Thiessen would run by the camera for a shot and then he’d have to “stop and take a big old breath.” Harum remembers those early filming sessions at the Dishman Hills area. Harum started filming Thiessen in late December, 10 days after Thiessen finished his last round of chemotherapy. As Harum said, Thiessen didn’t just assume you’d become a better person by going “through hard times.” Thiessen’s attitude was different than other cancer survivors. Harum, whose mother was diagnosed with cancer about 10 years ago, said he was immediately intrigued by the project. That’s when he reached out to Spokane filmmaker Adam Harum. He’d run the 50-kilometer race, cancer or not.Īt the same time, he felt an internal push to tell his story to a wider audience and help others recovering from cancer. He felt himself falling back into the same old cycle, the one he’d been sucked into after his first treatment. He recovered again, but he was “fairly bitter.” His 50-kilometer running dreams dashed on the operating table. One day after the diagnosis, he was back in the hospital. On June 16, his doctor discovered that his brain cancer had returned. He signed up for his first long run, a 50-kilometer trail run. He immersed himself in physical activity, especially trail running.Īlthough his testicular cancer diagnosis in 2005 was scary, he said the treatment and recovery was much simpler and easier than the brain tumor treatment.īy 2015, things were looking up. Thiessen went to a counselor and slowly rediscovered a sense of purpose and joy. Because when you’re in treatment, you have a goal and you’re active and you’re doing something.” In his case, after his first brain tumor treatment finished in 2001, he fell into depression. What happens when you beat the odds, defy the experts and get a lease on life. No, instead Thiessen wants to talk about what happens after cancer. Not the story about how positivity and good living carried the day. He wants to tell his story, and not the standard cancer story. The terrible cycle – heading into and out of treatment, the uncertainty, the fear – all revealed something to Thiessen. “It just sort of strips away some of your reservations and your social anxiety or whatever,” he said. Rounds of chemo left his body a wasteland of modern medicine. In between the brain cancer, he’s fought testicular cancer once. Or as Thiessen said, “It’s pretty much for sure coming back.” The diagnosis is terminal, with doctors telling him the cancer could return at any time. Thiessen has been diagnosed with brain cancer twice, most recently in 2015. Thiessen admits this is not something he normally would want, much less do.īut he’s had more than a few unpleasant experiences in his life. His movements are quiet, matching his voice, a voice you need to lean into if you have any hope of catching what comes forth.Īnd yet, in the grandest tradition of narcissism, Brad Thiessen has commissioned a documentary about himself. That’s clear simply in the way he holds himself.
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