Residents help cancer-stricken dad
Dean Coleman can’t wait to say good riddance to the pandemic and return to less stressful times when he and his wife Janna can resume normal operations at the fitness gym they own and operate in College Heights.
After being forced to shut the doors of The Movement Group Fitness Mecca for three months when COVID-19 was just starting to infect the province, the Colemans have had to adjust to a new reality of fewer people in the gym and fewer classes to respect provincial heath orders which now have them shut down again.
The financial hit to their business has made it difficult to keep up with the gym lease payments and now Dean faces an even more serious obstacle – dealing with cancer surgery for the second time in his life.
On Thursday in Vancouver General Hospital, a surgical team will open up his washboard abdomen to remove a 15-centimetre Stage 4 neuroendocrine tumour from his liver. It’s the same type of cancer he had eight years ago which cost him part of his right lung. His latest symptoms – diarrhea, stomach upset, loss of energy – started about the same time as the pandemic began in March and it wasn’t until early September that his cancer was diagnosed.
The preliminary results of a biopsy showed the tumour was low-grade (slower-growing ), which usually means a better outcome for surgery. The liver tends to regenerate itself and Dean is hopeful there will be enough healthy tissue left for that to happen. The resiliency of the organ hid the symptoms and he had no warning signs until the growth had progressed to Stage 4.
Dean and Janna have two daughters – 11-year-old Maija and nine-year-old Kenlee. He says his health concerns have been more difficult for his family members to deal with than they are for him.
“I think it’s harder on spouses and the kids, I really do,” Dean said. “There’s anxiety with the kids, I can really see it, and that’s the worst part. I think being a spectator is worse than being in the driver’s seat, to be honest. That’s the part that bugs me more than anything else.”
Dean is a full-time real estate agent for Royal LePage but also teaches Mossa indoor cycling, strength/functional training and aerobics group classes at the gym with Janna and the other instructors. Always a fitness buff, he’s been active in hockey, volleyball, downhill/water skiing, mountain biking and tennis for most of his life and now does most of those activities with his family. In 1997 he became a certified personal trainer, which led to a job a few years later as manager of Gold’s Gym. The Colemans bought their own gym in 2013 and expanded The Movement a year later.
During a brutal recovery period after his lung cancer surgery, Dean built his aerobic capacity beyond what it was before he had cancer and he’s maintained his own fitness vigilance. After his surgery Thursday, he won’t be able to lift anything for eight-to-12 weeks. Neither of his bouts with cancer require chemotherapy or radiation. They hope to be back in Prince George by mid-December.
Dean and Janna’s group fitness clients and the other instructors think of them as part of one big family and have rallied to help out financially to allow the couple to focus on Dean’s health without worrying about missing lease payments to their landlord. Kimberly Sexsmith, a dental hygienist who teaches a fitness class at the gym, created a GoFundMe page that within three days reached its goal of raising $25,000.
“I’m quite humbled by that, there’s so many people I have to reach out to, to thank them,” Dean said. “I wasn’t even going to tell anybody. I’m the kind of guy, I would just battle it and be done with it. But we had to tell The Movement community because people were asking for more workouts.”