Run, Run, Run – Top Canadian Marathon Athlete Shares His Testicular Cancer Story - Season 2, Episode 4

Running, teaching, running, testicular cancer…teaching….thyroid cancer…Jonathan Bradnam finished first among Canadian men in the 2021 New York City Marathon on Nov. 7. A teacher from Welland, Ontario, Canada, Jonathan survived two cancers, continued running during his journey, and began a running group for his students. His athletic ability and healthy living are part of his testicular cancer story, which he shares in this episode of Don’t Give Up on Testicular Cancer from the Max Mallory Foundation. 

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Run, Run, Run: Top Canadian Marathon Athlete Shares His Testicular Cancer Story, 

with Jonathan Bradnam, season 2, episode 4

Welcome to Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer, where cancer survivors, caregivers, and others touched by cancer share their stories. The Max Mallory Foundation presents this podcast in honor and memory of Max Mallory, who died at age 22 from testicular cancer. I'm your host, Joyce Lofstrom, a young adult and adult cancer survivor, and Max's mom.

JOYCE: Hi, this is Joyce. And with me today is Jonathan Bradnum. He's a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in Welland, Ontario, Canada. He's also a cancer survivor of both testicular and thyroid cancer. A husband and father, John runs marathons. And most recently he was selected to join the Canadian team, TCS, with four other teachers to run the New York city marathon--which happened in early November 2021. And he keeps on running with his students and he's established a running club at his school. So we'll learn more about all of them. So Jonathan, I'm glad you could join me today.

 JONATHAN: That was quite the introduction. Thank you, Joyce. It's very nice to talk with you, too.

JOYCE: Let's just start with your story. Tell us about your testicular cancer journey. What happened? Anything you want to share with us?

JONATHAN: Sure. So I'll go back to 2016. I was living a normal life, teaching elementary school. I had a young family at the time. My daughter was born in 2013, so she was three, and my son was born in 2015, so he was one. And being quite involved in sports and things at home, I was quite involved in the soccer scene. So as a soccer referee, I had a soccer game. Actually, I'm going to go back a little bit before that, maybe about two weeks. Let me think about this. This would have been… June 2016, I started to notice some discomfort and it wasn't anything super-concerning to me. My kids, like I said, were young at the time so they'd be jumping on daddy, and I noticed a little bit of discomfort when they're jumping on me, but didn't really worry too much about it. But I did mention it to my wife. And it was a little bit hard to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. But my wife said, you better just go and get checked out. And I was being athletic. I'm used to having different little injuries and little ailments. So I didn't really think much of it. But I said, alright, I guess I'll go get checked out. I went to get checked out; I went to my doctor who then sent me to go get an ultrasound, who then sent me to go get some blood work done at the hospital. And then I was sent home. A little bit concerning, but not super-concerning at the time. And then the doctor at the hospital had just said, if anything gets progressively worse, just to make sure you let them know.

So I was still staying involved with soccer. I referee nearly every night. So I had a soccer game going on a couple of days later. And during the game, I was in extreme discomfort. I could hardly run. I remember talking to another referee during the game saying, hey, like, I'm really hurting today. I'm just going to struggle to get through this game. So we ended up switching roles during that game. He took over as lead referee, and I took the sideline and got through the game.

Next day--again, I'm not one to sit at home and take time off--I went to work. And this was on a Friday. And I remember getting to work, going to my office, and the teacher in the room beside me said, John, you look terrible today. You need to go home. I was like, yeah, you're probably right. I do need to go home. At that time, I remember just driving home, getting home. School's only a couple minutes from my house. Drove home. I remember just sitting in my driveway and started crying, because I knew something was serious. I didn't really know exactly what it was. But something was seriously wrong. So at that time there, I drove to the hospital, in Niagara Falls, Canada. And the results had started to come back from my testing earlier in the week. I talked to the doctor, and he was like, hey, John, like, it looks like you have cancer. It looks like it's aggressive and we're going to do your surgery tonight. And I was like, wow.

Like at that moment, my mind was blown. Like cancer had never really even been on my mind before that. So I remember making a phone call around noon, I guess noon on that Friday, calling my wife, who's at home with my young kids [and I was] saying, hey, you're gonna have to come pick me up from the hospital tonight, because I'm having emergency surgery. So thank God the doctor caught it at that moment and provided the surgery immediately. So I had surgery that evening.

The [were] two reasons for the quick surgery. One was because it was an aggressive form of testicular cancer called embryonal carcinoma. Two, he was also going to be going on vacation for three weeks. He was like, John, this can't wait for three weeks. We're going to do it now. So, he did the surgery, I went home after about a week or so, I felt pretty good. Went back to work in about a week. I finished off the school year. There's only about a week or two left in the school year, [so I] finished off the school year and kind of thought things were okay. And then I went to the hospital just for my  post-surgery checkup, and my wife and I remember joking around with the doctor, kind of thinking things were good--not really too worried about how the results were. And then he started looking at the scans. He was like, well, we noticed a couple of other,  abnormalities in your abdomen and it's looking like it's metastasized into your abdomen. So this is something that can't be dealt with locally.

And at that time they sent me to, well, actually, they gave me two options. They gave me the option of going to Juravinsky Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, which is a great hospital. And he also gave me the option of going to Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, which is one of the top cancer sites in the world. So at that time, we made the decision to proceed with things in Toronto.

So we're going to fast forward here. And even in the meantime, I was teaching summer school locally for that summer until the surgery, or until the next steps happened. So things progressed to Princess Margaret [Hospital]. So when I went there to see what the next steps would be, I met with the doctor team there. Extremely amazing facility, extremely amazing doctors. My wife and I got to meet with two of the actual doctors, so it wasn't like practitioners, it was the main guys we got to talk with, [and] they said, hey, you have stage 2b embryonal carcinoma, which means the tumors are kind of mid-sized and they're in your abdomen, they haven't spread to like your lungs or to your brain. But they're definitely in your abdomen.

They gave me two options at that time. One was to have a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, an RPLND, which is like when they split you open from your throat to your groin area, kind of open you up and take out all your lymph nodes. So that was option A. And then option B was to go through chemotherapy. At that point, they wanted me to do three cycles of three weeks, so a nine-week process of, what was it called--bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin, so BEP cycle. And the doctors gave me the statistics about like the chances of success for both. Both were kind of around the 80% success rate, which, you know, you start thinking about those numbers, 80% sounds great, but there's 20% of the chance that it's not going to be great.

So if things weren't great at that time, kind of the next step would be to go through the other process as kind of the secondary measure. So whichever one I chose was the first step. And then if something else had to be done, they'd go to the other option. So my wife and I talked about it, and it was--I remember them closing the door and like, they wanted to—a decision to be made relatively quickly. I was like, wow, like this is like a life-altering decision at this point. Right. So we talked about it, and I opted for the chemotherapy treatments. My thinking at the time was that I know surgeons are extremely skilled and extremely professional and amazing at what they do, but, just by the odd chance if they missed some lymph node that had some sort of cancer cells in it, I didn't want to leave that to chance. And I thought with my wife, we prayed about it and thought that, if we go through the chemotherapy process, like the chemicals, you know, it's going to be hard on your body, but they're not as selective. So they're going to kill everything that's in there, hopefully. That was the thinking. So that was, I guess,  July 2016.

So I started my treatments in August 2016 at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. It's a three-week cycle. The first week's the heavy week where you have chemotherapy every day. And then the second week and the third week, you just have, I think it was one treatment each week. And then you kind of give your body a little bit of time to recover. Cause it's a pretty aggressive treatment. And then you repeat that cycle three times. Thankfully, Toronto from my house is about an hour and a half to two hours’ drive if the traffic's good, but there's often pretty severe traffic. So, the weeks when I was there for the full week, I ended up staying in a hotel for the week, close to the hospital. They gave me the option to stay onsite, but my thinking at that time was, you know, I'm young, I'm relatively healthy. I don't really want to be in a facility where I’m surrounded with people who are, you know, not the same state in their treatment. So I have to stay in the hotel to try to keep things positive.

My dad's also a cancer survivor, so he came with me. And so we stayed at the hospital. Yeah, it was nice to have that support system. And like I said, my wife was a rock during that time, too. So she was at home with my young kids, trying to keep things as normal and stable at home as she possibly could, with the knowledge that daddy's going through some pretty serious stuff right now. So [I] went through that cycle in Toronto with my dad. I remember going into chemotherapy for the first time and not really sure what to expect. And, you know, saying a little prayer the night before, hoping that, you know, after this treatment, daddy's eyes are going to be opening the next day to be able to see his kids. And you just got to kind of go through the process. And after that, yeah, go ahead. Sorry, Joyce.

JOYCE: Oh, no, I'm interrupting you, but I'm just saying, yes, you're right, because you don't you know, it's very scary.

JONATHAN: It's very scary. And you've obviously never gone through it, so you don't really know what to expect. Once the process starts, it's just kind of the process. You don't really have a whole lot of time to think about what's happening. You just go through what the doctors say is best. And at that point, I know there's a lot of people asking how things are going. My wife is obviously very concerned. So I think it's actually often harder on the people who aren't going through the treatment, like your spouse or your family, because they want to be able to help, but there's not a whole lot they can do other than try to hold down the fort in other spots. So I went through the treatment process and then they'd give you your scans and your blood work every week or two to try to see how things are progressing. And every update, every checkup that I had, was pretty positive. [It] seemed like the cancer, the tumors were shrinking.

By the end of the nine weeks, so that would have been September--I think it was September 24th, 2016, around that point--my treatments were finished. And so the follow up scans and blood work seemed to show that the cancer had then been treated properly through the chemotherapy and there's no signs of it. So I never like to say that it's gone. It's always still kind of on your mind. But yeah, so at that point there was no evidence of any cancer left in the body. That was kind of the end of it at that point. And  I went back home, and ended up actually going back to work, I think it took three weeks off after that finished. So I was still definitely in recovery mode when I went back to work. But again, like I'm not someone who likes to sit around and twiddle my thumbs. 

So I went back to work as quickly as I could, and that was a bit shocking. I remember going back to work and I had pretty bad tinnitus in my ears after the chemotherapy treatment. Well, I obviously noticed it, but it was much worse. Like when you're kind of out of your protected element at home. And so I guess that was it. I’ve been going to Princess Margaret [Hospital] for checkups ever since that point. And everything since that point in terms of the testicular cancer diagnosis has been good. So. I'm now going there, I think it's once a year is where I am in the whole treatment process. And they give me the scans and the blood work and meet with the doctors. And like I said, they're an extremely amazing facility. They treated us excellently. And they really do care about their patients there.

JOYCE: Well, you passed the five-year mark, I think, too.

JONATHAN: Yeah, I passed the five-year mark, but I mentioned to you, and you mentioned it earlier, my case is a little bit more complicated than most. So I passed the five-year mark. But yeah, so do you want me to get into the thyroid stuff, Joyce?

JOYCE: Yeah, and just a minute, I just wanted to make a comment about how abruptly  everything changed for you--abruptly, because you were a really active guy with the sports and the teaching and your young kids.

JONATHAN: That was actually one of the hardest things. So like when I had to put my life on hold for that, you know, whatever it was, four months or so, like just notifying everybody that John's not available to be doing what he normally does. Like that took a lot of work to be able to try to like get people to fill different voids. And that was honestly pretty hard because I like I like being busy. I like staying involved with different things and not to just lie in my bed. That's part of the process. That was hard, though. My daughter, who was three at the time, she wanted to be my little nurse, so she'd be bringing me drinks and food and bed. She talked about that recently [and said] ‘I remember being a little nurse when you had no hair.’ And I was like, that's not normal for a three-year-old to have to experience.

JOYCE: Right. That was her life. Yeah. I mean, it's in the support system you had--very strong, too, with your family, it sounds like.

JONATHAN: Yeah. Like my family, like I said, my wife, she picked up all the pieces that I had to drop at that time. And [I’m] thankful for her for being there, for being able to do that. And my family and my in-laws and a lot of friends helped as well. So I have a great circle of family and friends and church in the area, and there were tons of people, more than I really needed to help with different elements in my life, to help make sure the kids were OK, help make sure different things I was involved with were OK, help make sure my family was OK, and help make sure I was OK. So I was very thankful for that at that time.

JOYCE: That's great. So yeah, go ahead and tell us about your next cancer diagnosis.

JONATHAN: Yeah, was that was kind of shocking, to be honest. So that was in 2018. Fast forward about two years from my initial diagnosis. I was back teaching [and] coaching sports at school. I remember it was around my birthday. So March 2018. I went to just get my regular scans of the hospital and part of the regular scans they give you a CT scan of your abdomen area and your chest. And so they're looking to see obviously if the cancer is present.

An interesting follow-up after my scans: the doctor was like, well, everything looks fine in terms of your previous diagnosis, but there's something kind of at the top of the scan. Like they're not even really scanning your throat, but it just a piece of it showed up in the very top of the scan. They're like, there's something, we noticed something in your throat and your thyroid. And we want to double-check to make sure things are okay. Have you noticed anything? I was like, no, I feel totally fine. Like I have zero concerns. I wasn't concerned about anything at all.

So they wanted me to go through an ultrasound to give that a check. I got that done locally. And after that, they were kind of a bit inconclusive. So they sent me for a biopsy. I know you mentioned you've had thyroid cancer. So a thyroid biopsy like that was kind of painful. That was an interesting experience. They stick a big a big needle in your throat. And so I got the thyroid biopsy done. And I remember distinctly I was driving home from school, we had a basketball game. I coached basketball at school. And I'm driving home from a basketball game. I'm already in the Princess Margaret [Hospital] portal, because I was one of their patients, [so] I get all their updates emailed to me. I remember driving home from a basketball game and got an email with my results, so I pulled over in the grocery store parking lot so I could check my email, and was kind of expecting everything to be fine, and I see on the email like I see papillary carcinoma. 

I was like, well, I don't really know what papillary is, but I know what carcinoma is based on my past experience, and that sounds terrible, so I did a little Google search in the parking lot, and that's how I found out I had thyroid cancer--through an email. So they actually called me, a day or two later, just to let me know like this was what's going on.  Again, I'm driving home from school after this basketball game, and had to give my wife the latest news again. That was hard for her. We thought we were through the worst of things with the whole cancer stuff in my life, and to have to go through it for a second time. It was like the cycle is just beginning again. So that was that was hard for both of us. The thyroid cancer diagnosis wasn't as extreme as a testicular one, but just because of the timing of things and the past experiences like that [it] was hard. That was definitely a hard a hard pill to swallow. So they diagnosed that.

So then when they did the follow-up, and it was funny. So they asked like, how, like, had you noticed anything? And for years, I never really had thought about this, but every time I had to cough, I kind of put my fingers on my throat to give it a little bit of extra pressure. I never felt like it actually like cleared my throat. I just thought that was my life. Like I never even questioned it. There was no pain or anything like that. But I guess after the diagnosis, exactly where I was pressing on my throat was where the tumor was.

JOYCE: Oh my.

JONATHAN: Yeah, so that was an interesting revelation there. Anyway, so they found the thyroid tumor was on my left side but was encroaching on the right side of my thyroid as well. And because of my past diagnosis, they didn't want to leave anything to chance. So they removed my whole thyroid in 2018. So that was June 2018. And again, that surgery was done at Princess Margaret [Hospital] in Toronto. They were extremely professional, extremely proficient with it. And if you looked at my scar now on my neck,  it's hardly visible. I’ve known other people who've had their thyroids removed, and their scars are fairly visible. I had a doctor, Dr. Rotstein, who did my surgery and [was] extremely professional. When I went through the process, they're like, well, it's thyroid cancer. It's not super-aggressive. You can get it done quicker if you'd like. But if you want to wait for this doctor to do it, he'll do it for you. But you just have to wait for an extra month or two. And I was like, you know what? I'll take your advice. I'll wait for this doctor to do it. And he did a fantastic job. So that was in Toronto. in June 2018.

And then in August 2018, as you know, I got the radioactive iodine treatment, which is it's an interesting experience. Did you have that done as well, Joyce?

JOYCE: I’ve had it done twice.

JONATHAN: Yeah. So you know how that works. And it's interesting. Like they said, we think everything is gone, everything looks good. But kind of as like your silver bullet to make sure there's absolutely no remnants floating around in there, we're going to give you this pill. And like it's nuclear, right? So your body like it's like, a little nuclear bomb going off in your body. So it was it was weird. You go to the hospital, they have like this pill in a container, in another container that's super safe, super protected. Like the nurse comes in wearing like a hazmat suit and a shield. I'm just sitting there with my normal street clothes on. And she gives you this pill to swallow and takes the Geiger meter to stick it to your throat to make sure that, you know, your body's actually nuclear. And sure enough, like that Geiger meter started beeping away when it went to my throat. So that was that was interesting. There was no pain or any side effects from it all. But just knowing that your body was nuclear at that time was strange. And as you know, like they want you to limit who you're around for the immediate week, two weeks, three weeks after that's done. So my family ended up my wife and kids end up staying at the in-laws for a week. It gave me the house to myself just to make sure that they were safe. And that's when I got back into running.

JOYCE: It's the whole thyroid cancer thing is as you described, John. My first time was many years ago, 1978. And yeah, I was 25 and had just found out I had type one diabetes. They felt a lump in my neck after that. And long story short, it was didn't go away. And I had radiation treatment in the 60s in high school for acne. Okay. they kept asking me, have you been exposed to radiation? And I said, well, I don't know, but I'll try to find out if this light treatment was radiation. And it was. So I had the same thing. They took out my entire thyroid. They did nothing then. All they did was a scan. It came back twice in 20 years. It came back and, again, I had the lump removed. And then the third time I had a neck dissection on the right side of my neck where they took out all the lymph nodes: 24 of them, [and] four of them were malignant. And then I had the radioactive iodine. And it was like what you just described. It was like stay in [a separate part of the house] and don't be around anyone. I mean, I was in a separate part of my house. And the first time I was in the hospital, and they had coated the whole room with plastic.

JONATHAN: Right, it's surreal, right? Like, I'm just a person sitting here, and this is like a crazy situation.

JOYCE: But they had the Geiger counter, you know, the whole thing. So anyway, it's a, I guess it's a [form of] chemo. Tt's the treatment, I guess, for thyroid cancer.

JONATHAN: Yeah, it's just a treatment. And it was like they said, they called it the silver bullet, right? You know, you do some research, I'm sure you've done the same thing, like there's potential for some long-term side effects from it, I guess it's better than having short-term side effects.

JOYCE: Yeah, and it's that kind of thyroid cancer; we had the same kind, it's very localized, which is good.

JONATHAN: Well, and they figured too, like I found this fascinating, they figured that my thyroid cancer was probably there before the testicular cancer, because it's so slow progressing and they never had [a reason to] check that area before, and I had no issues with it. They figured that it was there at least as long, if not longer, than the testicular cancer, just very slow-progressing. It's interesting because until somebody really feels your neck to make sure there's nothing there--I’ve never had a doctor do that either-- until that happens so it's funny now too, you'll see now that I’ve gone through it, sometimes I'll notice someone who has a little lump on their neck. It's like I notice it now because I’ve gone through it, right? I’ve made the comment to the odd person too, like, hey, have you ever had this checked? Because here's my experience, right?

JOYCE: Yeah, it's good to do that. I know in the U.S. there's some television personality and somebody emailed her the same thing. I remember hearing that story actually. Well, talk about your blogging because I know that was a big part of your, I'll call it therapy.

JONATHAN: That was something that I had never done before and have never done since. So yeah, when I was going through the testicular cancer, I had tons of people texting me, messaging me, asking me questions. And it got overwhelming, right? A lot of people wanted to know, and again, they're doing it [because] they care, they want to know how things are going, they want to see how they can help, which is amazing, right? But when I was getting bombarded--where it became almost a job just to answer texts and emails and messages and stuff like that.

So at that time, I was doing a bit of research myself to see if I could find anything out,  about like how this treatment actually works. And, you find a little piece here and a little piece there, but nothing was really like thorough in the process. So at that point, I was like, you know what, I'm going to blog about this for two reasons. I want to share with people my story and let them know what the process is like. At that point, I didn't know how scary it would be. It could have been terrible. It could have been not so terrible. When you're going through it, you don't know what that outcome is going to be. So that was the first reason why. And the second reason why was just to let everyone know, here's my story. Here's what's going on. If you want an update, I will be writing every day. Feel free to check it. So they'd be messaging me. I'm like, here's a link. Feel free to check it. Feel free to share it with people who are also interested. It became pretty interesting.

So I was blogging every day for the first cycle, maybe two cycles, and it kind of slowed down a little bit at the end. But at one point, I was doing it on WordPress, and you can get your stats and stuff. So there were close to 1,000 hits a day for a while where people were checking in on things, which was comforting to know that there's that many people who are hearing your story. I remember being in the hospital, this one girl came up to me, and she's like, you're the one who's blogging right now. [She said:] my husband's going through the same thing as you. Like we've been following you as you go. So we still talk to them now.

JOYCE: Oh great. So that was pretty cool.

JONATHAN: Yeah. Like I have no idea how they found out. Like it wasn't like I advertised them on the hospital website or anything like that. Like there was zero advertising at all. So she found it somehow, and they're following as we went. That was cool. So just kind of being able to share my story as I went helped give me a focus as I was going to like, like I said, I'm not one to sit around a whole lot. So I liked having some sort of purpose while I was going through the treatments and to share my story and possibly help other people out too.

JOYCE: I read your blog. It was very good, very detailed. But, you know, I think anyone like the woman you met that would be going through it would learn a lo,t so I think that was good that you could share all of that.

JONATHAN: Yeah, thanks and like I said, I was doing a lot of it just for my own knowledge too, like I wanted to learn, I wanted to be able to share, so I was multifaceted while I was doing it.

JOYCE: You talked a lot about your wife and how much Michelle supported you and [support from] your friends. Can you elaborate on the kind of support you had?

JONATHAN: Yeah, like I couldn't imagine going through that kind of stuff on your own, right? So knowing I had a family, a wife, my kids, my parents, friends, church, people from sports that I know, there's just tons of people that were very hopeful and very supportive throughout that process. So just knowing that there's a huge community around you, kind of rallying around you. Oh, there are a lot more other stories I could share with you, Joyce. But yeah, just knowing that there are people who really, truly care about you gives you that strength to persevere through some of those struggles as well, because like going through treatments isn't easy. Like you go through a lot of pain, a lot of struggles through it. But knowing that you're not alone, a lot of people really want to see you pull through, was powerful.

JOYCE: I’ve talked to a lot of young men that have athletics as part of their life, I guess I'll say. And some runners, one golfer, actually another Canadian who was really into golf when he found out he had testicular cancer.

JONATHAN: Who was he? I'm just curious. Was it the one who's also a hockey referee now?

JOYCE: I don't know.

JONATHAN: I know there was one story. Anyways, go ahead. Go ahead, Joyce.

JOYCE: I have to go back and look, which I think it's Timothy Buckland is who it was. All right.

JONATHAN: Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

JOYCE: But anyway, just talk about some of your, I guess, interest in athletics and then your segue into the running that you've been doing with marathons.

JONATHAN: Yeah, so that's been an interesting journey as well. My whole life I’ve enjoyed running. I went to a small elementary school, like there were like a hundred kids in my elementary school, a little local school. We had a principal there who was really into running, named Gord Hamilton. And like starting around grade three, like he wanted us at school every day before school. And we'd run for, you know, we had a nice creek system close to our school. We'd run through the creek, run through the streets. I don't know how far it was, probably 3K, 4K, 5K. I don't know. So I'm talking kilometers being Canadian, but yeah, so I guess putting maybe like four miles, like three or four, I mean, probably what's that, two miles, three miles, something like that, two to three miles we were running with Mr. Hamilton every day. And like, it was just something that we did, like half my class would come out in the morning before school. And that just became part of my routine every day. You go to school 45 minutes early, run with Mr. Hamilton.

We all loved it. Because we had a small school, anybody who was into athletics played on every school team. And for a little school, we did well. We won a lot of the city tournaments and regardless of the sport, just because we had a lot of kids who were just interested in sports growing up. I just thought that's how things were everywhere. So that was a great experience; it was a super cool experience right? And then kind of as you got older, you realized our little world's not quite the same as it is everywhere, right?

So going to high school, I played a bunch of different sports. I ran track in grade nine  and then after that, between different things, I was involved with the school. I was working as well. You know, I can't do everything. So I dropped the track. There are various reasons for that. I still ran off and on throughout high school and did a couple local races and things like that, local 5Ks and things. And, I was very involved in soccer. I was playing soccer in the summer, going into grade 12 and ended up [in] last game of the season, extra time we were tied. And it was a muddy day. 

I remember distinctly going for a run and made a cut on the soccer field, and I tore my ACL on my knee. That was going into grade 12, so like your last year of high school when you want to be doing everything, and that really sucked. So I did what I could, but that was kind of--I had a big knee brace. Wearing a big knee brace really was hard to play soccer with, so that's when I transitioned into refereeing soccer, just to stay involved with things. So that was it. And then going into university, like I was focused on my education. I wasn't doing any university level sports. I still kept kind of running throughout university on the track at school and in the neighborhood, but never anything competitive or super serious. Probably, a couple of times a week here and there.

And then, life got busy with work. I got a career, had my family, got married, had kids. I moved to England for a year. I was teaching over there, came back home, and yeah, so  athletics was on the back burner. Like, I played ball hockey with my friends. We had a team that was pretty decent, but yeah, nothing super serious. But then, you know, once I went through the treatments, it took a toll on my body. Like I ballooned, I lost my hair. I didn't feel like myself. I looked terrible. I'm looking back at the photos now, the chemotherapy, like it's not easy on your body, obviously. So after going through the testicular cancer, I started running a little bit after that, but not a lot. Actually, I was really lucky. My neighbor, two doors down from me, was just getting into running. And as I was going through my treatments, he was like, John, do you want to go running with me? And I was like, sure, Brett, yeah, I'll go running with you. And at that point, his goal was to have a 30-minute 5K. And for me, you know, as I'm going through chemotherapy, that's about all I can muster up as well. So it was nice to have him to run with. And so we'd run a couple of times a week. I remember back when I was a kid and, you know, I could run an 18-minute 5k and I'm nowhere close to that anymore. 

JOYCE: That's a great time.

JONATHAN: Yeah. But I was just like, I was so far from that world at that time. I was just trying to survive. After going through chemotherapy, I mentioned it to you, I think--I had bad neuropathy in my feet. So neuropathy is like my feet felt like lead blocks. I could hardly walk, let alone run. My neurological system was messed up from the chemotherapy. I remember just lying in bed, like I'd have to lie up in bed to touch my feet to make sure they're still there and still warm. I had no feeling in my feet. So I could, I could walk, you know, after the chemotherapy was done. I could lightly jog, but very lightly. I remember one moment, the ball hockey team that I used to play with, they were shorthanded one day. So they gave me a call and said, hey, John, you know, if you're available, we need some guys tonight. So I said, sure. Yeah, I'll come out and play. That was my first time like trying to do something super athletic after that. I remember them passing me the ball and I tried to run, and I just fell over and it was so demoralizing. I'm like, I can't even run right now. I can jog, but my feet won't do it. My brain's telling it to do it. And then my buddy passed me the ball again, the same thing. I ran and I just fell. Like my feet wouldn't move.

It was like, I wanted to cry. Like, I can't like what's going on with my life right now. So I remember I sat on the bench the rest of the game. I was like, wow, you're nowhere close to where you once were. And it was heartbreaking.

JOYCE: Right.

JONATHAN: Cause I was someone who [always considered] sports was important. It was important in my life. And at that point I was like, wow, like maybe I'll never be able to do this again. Then, after the thyroid again, so like I got back into refereeing soccer, about six months after that, and the neuropathy had kind of subsided. So my feet were back to the way they were. There were still some lingering elements of it, but not enough to slow me down, I guess. I got back into refereeing soccer and it's funny how things work.

So I was at the soccer club and there was a poster on the wall for a local 5k race. This was posted just before the radioactive iodine in 2018. And I remember seeing a poster thinking, there's a local 5k race coming up at the end of September. And I was thinking, I wonder if I can get back to under 20 minutes. At that point, that was a super lofty goal for me. So I started getting back into training. My radioactive iodine treatment happened. 

My family was gone for that week or so. So I didn't really have a whole lot to do. I went down to the local track by my house and started running 5Ks on the track every day. And, you know, I started seeing slow progress--23 minutes, 22 and a half minutes, getting back to where I was. And yeah, that was it. I started doing 5Ks locally and then through doing that, started becoming quite successful after about six months or so. And I met some people through that. One person I met, his name was Charles Gervais, who was involved in the local race directing scene, as well as was a runner himself. And he was like, John, you've got some potential to be a marathoner. Have you ever thought about it? I was like, no, man. I don't want to train that much. I like doing 5Ks. I can train for 20 minutes and get on with my day. It doesn't take that long. He was like, well, you've shown some great progress. He showed me some run calculations on his phone. He's like, I bet you can get under three hours. That's Boston qualifying territory.

I had no idea about training plans, I had no idea about Strava, which is a running app, I had no idea about running groups, I was just running 5Ks at the local track. There's a nice trail by my house, by the water, that I like to run on, so at that point I was like, yeah, maybe I can do this. so I amped up the training, he connected me with some other local runners. I remember at that point too, they do a loop. It's the Morningstar runners locally. They're an amazing, talented group of runners. And I remember Charles was like, yeah, they meet Saturdays at 8.30 at this spot. You're welcome to join. I was like, oh, man, I don't know if I'm at this level. I don't know if I can do this.

So I remember the day or two before, I took a couple of days off of running to try to make sure I had the energy to stick with these guys. I didn't want to make a fool of myself and not be able to hang my first time out. So I remember it was a 16-kilometer loop, so 10 miles. Quite a hilly loop with lots of elevation. And I remember thinking like, wow, this is difficult, but I love it. And just picking the brains of these guys who are super-talented and have been in the running scene for a long time. I don't have a running coach. I don't have anything like that, but like all of these guys, they're all my running coaches and then we all kind of feed off of each other. So then I stuck with these guys, and you know, we learned from each other, and we run together every week. We ran this morning. It's quite the community of runners we have in our area and a lot of super-talented runners. Like, we were joking. But Boston 2022, I think there's like 18 of us going to Boston, which is amazing. You got to qualify obviously for the Boston marathon. I think 18 of us going down is a mind-blowing number for like a local running club. Yeah.

JOYCE: So how was the marathon in New York City?

JONATHAN: Oh, it was surreal. So my running experience is interesting. I’ve done a lot of local-level stuff, but never done anything on that scale or even anything close. So I’ve only done one official marathon before that. I’ve done a couple of virtual marathons and I’ve run the distance a few times just through training and things like that. The local marathon I did was the previous year, and I did well with that one. It was like a 75-person race, not like a 30,000-person race. It's doing loops of a park, not doing the streets of New York City. It was pretty surreal. I got a couple of moments where I was like, going down the Verrazano Bridge from Staten Island into Brooklyn. The bridge is silent, but you just see this swarm of people in Brooklyn.

I almost got a little teary-eyed at that moment. I was like, I’ve been through a lot. It was amazing. It was a pretty powerful moment. I'm like, here I am, I'm doing this. It's all come together. The race was awesome. I had a nice group of guys to run with who were going for the same goal. We were talking pre-race. We just found each other in the corral and said, we'll stick together for a bit. And the race was awesome. Just feeling the energy from the crowd, seeing the streets of New York, like seeing before the race starts, you're in Staten Island, looking across the bridge, like, wow, like Manhattan is so far away from here. And I'm about to run this like now. It was a crazy moment, but, uh,  the race was awesome. Being part of that team, TCS, was awesome. They took really good care of us throughout the last two years. I was supposed to run with them New York City 2020, but because of COVID, that race was canceled. At that point, I wasn't sure if our team was still going to be able to run the 2021 race. What's going to happen with this whole COVID stuff. But yeah, they stuck with us. They supported us for like the last two years, giving us little pick-me-ups here and there in the mail, and sending us emails, and letting us know what our teammates are doing and stuff like that. So it was a surreal experience.

JOYCE: That's wonderful. I mean, when I listen to you, it's the camaraderie, too, I think. 

JONATHAN: I'm a pretty social guy, too, so I remember thinking, during the race, like, I met one other guy who was pretty chatty with me. His name was Mike Anderson from Michigan, and he's a very experienced marathoner, so we were talking a lot pre-race, and he was giving me some tips about different things and he was kind of going for the same pace that I was going for. We ran with a group of about seven or eight guys for a while and we were chatting quite a bit and the other guys were serious and not chatting. So I'm thinking to myself, like, should I be talking right now? Is this normal? Should I be more focused? You know, the crowd's cheering, I'm engaging back with the crowd. Like I was super-new, like super-green with that kind of race. So it was a surreal experience.

JOYCE: Yeah, that's wonderful. Wow. So it sounds like, just listening to what you were talking about, your grade school experience or elementary school, you've kind of started that same tradition with your students about running. I guess it's before school or after school?

JONATHAN: Yeah, it's funny you mention that. I don't want to take credit for starting it. It was started years ago at my school by a teacher named Deb Gula, who is a fantastic teacher, fantastic runner as well. So she started at the school. She moved schools a couple of years ago, and me and another teacher, Adam White, we talked about our experiences and how we were so grateful to have experiences running when we were younger kids, and trying to like give kids that same experience at school, with the whole COVID scene. Kids haven't had a whole lot of options to do things the last couple of years. I'm not sure how things are where you are, but in Ontario, things shut down for a while, like things have just recently opened back up.

JOYCE: Right.

JONATHAN: So my kids, they're able to do sports now, but it's been a year. We're still we're still like doing school sports is still a little bit gray. So some things are permitted, some things aren't. Like we weren't allowed to have a cross country season this year, but we were allowed to have like just a run club at our school. So we talked about it. And we weren't sure how interested the kids would be. Cause there was no race at the end of the season. We're just doing it to run, to have fun together before school starts. So Adam and I threw it out to the kids and, you know, we were expecting maybe 20, 25 kids to show up. But we were getting 70, 75 kids come out before school and just running laps. Our school field is about 500 meters. So I guess what's that, you know, less than half a mile. And so we would do loops of the school facility. The kids who were the stronger runners would do three, three and a half, four kilometers, so I guess two miles or so. And some of the younger kids would do a couple of laps and just be happy to be out there. That was our goal.

We had no goals in terms of trying to push kids to a certain level or anything. We just wanted kids to have an opportunity to run, to see the importance of building some sort of athletics into their daily lives. Because that's important for us. We want to instill that in the kids, too. So that was our main drive, our main reason for continuing that. But again, so I don't want to take credit for starting it. I was just happy to be able to be one of a few people involved with that, which was awesome. The kids were super-committed to it. And there are one or two kids who definitely have potential to be super-successful runners when they're older, too. So it's been cool to see that progress.

JOYCE: So I think that would be so fun to have a teacher introduce that and keep it going when the other teachers have moved on and then have that kind of a challenge, I'll call it, when you're that young. Not everybody wants to do it, but for the kids that want to, it's right there for them.

JONATHAN: For sure, yeah. It's at school, right? We're a little bit limited just because of insurance reasons. There are some nice spots to run close to our school, but just leaving school facilities, it opens up a lot more issues. We just kept things at school. That way, there's no potential issues. But yeah, the kids, the kids loved it. And like, you know, some kids came out for a while and some kids petered off and some kids picked it up. And, you know, there's kids who saw kids out and like, oh, this is fun. Well, maybe we'll give it a shot. Right. So is again, just trying to build that mindset, building the mindset that like, you know, being active, just being active, like not for any reason other than to be active is important for your life.

JOYCE: Right, right. So as you mentioned, you're a very social guy and wrote about your cancer experience. And so what advice do you have for any of our listeners who might be dealing with testicular cancer? Do you have any words of wisdom?

JONATHAN: Yeah, it's been interesting for me; I’ve had friends reach out to me after like they've known that I’ve gone through the process and they're saying, hey, I’ve got an issue going on, what should I do? My answer is always go and get checked out. At worst they're gonna tell you to come home because everything's fine and like that's not bad,  like that's a good thing right? So go and get checked. There are no pride issues there; if there's something going on, it's obviously a bit of a sensitive thing to talk about with some people but it's life. If you don't take care of these issues, there's fatal consequences to it, right?

So just go and get checked out. Take that pride. Don't worry about it. Get checked out and make sure things are okay. In my situation, I'm thankful my wife forced me to get checked. If it were up to me, I would have let it go for another month or so until the pain got super severe and wouldn't have the prompt care that I did. Yeah, that'd be my biggest advice. And then just going through the process, like trust the doctors, trust the process, like don't trust Google. I don't Google too much. Like there's tons of stuff on Google. That's super scary. I know it's easy to just Google whatever, but, you know, trust the doctors more than you trust Google for anything. And you know, go through that process with them and just kind of stick to it. The success rates now for testicular cancer are super high. I remember doing some research myself and back in the 1960s--testicular cancer was pretty much fatal for everybody because the treatments weren't there. So thank God I'm alive now and not in the 1960s because my life would not likely even be here.

JOYCE: Right, you're right.

JONATHAN: And things keep progressing. There's always progress being made. just be  trusting in that process and don't be afraid to reach out to people too because people, when you look for that community--community is super helpful with things too.

JOYCE: I agree and there's a big community I know in Canada as well as in the U.S., for sure. You kind of touched on this when you talked about when your friends call you, but why do you think men are not willing to talk about what's going on if they have a health concern?

JONATHAN: I think it's definitely a pride thing. Guys are just supposed to be tough. Guys aren't supposed to let little things like that bother them, even though it's not a little thing. It has major life consequences, right? But I also think through sports, guys are used to having different little nicks and ailments and things. So, some people feel pain more than others, I guess. And we're also kind of taught, just kind of tough things out and it'll be better over time. But not everything does get better over time. And again, like if it were if it were just my thinking, I would have had that thinking myself, too. I thought, hey, it's just some pain. It'll be fine in a couple of weeks. Don't worry about it, John. But that wasn't the case. So thankfully, I had the treatment that I needed when I got it.

JOYCE: Right. So my last question to you is, would you like to share what's next on your agenda?

JONATHAN: So like I mentioned, I run at the Morningstar Runners and there's about, I don't know, I want to say about 18 of us going to Boston 2022. So it's going to be a lot of fun. It'll be a major race for all of us. So that'll be awesome. Super looking forward to that. And then I'm also planning to go to Chicago Marathon in the fall. That's my two big races for 2022. And other than that, I’ve also learned, I like to race. I love to race, but racing takes its toll on your body as well. So sometimes I might race a little bit too often. I'm limiting myself to just those two races next year. Like I might toss in a 5k or something like that, but there's going to be nothing else other than those two races next year. And I have some friends going to Chicago as well, so that'll be a blast. So that's the plan for next year and hoping to put things together again for both of those races.

JOYCE: Yeah, that sounds great. So good time of year to be in Chicago, too.

JONATHAN: That's what I hear. In Canada, it's our Thanksgiving weekend. I know your Thanksgiving is later in the year than ours. Ours was last week. Right. And I think there's an American holiday that time, too. Is one before Halloween?

JOYCE: Labor Day in September. It's somewhere in between.

JONATHAN: Maybe I think it might be Columbus Day weekend.

JOYCE: Indigenous Peoples Day.

JONATHAN: Right, yes. I think it's that. It's the same Monday as that day, whatever it's called now. Patriots Day now, right? Is that right?

JOYCE: That's in Boston. That's a Boston thing.

JONATHAN: Is that the Boston one? Okay, whatever. I'm all confused with my day for the American stuff. Sorry about my American knowledge there. But yeah, so I know it's a holiday for us, which works out nicely for Canadians going down to Chicago. It's a holiday weekend. So we're looking forward to doing that one too. Oh, actually, there'll be for me when I went to New York City. I went by myself just because the whole COVID situation wasn't quite--we weren't quite sure how things would play out for the kids. Like if my kids were to go, our policies still in Canada is if they cross the border because the kids are on vax, they'd still have to quarantine from school for two weeks. And we figured like it's not worth the kids having to stay home from school. But by Boston time, the kids are vaxxed and [I’m] hoping policies are okay. So that'll be the first the first time my kids get to see daddy do a big race. That'll be special for everybody.

JOYCE: That'll be fun. Well, I wish you much success in that race, and I appreciate that you took the time to talk with me about your story and everything. I'm glad you're healthy.

JONATHAN: Yeah, and thanks for giving me the opportunity. It's something that's obviously passionate for me to be able to share this kind of stuff, as much as I enjoy other aspects of my life. The whole cancer part of my life is a major part, obviously, and  to have lived through it and to be able to share that story with others, I think, you know, if it helps one person, then sharing my story is worth it to me.

JOYCE: I agree. I agree. So thank you.

JONATHAN: Thank you very much to Joyce.

JOYCE: Thank you for joining me today on Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer from the Max Mallory Foundation. Go to maxmalloryfoundation.com to learn more about testicular cancer, to donate, and send your suggestions for guests on the podcast. And join me next time for Don't Give Up on Testicular Cancer.

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