and she's an author.

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She has books that she calls the Cancer Comeback Series my Noisy Cancer Comeback Running at the Mouth While Running for my Life, your Healthy Cancer Comeback.

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Six to Strong Healthy Comeback Journal.

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And not only is she right in our wheelhouse as an endurance person, but she's also been on Dancing with the Stars, so we got to get into that.

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So, fitz, how are you today?

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Well, I am freaking delighted, Brad, thank you so much for having me on your show.

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You are so sweet and you're a fellow Floridian how awesome is that.

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I'm a fellow Floridian.

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Where are you?

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Gainesville Okay cool.

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Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Came up here for college and never left.

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It's always nice to hang with a Sunshine Stater, yeah unfortunately.

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I grew up in Chicago, but I am now a Floridian, you're a smart man by choice.

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All the credit.

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I am not going.

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Floridian, you're a smart man, I'll take it, yeah, by choice, that's all the credit.

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I am not going to those winters again, believe you me, but anyway.

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So, as I ask every one of my guests, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up Well, I guess you've already told us that and the compliment of your family and what the environment was like.

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Yeah, so, born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, moved into the house.

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I grew up in my mom's still there.

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When I was three, I was the youngest of three.

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My brother was nine years older, super cool guy, super handsome, athletic.

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My sister six years older, very beautiful, very athletic, mean to me or very mean to me.

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So I was the youngest one dealing with a lot of stuff.

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I would say generically we were middle class.

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We always had food on the table and we went to Disney for vacations.

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We weren't off in Europe and, yeah, it was very reasonable upbringing Both my parents were and we were scrappy.

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It was at a time where people weren't recording everything on their cell phones.

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So we got into a decent amount of trouble Never too much.

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I had a lot of my friends, did drugs and slept with everybody.

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I drank all the beer and kissed all the boys, but never went too far beyond that.

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I drank lots of beer, boy, did I ever?

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Yeah, we had fake IDs.

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We were little troublemakers, but also with this really wholesome sidebar where my mom said never egg a house or a car because that can be very expensive replacing those things with paint.

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So I would never egg a house.

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So anything we did was just harmful or stupid for ourselves.

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But yeah, fun, beach goer.

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My very first car was a Suzuki Samurai, the little baby Jeep, and then my next car was a Jeep Wrangler two door and my present car is a Jeep Wrangler four door and all stick shift and just rowdy and scrappy.

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And public high school, massive public high school.

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We had all the friends of all the colors, all the the religions Fort Lauderdale is that kind of place and yeah, I had some really nice memories of my family and some not so nice.

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My dad was a prescription pill popper, which wasn't awesome, and so I might be giving you more than you asked for, but you know we were.

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We were gritty and we got through it and I got to college and created my own destiny and, yeah, things are really good.

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So did you.

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So you're an endurance athlete now.

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Were you an endurance athlete back in high school?

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What's interesting is we were very sporty and my siblings were elite athletes.

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I played everything but I was never really good at anything.

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I played everything but I was never really good at anything.

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So I think I started off with t-ball and flag football, cheerleading, and then I joined the soccer team and I rode the bench a lot playing soccer, blew my knee out at 14, had a MCL, acl reconstruction wasn't crutches for six months, that type of thing.

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So that didn't enhance my athleticism.

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So I didn't make our soccer team school soccer team because that was they type of thing.

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So that didn't enhance my athleticism.

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So I didn't make our soccer team school soccer team because that was.

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They were state champions.

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I happened to be at the school with the best soccer team, which wasn't good for me.

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I just wanted to be on a team.

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So I tried out for softball and wasn't very good.

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They cut me.

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I tried out for volleyball and my mom was worried about me landing on my knee so she made the coach cut me.

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Tried out for cheerleading the first couple of years of high school.

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Didn't make it.

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And then in senior year they chose me, I made the team and they made me captain.

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But yeah, I wasn't great at anything, but at about 15, that's when I started teaching fitness.

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I started teaching group exercise or aerobics classes at a local gym and that really changed my fate.

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I became good at something where physical fitness was involved and I loved it not only the way it made me feel, but the connection I got to have with all the people that I was teaching fitness to and that really set me off on my career.

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Wow, we were teaching fitness at 15.

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How does that happen?

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Usually, people are just like you're only allowed in the gym at 13.

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Okay, so this is great.

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So when I had my knee surgery when I was 14, I went to lots and lots of physical therapy and before the PT released me, he told my mom.

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He said you need to sign her up and get her going to a gym so she can continue strength training.

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She's going to re-injure this thing.

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So my mom lied.

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She lied and told the people at Spa Lady Fitness Center that I was 16.

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And so I was 14, going to the gym and then I was working at Cinnabon.

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This is great.

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This is the perfect vision.

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Just so you know, my first job was I was the birthday clown at the skating rink, which is not far off from what I do right now.

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I'm still the birthday clown, but yeah, I was working in Cinnabon, which is the opposite of fitness.

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But my manager was really mean.

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Her name was Ronnie and she was horrible, and so finally, I quit Cinnabon at the mall, thank goodness, and I applied at the gym because I really enjoyed being there and I was taking classes.

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I thought the instructors were cool and the manager who was interviewing me.

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He said do you do our classes?

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I said yeah, and he said do you think you could teach one Friday night this was a Tuesday or something I said sure, thank God, I'm a gamer, that's really.

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That's the threat.

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That's how I became a fitness professional right at about 15 is because I said yes and you do it.

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I said sure, and I'm of the mindset that if you get a good opportunity, agree to it and then figure it out.

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And so I did.

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All worked out.

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Oh my God.

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So I just have to ask this question because you're falling right in line.

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You ever heard of Laura Langmeier?

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I have not.

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You ever heard of Laura Langmeier?

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I have not.

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Okay, so she's another personal development person and she has this book called the Power of yes, and it was a little bit different story.

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So she gets out of college and they ask her if she would start a fitness fitness gyms on oil rigs for the guys.

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Yeah, knew nothing about fitness, knew nothing about gyms, but she just said yes, and that's like the same thing.

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You were just like, hey, I was just taking the classes and now you're going to teach one.

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So I was just, it almost was like a parallel, it was pretty cool.

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But yeah, so you can see that I'm constantly talking about personal development and stuff.

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But yeah, so that's amazing.

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So you were, so you're teaching, so you got this job you're teaching and you're going to school, and did you something special about teaching to a room full of 50 college students?

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I got to play the vulgar rap music that I maybe couldn't slash, shouldn't play for some of the grownups I was associating with at the other gym.

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But we got to be really rowdy at UF and I taught all sorts of classes to excess.

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But it was a wonderful part of my collegiate experience and you get to make so many friends when you're the instructor, right.

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So 50 kids pour in and they instantly became your friend.

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They know your name, right.

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So I made a lot of great buddies through my fitness teaching.

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But in the summer after my sophomore year, I took a job on a cruise ship teaching fitness.

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I was a fitness director on the Crystal Harmony, which was a five-star cruise liner, and I boarded in New York.

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We sailed across to France, stopped in England and then did every country in Scandinavia plus Russia and Estonia a few times, and so that was pretty cool.

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That was my first time going global.

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And again my family.

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We did Disney and Busch Gardens.

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We did not do Europe.

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So not only did I get to do it, but I got to go alone and I got paid for it.

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I just had so many wonderful experiences and it really gave me a lot of confidence and maturity being over there on my own, especially roaming the streets of Russia.

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And then, when I came back to UF, there was a producer who was holding auditions for a fitness TV show called Cardio Jam, and I auditioned and he chose me.

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I was one of a handful of instructors and so then I had a TV show that was airing three times a week and that expanded my impact, which I that.

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That's the thing that connected me with real strangers.

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I remember going to a Sonny's barbecue, which is a barbecue joint and not the Mecca of healthy food.

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You can get salads or whatever, but anyways, I sit down and the morbidly obese waitress comes over to me and she's certainly not someone you would anticipate was exercising Right and she starts taking my order and she says are you fits?

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And I said I am.

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And she says, oh, you Fitz.

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And I said I am.

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And she says, oh, my gosh, I love your show.

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You're my favorite instructor.

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I do it when it's on live, I record it and I have lost 17 pounds.

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And with that she just.

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It's almost like somebody punched me in my chest.

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I just, I felt just was so meaningful to me, and so I love the fact that through mass media, I was able to help strangers.

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Would we be in the same social circle?

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She was a grown up, I was a college kid.

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Could she have afforded me as a personal trainer?

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I tell you, I wasn't charging much back then, but I don't think her Sunday's barbecue waitress salaries would have connected us.

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And so, because of that experience on TV after her, people started coming out of the woodwork with similar experiences.

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Then I wrote my first article and that brought me in, connected me with people all across the country, and so I really I'm so passionate about fitness.

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I'm a big believer that it can change your life and it's fact-based right.

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I can stand on evidence that it will make your life better.

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It will help you live better and longer, and it's fact based right.

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I can stand on evidence that it will make your life better.

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It will help you live better and longer, and that's my mission.

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It's back at least 10 years of quality life on everyone I come across.

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And so I haven't been, I haven't worked in a gym in decades, because I learned really quickly that my power really was extended if I spent my time, my efforts on TV and radio, books, magazines, online content, speaking engagements and so forth, and so I have the dream career doing what I love to do for people I truly care about.

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It's awesome.

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All right.

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So you got this TV show.

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You're impacting all these people which I am so on board with I try to do that myself and so excited about that.

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Oh and, by the way, remind me after we're done here to tell you my funny story, because you're going to tell me anyway.

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So we're going to go forward with that.

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But yeah, so you made this impact.

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Where did running start for you, or was that just always a part of your fitness?

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Yeah, so I was always running for exercise.

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I was a soccer player, remember.

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I wasn't a very good one, but we ran a lot.

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We ran a lot for all sports.

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When I was in high school I was a bit overweight and so I used running as a way to try to manage my weight and I think my gosh.

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I believe there was a few fun runs or 5Ks involved in my life up to a point I really can't remember, but I think my first race I did was I was training a woman with breast cancer and her father hired me as a personal trainer for her and her father hired me as a personal trainer for her and she was doing great and so we ran that Making Strides for Breast Cancer walk or run here in Gainesville.

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I ran with her and that was really my re-entry to racing and I've never been well, never been.

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I was so proud, I was so proud.

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I ran the whole way with her and I just was just mesmerized by her ability to do what she was doing during treatment.

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And, yeah, as we approached the finish line, I just backed off and let her go do it herself and, as magical, but yeah, jumped into racing excessively.

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After that I'm not sure how that happened, but here we are.

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Not sure how that happened, but here we are.

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All right.

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So there's the segue.

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You were training somebody with breast cancer and for all of you, as you've known, I've already given you all of her titles.

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So obviously you had a scare and a part of this yourself that you ended up with breast cancer.

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Do you want to start with how?

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What were you feeling like when you start, when you started to feel like something was off and what that felt like, and then how you ended up getting diagnosed?

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Yeah, so, interestingly enough, I never cancer never made me feel bad.

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I was healthy.

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I was actually at a race weekend getting ready to run a race when I found my lump.

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And I found that lump six weeks after a sparkling clean mammogram.

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So I had gone in at the end of December of 2018, had a mammogram they didn't miss anything.

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That wasn't there, I'm assuming.

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The second I stepped out into the parking lot, a cell went rogue, and so I'm at a race weekend and I get out of the shower and I rubbed my under boob.

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It's a Thursday.

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I rubbed my under boob just so it was itchy, and I found a lump.

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Doctor describes it as a grape-sized lump and I thought, ah, damn it.

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So standing there naked in the bathroom and this is very important I picked up the phone and I called my doctor.

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I did not Google it, I did not call my mom and cry or ask my friends what I should do.

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I just picked up the phone and call and, folks, if you have any sort of red flags whether it's chest pain or a droopy face or a lump in your breast or testicle you call right away.

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So I did and I said, hey, I found a lump.

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And they said, hey, can you come in tomorrow?

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And I said no, I'm running a race tomorrow.

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And they said, ok, what about Monday?

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And I said sure.

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So I kept it to myself and I went in Monday and the doctor says, yeah, something suspicious, let's get some scans.

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No-transcript, no-transcript, you like wildfire and we need to treat you immediately because it is.

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It's a big deal.

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We're treating you urgently and aggressively.

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And they did, and I ended up with 15 months of chemotherapy.

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I think I had 21 rounds.

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I had 33 rounds of radiation, I had several surgery and I'm super grateful to say that I am several years cancer free.

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But I had the treatment triathlon and it was no fun.

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Yeah, I can't even imagine.

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First of all, I'd like to know who did your first mammogram.

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No, they didn't miss it, and it's very interesting because we took a scan and they sent it to other radiologists.

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So Gainesville is a tight-knit community and I'm pals with some doctors and people reached out and said hey, I looked at your scan.

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She did not miss anything.

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It was not there.

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So.

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But again, it was this warp speed on fire.

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I'm going to kill you Fitz Kohler type of booger.

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And I'm so grateful I found that lump, because had I not found the actual lump, I wouldn't have known until perhaps I started coughing because it had settled into my lungs, or perhaps I would have been confused because it had settled into my brain.

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And that's where breast cancer tends to go.

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First is the lungs and the brain.

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And so I'm just very fortunate that I found that lump.

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I want to encourage everybody to squeeze their stuff every single week.

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Don't wait till you're 40.

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Don't wait till you're 35 or 50, whatever it is.

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Take your hands on your stuff and have a squeeze Grote all the little special places in your body and if you feel something, make that phone call.

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Save your own darn life.

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And it's so much easier to cure something in stage one or two than three or four.

00:17:17.750 --> 00:17:20.491
And so, yeah, get all the scans and squeeze yourself.

00:17:21.452 --> 00:17:28.176
So you found this a week after the first mammogram where they said it was clear oh, it's six weeks, Okay, six weeks.

00:17:28.176 --> 00:17:36.883
So with the way that you said it was so aggressive, can I ask did they dictate you at stage one or were you already at stage two?

00:17:41.585 --> 00:17:43.368
I was stage 2B, which is pretty quick for six weeks in.

00:17:43.368 --> 00:17:52.635
It's really there's so many different options based on each cancer case is like a snowflake, so the things that are relevant to me aren't really necessarily relevant to everybody else.

00:17:52.635 --> 00:17:57.667
With breast cancer they check three different things.

00:17:57.667 --> 00:17:59.673
One is are you estrogen positive?

00:17:59.673 --> 00:18:01.537
Does your cancer feed off of estrogen?

00:18:01.537 --> 00:18:04.528
Does it feed off of progesterone?

00:18:04.528 --> 00:18:07.034
And is it HER2 positive?

00:18:07.034 --> 00:18:12.188
And basically what HER2 means, as explained to me, is HER2 moves really fast.

00:18:12.188 --> 00:18:14.070
It's a rapid growing type of cancer.

00:18:14.070 --> 00:18:15.333
Mine was HER2 positive.

00:18:15.333 --> 00:18:16.634
Her2 moves really fast.

00:18:16.634 --> 00:18:17.736
It's a rapid growing type of cancer.

00:18:17.776 --> 00:18:21.560
Mine was HER2 positive, estrogen positive, apparently on the border for progesterone.

00:18:21.560 --> 00:18:23.763
So I was told, hey, you got cancer.

00:18:23.763 --> 00:18:28.317
And then we were told we're going to do further exams on your sample, on your biopsy, and then we'll let you know exactly what kind of breast cancer you had.

00:18:28.317 --> 00:18:31.875
And again, back then I didn't even know there were multiple types of breast cancer.

00:18:31.875 --> 00:18:36.886
I thought breast cancer was breast cancer and multiple types of breast cancer.

00:18:36.886 --> 00:18:38.028
I thought breast cancer was breast cancer.

00:18:38.028 --> 00:18:40.173
And so I get a call from this oncologist, nurse, practitioner or PA.

00:18:40.173 --> 00:18:49.057
She goes hey, fitz, I got your results and I want to let you know that you tested positive for estrogen, progesterone and HER2.

00:18:49.057 --> 00:18:51.426
And I let out the biggest F-bomb.

00:18:51.426 --> 00:18:53.893
I was meeting with my interns at a big old bakery.

00:18:53.893 --> 00:19:02.807
I was like freak I'm going to say the ugly word and I was like I am definitely dying because now I'm positive for all of these things and they said no.

00:19:02.807 --> 00:19:09.498
In this case the positives are good things, because if you're positive for estrogen, they know how to kill that type of cancer.

00:19:09.498 --> 00:19:12.446
If you're HER2 positive, they have a solution for that.

00:19:12.446 --> 00:19:14.849
It's really the most tricky type of breast.

00:19:14.849 --> 00:19:21.398
Cancer is triple negative because they're really unsure what your tumors are feeding off of.

00:19:21.398 --> 00:19:25.115
So I was actually lucky that I was HER2 and estrogen positive.

00:19:25.195 --> 00:19:33.357
But I don't know, once it spreads to your lymph nodes, usually you're in for chemo and I can attest to chemo being not a good time.

00:19:33.357 --> 00:19:36.816
In fact, out of all of my treatments, chemo was by far the worst.

00:19:36.816 --> 00:19:39.148
It just brutalized me.

00:19:39.148 --> 00:19:41.253
I was wasted, of course.

00:19:41.253 --> 00:19:43.999
I lost my hair, all the hair, lost my fingernails.

00:19:43.999 --> 00:19:46.133
My stomach was a catastrophe.

00:19:46.133 --> 00:19:47.298
I lost tons of weight.

00:19:47.298 --> 00:19:49.005
I was beaten up by chemo Radiation.

00:19:49.005 --> 00:19:50.970
I didn't find very difficult at the time.

00:19:50.970 --> 00:19:53.355
I didn't burn super badly.

00:19:53.355 --> 00:19:54.278
Like many people do.

00:19:54.278 --> 00:19:58.276
I have long lasting effects from radiation which I hadn't anticipated.

00:19:58.276 --> 00:19:59.067
And then surgery.

00:19:59.067 --> 00:20:04.536
Surgery was annoying and I was blessed with a lumpectomy versus a full mastectomy.

00:20:04.536 --> 00:20:14.805
So the poor women and sometimes men who have a full mastectomy that means they remove the entire breast, one or both If they choose to reconstruct, that's not just one surgery.

00:20:14.805 --> 00:20:18.453
They're having multiple surgeries and so I really dodged a bullet with that one.

00:20:18.453 --> 00:20:27.705
There was no benefit for me having the phlemosectomy, but yeah, 15 months of yikes and I'm glad it's in my rear view mirror, that's for sure.

00:20:28.468 --> 00:20:29.951
So most people don't understand it.

00:20:29.951 --> 00:20:32.297
I've actually been in the industry.

00:20:32.297 --> 00:20:40.096
Well, I don't know about the industry, but I've been around answer kids and um and adults and stuff a good amount of time.

00:20:40.096 --> 00:20:41.858
I'm luckily I never had it.

00:20:41.858 --> 00:20:48.516
My mom is a breast cancer survivor, my father is a merkle cell uh cancer survivor.

00:20:48.516 --> 00:20:49.959
So I've been around it.

00:20:49.959 --> 00:20:54.839
But but people, chemo is poison.

00:20:54.839 --> 00:20:56.565
It literally is poison.

00:20:56.565 --> 00:21:04.078
It rids you of everything you have so that when they put the medication back in that you start over.

00:21:04.664 --> 00:21:06.451
Well and so, yes and no.

00:21:06.451 --> 00:21:09.131
Some people are on chemo right now and they're living full lives.

00:21:09.131 --> 00:21:12.258
They've got their hair, they can eat the food, they can run the races.

00:21:12.258 --> 00:21:18.432
I have a friend, phil Decker, who's run several marathons during his colon cancer chemo so cool.

00:21:18.432 --> 00:21:22.865
But some of us are just in a different boat and they threw me.

00:21:22.865 --> 00:21:24.670
What my doctor said is he was giving me.

00:21:24.670 --> 00:21:25.633
In hindsight.

00:21:25.633 --> 00:21:28.867
After the fact he said no, I gave you the nastiest concoction we give anybody.

00:21:28.867 --> 00:21:32.693
You need four nasty drugs and it was god awful.

00:21:32.693 --> 00:21:47.622
I'm thrilled for people who don't have to have that type of chemo and really, as long as we survive it right, we get past it right, right and again, it's the what you said absolutely the nastiest type, and that's what I was trying to just put out there.

00:21:47.663 --> 00:21:48.224
It is nasty.

00:21:48.224 --> 00:22:02.760
No, you're right, in the current time, they have found ways that they need that to use chemo and different, different treatments in order to localize and find the specific cells, the specific things is.

00:22:02.760 --> 00:22:14.826
But when you went through it and because it you were three different, very good, your breast cancer triathlon, right, I heard you project they had to give you that in order to like wipe your body of everything so they can start again.

00:22:14.826 --> 00:22:18.394
But it's, yeah, it's nasty and yeah, I wouldn't wish.

00:22:18.394 --> 00:22:20.326
I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy level on you.

00:22:20.848 --> 00:22:22.134
So yeah, thank you.

00:22:22.134 --> 00:22:23.038
Yeah, it was awful.

00:22:23.038 --> 00:22:24.142
What's interesting is chemo.

00:22:24.142 --> 00:22:26.450
Number one is super scary because of the unknown.

00:22:26.450 --> 00:22:27.993
Right you walk in you think what is this?

00:22:27.993 --> 00:22:28.816
What's going to happen?

00:22:28.904 --> 00:22:35.875
I had friends who had breast cancer, the triple negative breast cancer, and those were to my two girlfriends who I was looking to for guidance.

00:22:35.875 --> 00:22:42.554
I created a little wall because once people know everybody's like hey, my cousin's best friend had breast cancer, let me get the hook you up.

00:22:42.554 --> 00:22:44.248
I'm like, no, I want to talk to everybody.

00:22:44.248 --> 00:22:45.792
I've got doctors and I take their advice.

00:22:45.792 --> 00:22:51.069
And then I had two close girlfriends who were either recently finished or were going through it at the time.

00:22:51.069 --> 00:22:53.393
So I decided they would be the people I'd talk to.

00:22:53.432 --> 00:22:58.519
And they had triple negative breast cancer and they had a drug that nickname is the red devil.

00:22:58.519 --> 00:23:04.948
And so I thought well, clearly that has to be the worst thing.

00:23:04.948 --> 00:23:06.652
It's called the red devil Now they call it that because it's red.

00:23:06.652 --> 00:23:08.214
But both of them had said, no, I'm not really sick.

00:23:08.214 --> 00:23:16.750
I feel a little mousy, a little tired after chemo, but it's really not that bad.

00:23:16.750 --> 00:23:19.805
And so I thought, well, whatever I'm getting, clearly it's going to be way better than that, because it's not the red devil and I was wrong.

00:23:19.805 --> 00:23:24.133
I was wrong, they, they went, I don't know.

00:23:24.133 --> 00:23:28.886
It was like a nuclear explosion went off inside of me and it didn't stop for over a year.

00:23:28.886 --> 00:23:32.550
But again, I get to live to tell the tale.

00:23:32.550 --> 00:23:34.472
So Crimea River right.

00:23:34.813 --> 00:23:39.657
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and you are obviously one of the strongest that I've ever met.

00:23:39.657 --> 00:23:43.362
So you're going through all of this, right?

00:23:43.362 --> 00:23:48.356
You said 15 months, 33 different radiation treatments, plus.

00:23:48.356 --> 00:23:53.537
What's going on inside your head, because you are such an optimist and you're teaching these people to get through fitness and stuff.

00:23:53.537 --> 00:23:56.318
What's going on through your head while you're going through all of this?

00:23:56.818 --> 00:23:58.480
Yeah, so great question.

00:23:58.480 --> 00:24:00.942
That's very important stuff, it's the most important.

00:24:00.942 --> 00:24:02.863
So originally I thought, well, surely I'm dying.

00:24:02.863 --> 00:24:09.405
I thought I have the perfect career, perfect family, I'm somewhat of the perfect example of health and fitness.

00:24:09.405 --> 00:24:13.153
I'm going to make the perfect tale of tragedy and it was sad to think that I was going to die.

00:24:13.153 --> 00:24:17.008
But really what I was gutted about was losing my kids' lives.

00:24:17.008 --> 00:24:21.557
Ginger was 15 at the time, parker was 13, and I really mourned losing them.

00:24:21.805 --> 00:24:28.112
So it was about a week and a half until I met my oncologist and he said no, you're not dying, we have a plan to cure you.

00:24:28.112 --> 00:24:29.319
You just have to endure the cure.

00:24:29.319 --> 00:24:30.886
So then I thought, okay, now I have choices.

00:24:30.886 --> 00:24:33.114
So lovely to have choices.

00:24:33.114 --> 00:24:39.109
And so my number one choice was to utilize perspective, which has always been my right hand man.

00:24:39.230 --> 00:24:44.452
But there were there's babies in the hospital here at the University of Florida Health.

00:24:44.452 --> 00:24:45.256
They did nothing.

00:24:45.256 --> 00:24:46.319
I never had the why me?

00:24:46.319 --> 00:24:46.701
Moment.

00:24:46.701 --> 00:24:49.567
A babies didn't do anything to cause themselves cancer.

00:24:49.567 --> 00:24:52.833
So that's a stupid thought at all.

00:24:52.833 --> 00:24:54.796
Why me, why not me, right?

00:24:55.356 --> 00:25:08.257
And then I just kept thinking well, it would be way harder to be a baby or a child with cancer than to be a grownup with cancer, and I was so, for I'm so grateful that I wasn't a parent of a kid with cancer, right.

00:25:08.257 --> 00:25:25.190
So I think, when you start thinking about what really is a worst case scenario, me having breast cancer wasn't the worst case scenario, and so what I decided is that the stress was real, the stress was unbearable, and this grief and the loss, the loss has kept coming for a long time.

00:25:25.190 --> 00:25:29.990
It was really difficult, but I would probably cry about 15 minutes every day.

00:25:29.990 --> 00:25:32.038
I didn't schedule it in, it would just happen.

00:25:32.038 --> 00:25:48.710
When I felt it coming, I would go in my bathroom and shut the door, I'd go in my car and I'd cry and then I'd get all the boo-boos out and then I'd get on with it, because I do have children and dragging them down further after they were already so fearful for me wasn't going to be okay.

00:25:48.710 --> 00:25:52.234
And, yeah, I would just cry and then get on with it.

00:25:52.234 --> 00:26:00.934
And I hope people know that it's okay to feel sad, it's okay to grieve, it's not okay to bask in those feelings, it's not okay to wallow.

00:26:01.195 --> 00:26:07.153
And I'm a bit type A and so my instincts are what can I do, what can I control?

00:26:07.153 --> 00:26:09.438
And that matters not only with cancer.

00:26:09.438 --> 00:26:12.067
But everyday life is control what you can when you can.

00:26:12.067 --> 00:26:16.431
And so, knowing that I was stressed, what can I do to relieve the stress?

00:26:16.431 --> 00:26:22.115
So for me, the things that worked are exercise I couldn't always do that, I had a duck at the time.

00:26:22.115 --> 00:26:25.519
Spend time with my duck, spend time with my dog, be outside.

00:26:25.519 --> 00:26:34.411
I would turn on music, I would get in the shower and there was a lot of crying in the shower, but I would go to YouTube and search for Jerry Seinfeld.

00:26:34.411 --> 00:26:37.056
That was it Just search Jerry Seinfeld and I would listen to him.

00:26:37.056 --> 00:26:45.417
I'd listen to his standup, I would listen to his interviews and just force joy upon myself, and so that really mattered.

00:26:45.417 --> 00:26:52.567
And then the other great decision I make was to continue pursuing my passions, which was probably the coolest decision I've ever made in my entire life.

00:26:53.651 --> 00:26:54.031
Wow.

00:26:54.031 --> 00:26:55.776
So that's fantastic.

00:26:55.776 --> 00:27:00.252
So I'm going to run down this list because you gave us some great little things.

00:27:00.252 --> 00:27:03.567
So, first of all, you get into a situation that's not.

00:27:03.567 --> 00:27:10.813
It doesn't have to be cancer, it could just be an obstacle in your way, it could be some a little bit of adversity that you need to get through.

00:27:10.813 --> 00:27:14.132
But basically what you said is utilize perspective right.

00:27:14.132 --> 00:27:22.631
And basically you said comparing yourself to people that might have it worse, might even have it better, and fine, where does your perspective lie?

00:27:22.631 --> 00:27:30.721
And then you said allow yourself to cry, yeah, allow it to happen, but don't bask in it.

00:27:31.123 --> 00:27:31.343
Yeah.

00:27:31.784 --> 00:27:38.525
Give yourself some time, allow yourself to cry and then move on and then determine what you can control.

00:27:38.525 --> 00:27:41.416
The serenity prayer yeah, that's right.

00:27:41.416 --> 00:27:49.912
Yes, allow me the strength to allow me the strength to control what I can and the wisdom to know the difference between what I can and what I can't.

00:27:49.912 --> 00:27:52.702
Unfortunately, I don't have them off the top of my head, but great thing.

00:27:52.702 --> 00:27:57.182
And then force joy and then continue pursuing your passions.

00:27:57.182 --> 00:28:00.078
Yeah, am I missing something?

00:28:00.520 --> 00:28:01.743
No, you nailed it, that was it.

00:28:01.743 --> 00:28:02.165
That was it.

00:28:02.165 --> 00:28:05.202
That's my big, my words of wisdom right there, brad.

00:28:05.884 --> 00:28:07.096
All right, I love that.

00:28:07.096 --> 00:28:24.067
So the interesting thing is that we went back and you said that you had done a 5K with someone that had breast cancer and unfortunately, maybe I made an ass out of myself, but I assume that was after your cancer.

00:28:24.615 --> 00:28:27.663
No, it was 20 something years ago when I was doing personal training.

00:28:27.663 --> 00:28:30.915
That's been a long time, but yeah, it was many years ago and it's interesting.

00:28:30.915 --> 00:28:43.871
I think I was probably about 22 when I showed up at a fitness conference and I took a course on how to train women who had been through breast cancer care and I learned so much about it.

00:28:43.871 --> 00:28:53.959
And you're managing the potential for lymphedema, you're trying to avoid irritating the arm that has had lymph nodes removed, and so forth.

00:28:53.959 --> 00:28:55.605
So I learned a lot about it back then.

00:28:55.605 --> 00:29:03.728
But then it was a friend and neighbor who she was diagnosed and she came to me and said, hey, my dad wants to hire me a personal trainer.

00:29:03.728 --> 00:29:04.377
Are you available?

00:29:04.377 --> 00:29:07.171
And at that point I had already been done personal training.

00:29:07.171 --> 00:29:14.018
But I said yeah, for you for sure, and it was great and I've done all sorts of walks and the fundraising and all this stuff.

00:29:14.018 --> 00:29:20.038
And it's one thing to support a cause, it's another thing to show up and be the cause.

00:29:20.038 --> 00:29:23.952
And so when I was going through treatment I never stopped working.

00:29:23.952 --> 00:29:25.740
I traveled all around the country.

00:29:25.740 --> 00:29:38.946
I boarded over 30 planes out of Gainesville, florida, to go announce races and do keynotes, and right here in my own backyard we had the Making Strides for Breast Cancer Walk and so they invited me to do like a keynote before the walk.

00:29:38.946 --> 00:29:45.009
And I show up there and I was like, well, damn it, I'm the cause, I am the cause.

00:29:45.009 --> 00:29:45.451
And I was.

00:29:45.451 --> 00:29:47.376
My hair had just started coming back.

00:29:47.376 --> 00:29:50.584
I was as skinny as a little rail All of these little things.

00:29:50.584 --> 00:29:54.481
I was like, oh, it's me this time and it's very humbling.

00:29:54.481 --> 00:29:55.861
So this is interesting.

00:29:56.915 --> 00:30:00.685
As soon as I got diagnosed, I started ribbons.

00:30:00.685 --> 00:30:05.143
Pink ribbons made me recoil, just really bothered me.

00:30:05.143 --> 00:30:09.386
I'd see those pink ribbons and everyone was buying me stuff.

00:30:09.386 --> 00:30:12.204
They're like, oh, it's almost like congratulations, you got breast cancer.

00:30:12.204 --> 00:30:17.321
Here's a hat with a ribbon, here's a shirt with a ribbon, and so all well-intentioned.

00:30:17.321 --> 00:30:20.320
But in my mind I was like, no, I'm not putting on that ribbon.

00:30:20.320 --> 00:30:23.664

Fitness, Fortitude, and Fitz Koehler: A Story of Survival

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