SURVIVING & THRIVING

Skin cancer, eight heart attacks and two hip replacements have not dulled Jenni’s sparkle

PORT Elizabeth-based International jewellery designer JENNI GAULT outlines why she does the SPAR Women’s Challenge despite multiple challenges. Our bodies deserve all the looking after in the world but sometimes, despite this, they develop issues. It is how we deal with these that determines our outcome.

I refuse to be dictated to by ailments – while I might tire more easily than before, sickness is too often a state of mind.

I have been stung by bees – twice – I am violently allergic and now I need to carry an epipen with me all the time.

I have horrendous photos of my face when I was first under treatment for skin cancer in 2006. This was my first SA Fashion Week and although my self-confidence was in tatters, I used the opportunity to educate folks on the harsh realities of living under our African skies.

In 2007, I was eating my salad lunch, having finished my daily 7km run, when my body gave way to a weakness that was the prelude to four of my eight heart attacks.

The four previous incidents had gone undiagnosed! This did halt me in my tracks and put me under the care of some of South Africa’s brightest doctors, through whom I made a full recovery.

Then, in 2010, soon after moving to PE, I noticed that my motion in my left leg was more limited than before. Eventually an orthopaedic surgeon gave me a total hip replacement, and a year-and-a-half later the same operation on the other hip.

I walk 6km every day I can, I keep an epipen with me in case of bees, I stretch my joints as far as the surgeons suggest, I take a hatfull of pills for my heart, I use sun block and a hat and I am looking forward to this year’s SPAR Women’s Challenge to walk with 12 000 other women because I stubbornly refuse to let it get me down.

I meet these obstacles in the same way that I trained for Ironman events when I was younger: mind right, body right . . . one step at a time.

I believe that spending quality time with family and friends is a tonic strong enough to beat all our body’s ailments, and the SPAR Women’s Challenge is a beautiful example of this.

“Spending quality time with family and friends is a tonic strong enough to beat all our body’s ailments,” – Jenni Gault