I will like to introduce you to Wayne Russell.
Wayne is a cancer survivor, and although he was inactive for the time being, recovering, as soon as he was given the green light, he was back at doing what he loved, and also competed in a WNBFSASKATCHEWAN bodybuilding show! Wayne is a testament that if something breaks, it can make you stronger.
Thirteen years ago, I went into surgery to save my sight. Instead, doctors found a threat to my life: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—what some call an athlete’s heart that has gone wrong. Overnight, this man who lived to move was told to slow down. I did what I was told. I waited. I healed. Two years later I was cleared to return to the things I loved.
Then my hips began to burn. Arthritis. In 2016 I had hip resurfacing and learned how to move through pain and past it. I was back on my feet when the world shut down in a pandemic. Like all of us, I adapted. I kept going.
But nothing prepared me for March 2021, when walking a few blocks left me winded. In April, I heard the words no one is ready for: CANCER - Acute Myeloid Leukemia, cancer of the blood. The very next morning I was in the cancer ward. Seven days, twenty-four hours a day, I received a river of chemo meant to erase the disease from my blood.
It wasn’t enough to fight cancer; I had to fight a complication too. A defective chest line leaked chemo into my right side, killing the tissue in my pectoral. Surgeons removed what had died, leaving a hole to the muscle. Another surgery took skin from my thigh to cover my chest. I watched the body I knew changed forever.
On August 18, 2021, a stranger’s stem cells were infused into me—new marrow, new blood. The doctors called it a rebirth. I had lost almost thirty pounds and a part of my chest, but I had not lost my will. By March 2022, I could feel recovery taking hold.
Today, just over four years after the diagnosis, I am here, a New person because I am exactly that: new. Not restored—recreated. The iron I lift is not just weight, the trails I hike and the paths I run; they are proof that the body can be rebuilt. That a life can be reclaimed.
I am here, constantly redefining what my limits are, because of many people, my son Scott, my daughter Carly, my grandkids Maria and Ethan, but one most of all: my wife, Lorelei—my steady, relentless miracle. She believed in this day before I could, and she continues to challenge me to keep pushing!
Thank you for listening to my story. May it remind you that even when something breaks, it can become the strongest part of who you are.