May 27, 2026
Dying To Climb: Woman With Stage 4 Cancer Becomes First Ever To Summit Everest!
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RSS Feed What an inspiration: 50-year-old Dr. Shauna Burke just became the first woman with stage 4, incurable breast cancer to summit Mount Everest. It took Burke 12 months of training, and 5 weeks to make it to the top. Burke has already had months of chemotherapy and continued her drug therapy as she made her way up the mountain, where she is conducting research on the effects of exercise and oxygen deprivation on cancer cells. Burke proving to the world with her historic summit, we are all stronger than we think.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, that folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Wednesday, May twenty seventh, and sure thousands of people have summoned it Mount Everest, but nobody has done it the way Doctor Shauna Burke has just done it. And with that, welcome to this inspirational episode of Amy and TJ. Robes. She is the first woman to set foot up there, and no other woman has set foot up there with the issues that she has.
00:00:32
Speaker 3: Yes, doctor Shauna Burke is a stage four breast cancer self described thriver, and look, this is this brings tears to my eyes because I think most of us can kind of understand how difficult and taxing and seemingly impossible it is to summit Mount Everest, what it takes, what it does to your body. People die every year trying, and then there are very few people who know what it's like to have breast cancer and to have stage four breast cancer where you are on constant drug therapy, your body is fighting off a deadly disease. And she summitted that mountain with stage four cancer and she is the first woman to have ever done so.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: So we're just getting worried about this now. But she's been on this journey and she's been documenting it for the past several weeks, and it does take weeks to summit everes, so she has been keeping up, but it ropes there's you would naturally, first of all, have concern that is this okay? Is this healthy? Should she be doing this challenge? And then as soon as you have it, before you can hear anything else, you go, why the hell not? What do I want her to do? I get around and wait what.
00:01:48
Speaker 3: I get emotional thinking about it. Look if she physically can do it, hell yeah, the mental benefits she gets. And look, she is a doctor, she has her PhD. She's an ex exercized psychologist. And she said she wasn't just doing this for herself. Yes, that was a huge part of it, and she is an experienced climber, but she was also doing it for the research she wanted. And she's been studying what the role exercise plays during cancer treatment for cancer patients, and she also wants to find out what oxygen deprivation might do to cancer cells.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: These are studies.
00:02:24
Speaker 3: That haven't really been researched before, because I can't think of anyone, I mean off the top of my hand, and certainly there hasn't been another woman who's been able to do this, to be able to put her body through what it's gone through and at the same time you fight in cancer, could there be benefits? That's what she also wanted to find out beyond just having this personal accomplishment.
00:02:45
Speaker 2: And this is you know, it's a name. Maybe you don't know, but she will go down in history now doctor SHAWNA. Burke. She's actually a Canadian living in the UK right now. She works with a university there. She's a social professor at Leeds Universe there in the UK. And yes, you talked about some of the work that she has done. But she is an experienced climber. She is not someone who got a DIAGNOSI and said, hey, I'm gonna go skydive and now there's a little training. Now, this woman knows what she's doing. You have to know what you're doing. Just to throw several in there, but she's climbed Kilimanjaro. Just to let you know, the woman has legit credentials on her resume.
00:03:21
Speaker 3: She climbed Everest in two thousand and five, so this is her second climb and there was a big difference. Obviously it was twenty one years ago, and so look to do it then when she was that would have made her twenty nine, probably in the prime of her life and certainly not battling cancer. So she had done it before she knew what it was going to take, and she took twelve months to prepare her body. She talked about running three miles to her chemo appointments and then walking back. I mean, when I think about that, I get emotional, because look, when you are battling something like this, you feel weak, you feel like you can't go on, you question your body's ability to do anything. And the fact that she took it and said, nah, I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to see how far I can take my body. I'm going to see what I can do with my body, and what the hell do I have to lose At this point, she right now is battling an incurable cancer. Stage four breast cancer is a terminal diagnosis right now, and so she for her it was motivating. I love the name of her documentary. She's been documenting it. You pointed this out as she's climbing Everest, dying to climb man that packs a punch.
00:04:32
Speaker 2: And this young lady she was diagnosed in two thousand and twenty four with stage two, but a short time later she came back and more testing and this show it had spread to her liver.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: Liver.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: Now, she made the choice, Robes to make some I mean, she maybe didn't have a choice on some of it. But this is a woman who has been through it since twenty twenty four and had several surgeries that are taxing on the body and are devastating but could prolong your life.
00:05:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:05:05
Speaker 3: She had a double mastectomy and look, that is no small surgery. It is a serious recovery period. You are basically having a double amputation. This is a massive surgery. She also had liver surgery, and we have a friend who's gone through both of those things and we know what that does to the body, or at least only through her account. She's had chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and yeah, she's on drug therapy now because you don't just get this diagnosis and just wait for whatever.
00:05:35
Speaker 1: She's on a massive.
00:05:36
Speaker 3: Drug regimen that she had to continue while climbing these five weeks to summit Everest.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: All right, summitting everests of course, Robes is taxing enough. You talk about what she's doing. And again, now her situation is unique. We need to put some context and you can help with this context here with this lady. You hear stage four cancer, you hear metastatic breast cancer. And if you've ever been around or experience someone who had stage four metastatic, it's not usually the case where you're looking at someone that you think is vibrant or necessarily healthy and should be taxing their body. That's just the truth of the matter. And that's sad, and that's unfortunate. She though robes and you help everybody understand this. It spread to her liver.
00:06:22
Speaker 1: YEP.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: Now that's awful. That's metastatic. That's stage four. But they're keeping it in some way under controls my understanding, to keep it from and she had the surgery to keep it from spreading even further. And maybe that's why she is able to still right now do something as impossible seemingly as clim everest.
00:06:41
Speaker 3: Yes, the experience I've had, and it's been through friends and through partnerships and just being around folks who are metastatic. These women have a lot to give and a lot to live. And right now with the drug therapy is available for and each cancer, each stage four patient is different. But we are seeing women live a decade. We are seeing women live significantly longer than they.
00:07:04
Speaker 1: Ever have before.
00:07:05
Speaker 3: It is not an immediate death sentence right now. It still ultimately is, but we've seen women live and every year there are more drug therapies and more opportunities to live longer and better. And so I love that she's taking her diagnosis. That is the scariest diagnosis most people could ever receive, a stage four cancer diagnosis. It's what I live under the thread of and am always fearful love. But to see someone like her taking that diagnosis, and she's in the early days of this diagnosis. I say early days because she's two years into her metastatic journey. And look as she goes through different drug therapies, eventually, what ultimately happens is they stop working, you move on to the next drug. You move on to the next drug. And so she does have hopefully many many many years ahead, and hopefully a lifetime ahead.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: If researchers can catch up.
00:07:57
Speaker 3: But the point being is she is in the early stages, so she's still going to have more strength perhaps than she would maybe five years from now or ten years from now. And I love that she's showing people everywhere, even people who get seemingly the worst news ever, that you not only can just exist, but you can live.
00:08:15
Speaker 1: And that's what she said.
00:08:17
Speaker 3: She had this powerful feeling immediately after this diagnosis of not just wanting to survive, but she wanted to and she just said live, like in all caps. And I get that, and it's so inspirational.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: And she's able to. I think, no, I don't think there is a tendency Robes. There is a tendency to feel like, why is this happening to me? I can never overcome this, to go into a shell, to go into a fetal position, to just sit in the house and cry all day, And some people do, and some people physically can't do much more than that sometimes. But she is telling anybody, yes, if you're physically able, even though Robes this is a hard stuff. If she decided not to climb Everest, she would have a physically difficult day today. You know, that's just what life is. But she is saying, push through it. It hurts her. Messaging here is that I'm able to. I don't. I didn't find anything in researching her. That made it feel like she was taking some unnecessary risk with her cancer diagnosis.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: No, and at this stage, obviously she's under the care of doctors.
00:09:30
Speaker 1: She's a very intelligent woman.
00:09:32
Speaker 3: She's not doing anything that would make things worse for her at this point. They might make it harder, but it's physically harder perhaps, but the mental benefits, and she's studying if there are actual physical benefits to what she's doing, which I think is so cool. Look, I climbed Kilimanjaro, as you know, to celebrate a cancer versary, and I was I say, only at nineteen three hundred and forty one feet and that was unbelievably difficult. I was significantly pass to treatment. I was on some drug therapies, but I wasn't anywhere near as close as she is in the middle of all of this treatment.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: But she went another.
00:10:07
Speaker 3: Ten thousand feet up twenty nine thousand feet.
00:10:10
Speaker 1: In the air. That to me is so remarkable.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: I just it takes my breath away to see and to watch what she's doing and the unbelievable inspiration she's providing to people who feel like they can't get out of bed in the morning. And look, I'm sure you mentioned she's not in her room crying and licking her wounds, but I'm sure she spent many days doing that, crying and hiding and thinking why me and you go through these phases. But at some point she said, hell, yeah, I'm going to live. I'm going to do what I can with this body. I'm going to prove that I can do things that people don't think are possible. And when you see people who are pioneers like this, it is just incredible.
00:10:52
Speaker 1: And I was moved to tears reading her story.
00:10:57
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of women, and a lot of men, and a lot of people not only who've gone through cancer, but who are around people who have been through it, look at this woman and say thank you, thank you, thank you for the research, thank you for the inspiration.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: We talk about the inspiration, we talk about the research that she's doing, but that is not all. Stay here, we'll explain the other effort that she is putting forward by climbing this mountain.
00:11:21
Speaker 3: Stay here, Welcome back everyone to this inspirational episode of Amy and DJ. We are just learning about this superwoman, fifty year old doctor SHAWNA. Burke stage four breast cancer. She has gone through incredible surgeries and she's in the middle of treatment so or at least in terms of her drug therapy. She's passed the chemo at least right now. And this woman in five weeks managed to climb and summit Mount every making her the first woman ever with stage for cancer to do so. She's documenting it in a documentary called Dying Decline.
00:12:08
Speaker 1: But we just found out about it.
00:12:09
Speaker 3: It happened over the weekend, but she just posted to social media to let everyone know that she in fact summited and made it up to the top safely.
00:12:21
Speaker 2: The pictures are kind of cool. Yeah, anybody that summits ever, that's a it's a big deal. And this is something that people These are bucket lists things, and you can't just go there and do it. You have to train to do it. You have to it's very expensive to do it. And she has now done it twice and the second time around, as she said robe, she felt like she was carrying so many people with her up that mountain. And you can understand what she's saying. This isn't a message to go, hey, you stage four, stage three cancer folks out there, go out there and do the most strenuous thing you can find. That's not what she's saying. The way she put it, finds your own Everest. Everybody's got an Everest, and your Everest might be making it two blocks today because you've been so weak that you couldn't do so your evers is different. But just the idea that you don't have to it a death sentence. That doesn't have to be a death sentence. You don't die the day you get diagnosed, unfortunately too often, and you can understand why for those of those hasn't been through that, you can understand why that diagnosis could be so devastating. And for her to push back on it, I thought it was pretty damn cool.
00:13:29
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
00:13:30
Speaker 3: Did you see that she also has run the Everest Marathon, one of the hardest marathons in the world. This woman is a powerhouse. And I remember going through the toughest time is of course during chemo. But you met my oncologist doctor or at doctor Ruth Ritz. But I remember she told me, when you feel like you want to take a nap, take a walk, and when you take a walk, see if you can just take a little bit of a jog, just kind of pushing this notion that we don't have to just go into fetal position and be weak and experienced weakness. We can actually push our bodies a little further than we think each time, building a little more strength.
00:14:09
Speaker 1: And it does matter. It affects your mental health.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: It affects your ability to fight this disease because when you feel stronger, you have a different mental approach to just being a cancer patient and fighting the disease, and it just gives you a better chance at living better and living longer.
00:14:26
Speaker 2: And we mentioned she's there studying, so that's one contribution she's making. She's actually studying how exercise and oxygen levels, all these things, how that has an impact on your cancer marker. So that's incredibly valuable research there. We mentioned just the inspiration that she is by doing what she's doing. We mentioned that she's doing a documentary while she's going up, which is going to go out and inspire others when it finally comes out. And then the other thing, well, it's fundraiser.
00:14:55
Speaker 3: She's raising a ton of money, which is so incredible. She had a GoFundMe page that I think help finance the actual track.
00:15:03
Speaker 1: But now she's going to be giving back as well.
00:15:06
Speaker 2: Macmillan we don't know as familiar here maybe, but the Macmillan Cancer Support is the name of the group there, but it's one of the largest charities there that focuses on health and on cancer, and specifically she's raising money for that organization. So we can talk all day about this. You could actually argue robes that her personal gain, or her personal aims or goals or challenges might have been lower on the list of priorities for her in this journey. She's doing a lot.
00:15:36
Speaker 3: She's doing a lot for so many people, and people she's never met, she may never meet, she won't even know the ripple effects of what she's doing. Just the fact that she's done it, that she's been public about it, that she's raising awareness, that she's creating for perhaps new research.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: And now yes, she's raising money.
00:15:54
Speaker 3: Did I see it last count She's up to almost one hundred thousand dollars that she has already that will go to this cancer center, which is just going to help so many people. Because I remember I learned early on. I remember one time a doctor told me there is a cure for cancer. It's called cash. We just need to raise more of it. We need to incentivize researchers, we need to get doctors to collaborate. We need to find a way, and there is a path forward, and right now it's exciting. It's an exciting time with cancer research. There are new drugs and new therapies being discovered and created and tested each and every day, and the whole idea is to get Stage four patients to live that next day, to live a little bit longer, to get to the next therapy that's becoming available. And she is proving it can be done in ways none of us could have I would never have even thought this was possible, and it's just so cool to see that it is, and doctor SHAWNA.
00:16:48
Speaker 1: Burke is proving it to all of us.
00:16:50
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to hop on and maybe this will get you out on a run today, or at least get you to the gym, or just make you feel like you're a little stronger than you thought, no matter who you are out there, So thank you as always for listening to us.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: I'm Amy Roeboch alongside T. J. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, that folks.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Wednesday, May twenty seventh, and sure thousands of people have summoned it Mount Everest, but nobody has done it the way Doctor Shauna Burke has just done it. And with that, welcome to this inspirational episode of Amy and TJ. Robes. She is the first woman to set foot up there, and no other woman has set foot up there with the issues that she has.
00:00:32
Speaker 3: Yes, doctor Shauna Burke is a stage four breast cancer self described thriver, and look, this is this brings tears to my eyes because I think most of us can kind of understand how difficult and taxing and seemingly impossible it is to summit Mount Everest, what it takes, what it does to your body. People die every year trying, and then there are very few people who know what it's like to have breast cancer and to have stage four breast cancer where you are on constant drug therapy, your body is fighting off a deadly disease. And she summitted that mountain with stage four cancer and she is the first woman to have ever done so.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: So we're just getting worried about this now. But she's been on this journey and she's been documenting it for the past several weeks, and it does take weeks to summit everes, so she has been keeping up, but it ropes there's you would naturally, first of all, have concern that is this okay? Is this healthy? Should she be doing this challenge? And then as soon as you have it, before you can hear anything else, you go, why the hell not? What do I want her to do? I get around and wait what.
00:01:48
Speaker 3: I get emotional thinking about it. Look if she physically can do it, hell yeah, the mental benefits she gets. And look, she is a doctor, she has her PhD. She's an ex exercized psychologist. And she said she wasn't just doing this for herself. Yes, that was a huge part of it, and she is an experienced climber, but she was also doing it for the research she wanted. And she's been studying what the role exercise plays during cancer treatment for cancer patients, and she also wants to find out what oxygen deprivation might do to cancer cells.
00:02:22
Speaker 1: These are studies.
00:02:24
Speaker 3: That haven't really been researched before, because I can't think of anyone, I mean off the top of my hand, and certainly there hasn't been another woman who's been able to do this, to be able to put her body through what it's gone through and at the same time you fight in cancer, could there be benefits? That's what she also wanted to find out beyond just having this personal accomplishment.
00:02:45
Speaker 2: And this is you know, it's a name. Maybe you don't know, but she will go down in history now doctor SHAWNA. Burke. She's actually a Canadian living in the UK right now. She works with a university there. She's a social professor at Leeds Universe there in the UK. And yes, you talked about some of the work that she has done. But she is an experienced climber. She is not someone who got a DIAGNOSI and said, hey, I'm gonna go skydive and now there's a little training. Now, this woman knows what she's doing. You have to know what you're doing. Just to throw several in there, but she's climbed Kilimanjaro. Just to let you know, the woman has legit credentials on her resume.
00:03:21
Speaker 3: She climbed Everest in two thousand and five, so this is her second climb and there was a big difference. Obviously it was twenty one years ago, and so look to do it then when she was that would have made her twenty nine, probably in the prime of her life and certainly not battling cancer. So she had done it before she knew what it was going to take, and she took twelve months to prepare her body. She talked about running three miles to her chemo appointments and then walking back. I mean, when I think about that, I get emotional, because look, when you are battling something like this, you feel weak, you feel like you can't go on, you question your body's ability to do anything. And the fact that she took it and said, nah, I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to see how far I can take my body. I'm going to see what I can do with my body, and what the hell do I have to lose At this point, she right now is battling an incurable cancer. Stage four breast cancer is a terminal diagnosis right now, and so she for her it was motivating. I love the name of her documentary. She's been documenting it. You pointed this out as she's climbing Everest, dying to climb man that packs a punch.
00:04:32
Speaker 2: And this young lady she was diagnosed in two thousand and twenty four with stage two, but a short time later she came back and more testing and this show it had spread to her liver.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: Liver.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: Now, she made the choice, Robes to make some I mean, she maybe didn't have a choice on some of it. But this is a woman who has been through it since twenty twenty four and had several surgeries that are taxing on the body and are devastating but could prolong your life.
00:05:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:05:05
Speaker 3: She had a double mastectomy and look, that is no small surgery. It is a serious recovery period. You are basically having a double amputation. This is a massive surgery. She also had liver surgery, and we have a friend who's gone through both of those things and we know what that does to the body, or at least only through her account. She's had chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and yeah, she's on drug therapy now because you don't just get this diagnosis and just wait for whatever.
00:05:35
Speaker 1: She's on a massive.
00:05:36
Speaker 3: Drug regimen that she had to continue while climbing these five weeks to summit Everest.
00:05:42
Speaker 2: All right, summitting everests of course, Robes is taxing enough. You talk about what she's doing. And again, now her situation is unique. We need to put some context and you can help with this context here with this lady. You hear stage four cancer, you hear metastatic breast cancer. And if you've ever been around or experience someone who had stage four metastatic, it's not usually the case where you're looking at someone that you think is vibrant or necessarily healthy and should be taxing their body. That's just the truth of the matter. And that's sad, and that's unfortunate. She though robes and you help everybody understand this. It spread to her liver.
00:06:22
Speaker 1: YEP.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: Now that's awful. That's metastatic. That's stage four. But they're keeping it in some way under controls my understanding, to keep it from and she had the surgery to keep it from spreading even further. And maybe that's why she is able to still right now do something as impossible seemingly as clim everest.
00:06:41
Speaker 3: Yes, the experience I've had, and it's been through friends and through partnerships and just being around folks who are metastatic. These women have a lot to give and a lot to live. And right now with the drug therapy is available for and each cancer, each stage four patient is different. But we are seeing women live a decade. We are seeing women live significantly longer than they.
00:07:04
Speaker 1: Ever have before.
00:07:05
Speaker 3: It is not an immediate death sentence right now. It still ultimately is, but we've seen women live and every year there are more drug therapies and more opportunities to live longer and better. And so I love that she's taking her diagnosis. That is the scariest diagnosis most people could ever receive, a stage four cancer diagnosis. It's what I live under the thread of and am always fearful love. But to see someone like her taking that diagnosis, and she's in the early days of this diagnosis. I say early days because she's two years into her metastatic journey. And look as she goes through different drug therapies, eventually, what ultimately happens is they stop working, you move on to the next drug. You move on to the next drug. And so she does have hopefully many many many years ahead, and hopefully a lifetime ahead.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: If researchers can catch up.
00:07:57
Speaker 3: But the point being is she is in the early stages, so she's still going to have more strength perhaps than she would maybe five years from now or ten years from now. And I love that she's showing people everywhere, even people who get seemingly the worst news ever, that you not only can just exist, but you can live.
00:08:15
Speaker 1: And that's what she said.
00:08:17
Speaker 3: She had this powerful feeling immediately after this diagnosis of not just wanting to survive, but she wanted to and she just said live, like in all caps. And I get that, and it's so inspirational.
00:08:30
Speaker 2: And she's able to. I think, no, I don't think there is a tendency Robes. There is a tendency to feel like, why is this happening to me? I can never overcome this, to go into a shell, to go into a fetal position, to just sit in the house and cry all day, And some people do, and some people physically can't do much more than that sometimes. But she is telling anybody, yes, if you're physically able, even though Robes this is a hard stuff. If she decided not to climb Everest, she would have a physically difficult day today. You know, that's just what life is. But she is saying, push through it. It hurts her. Messaging here is that I'm able to. I don't. I didn't find anything in researching her. That made it feel like she was taking some unnecessary risk with her cancer diagnosis.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: No, and at this stage, obviously she's under the care of doctors.
00:09:30
Speaker 1: She's a very intelligent woman.
00:09:32
Speaker 3: She's not doing anything that would make things worse for her at this point. They might make it harder, but it's physically harder perhaps, but the mental benefits, and she's studying if there are actual physical benefits to what she's doing, which I think is so cool. Look, I climbed Kilimanjaro, as you know, to celebrate a cancer versary, and I was I say, only at nineteen three hundred and forty one feet and that was unbelievably difficult. I was significantly pass to treatment. I was on some drug therapies, but I wasn't anywhere near as close as she is in the middle of all of this treatment.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: But she went another.
00:10:07
Speaker 3: Ten thousand feet up twenty nine thousand feet.
00:10:10
Speaker 1: In the air. That to me is so remarkable.
00:10:15
Speaker 3: I just it takes my breath away to see and to watch what she's doing and the unbelievable inspiration she's providing to people who feel like they can't get out of bed in the morning. And look, I'm sure you mentioned she's not in her room crying and licking her wounds, but I'm sure she spent many days doing that, crying and hiding and thinking why me and you go through these phases. But at some point she said, hell, yeah, I'm going to live. I'm going to do what I can with this body. I'm going to prove that I can do things that people don't think are possible. And when you see people who are pioneers like this, it is just incredible.
00:10:52
Speaker 1: And I was moved to tears reading her story.
00:10:57
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of women, and a lot of men, and a lot of people not only who've gone through cancer, but who are around people who have been through it, look at this woman and say thank you, thank you, thank you for the research, thank you for the inspiration.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: We talk about the inspiration, we talk about the research that she's doing, but that is not all. Stay here, we'll explain the other effort that she is putting forward by climbing this mountain.
00:11:21
Speaker 3: Stay here, Welcome back everyone to this inspirational episode of Amy and DJ. We are just learning about this superwoman, fifty year old doctor SHAWNA. Burke stage four breast cancer. She has gone through incredible surgeries and she's in the middle of treatment so or at least in terms of her drug therapy. She's passed the chemo at least right now. And this woman in five weeks managed to climb and summit Mount every making her the first woman ever with stage for cancer to do so. She's documenting it in a documentary called Dying Decline.
00:12:08
Speaker 1: But we just found out about it.
00:12:09
Speaker 3: It happened over the weekend, but she just posted to social media to let everyone know that she in fact summited and made it up to the top safely.
00:12:21
Speaker 2: The pictures are kind of cool. Yeah, anybody that summits ever, that's a it's a big deal. And this is something that people These are bucket lists things, and you can't just go there and do it. You have to train to do it. You have to it's very expensive to do it. And she has now done it twice and the second time around, as she said robe, she felt like she was carrying so many people with her up that mountain. And you can understand what she's saying. This isn't a message to go, hey, you stage four, stage three cancer folks out there, go out there and do the most strenuous thing you can find. That's not what she's saying. The way she put it, finds your own Everest. Everybody's got an Everest, and your Everest might be making it two blocks today because you've been so weak that you couldn't do so your evers is different. But just the idea that you don't have to it a death sentence. That doesn't have to be a death sentence. You don't die the day you get diagnosed, unfortunately too often, and you can understand why for those of those hasn't been through that, you can understand why that diagnosis could be so devastating. And for her to push back on it, I thought it was pretty damn cool.
00:13:29
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
00:13:30
Speaker 3: Did you see that she also has run the Everest Marathon, one of the hardest marathons in the world. This woman is a powerhouse. And I remember going through the toughest time is of course during chemo. But you met my oncologist doctor or at doctor Ruth Ritz. But I remember she told me, when you feel like you want to take a nap, take a walk, and when you take a walk, see if you can just take a little bit of a jog, just kind of pushing this notion that we don't have to just go into fetal position and be weak and experienced weakness. We can actually push our bodies a little further than we think each time, building a little more strength.
00:14:09
Speaker 1: And it does matter. It affects your mental health.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: It affects your ability to fight this disease because when you feel stronger, you have a different mental approach to just being a cancer patient and fighting the disease, and it just gives you a better chance at living better and living longer.
00:14:26
Speaker 2: And we mentioned she's there studying, so that's one contribution she's making. She's actually studying how exercise and oxygen levels, all these things, how that has an impact on your cancer marker. So that's incredibly valuable research there. We mentioned just the inspiration that she is by doing what she's doing. We mentioned that she's doing a documentary while she's going up, which is going to go out and inspire others when it finally comes out. And then the other thing, well, it's fundraiser.
00:14:55
Speaker 3: She's raising a ton of money, which is so incredible. She had a GoFundMe page that I think help finance the actual track.
00:15:03
Speaker 1: But now she's going to be giving back as well.
00:15:06
Speaker 2: Macmillan we don't know as familiar here maybe, but the Macmillan Cancer Support is the name of the group there, but it's one of the largest charities there that focuses on health and on cancer, and specifically she's raising money for that organization. So we can talk all day about this. You could actually argue robes that her personal gain, or her personal aims or goals or challenges might have been lower on the list of priorities for her in this journey. She's doing a lot.
00:15:36
Speaker 3: She's doing a lot for so many people, and people she's never met, she may never meet, she won't even know the ripple effects of what she's doing. Just the fact that she's done it, that she's been public about it, that she's raising awareness, that she's creating for perhaps new research.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: And now yes, she's raising money.
00:15:54
Speaker 3: Did I see it last count She's up to almost one hundred thousand dollars that she has already that will go to this cancer center, which is just going to help so many people. Because I remember I learned early on. I remember one time a doctor told me there is a cure for cancer. It's called cash. We just need to raise more of it. We need to incentivize researchers, we need to get doctors to collaborate. We need to find a way, and there is a path forward, and right now it's exciting. It's an exciting time with cancer research. There are new drugs and new therapies being discovered and created and tested each and every day, and the whole idea is to get Stage four patients to live that next day, to live a little bit longer, to get to the next therapy that's becoming available. And she is proving it can be done in ways none of us could have I would never have even thought this was possible, and it's just so cool to see that it is, and doctor SHAWNA.
00:16:48
Speaker 1: Burke is proving it to all of us.
00:16:50
Speaker 3: So I just wanted to hop on and maybe this will get you out on a run today, or at least get you to the gym, or just make you feel like you're a little stronger than you thought, no matter who you are out there, So thank you as always for listening to us.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: I'm Amy Roeboch alongside T. J. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.