Rowing to Recovery
Following a debilitating personal tragedy, one Club Member focused on his fitness to turn his life around
“In Asia, there are old wives’ tales that when a woman is pregnant with a boy, the birth and everything is more painful and there are more aches and pains,” says Jim Hawrylak. So when his wife, Maiko, suffered stomach pains throughout her pregnancy with their second child, they weren’t overly concerned. After all, the baby was a boy, who was born safely in March 2010.
But Maiko’s discomfort didn’t subside, even after the birth. It intensified. Finally, after about 10 days of incessant cramps, she went to see a doctor. The high-resolution endoscopy pictures of her stomach revealed a tumor.
“You do anything you can to rationalize that that’s not your case: ‘So stomach cancers are usually with older people who are sicker and weaker, or you’ll be OK, you’re strong and young.’ We didn’t realize how far it had spread,” Hawrylak says.
The doctors removed her stomach to try and slow the spread of the disease, but the prognosis wasn’t good. Typically, only 2 percent of patients with the same advanced stage of stomach cancer survive a year. By now, Maiko was receiving treatment at the Aichi Cancer Center in Nagoya, her hometown.
“She wasn’t feeling good that day and we took her in. Then, when we went in, the doctor pulled me aside and told me that she might make it another day. All of a sudden, it became very clear that ‘Oh my God, she’s going to die.’ So we called up [her family] to come. It was a full day of trying to keep her medicated. She was already kind of half in and out but was aware enough. We put the kids to sleep at the foot of the bed and then, at about 3:30 in the morning, she died,” says Hawrylak, his voice cracking.
That was June 1, 2011. Maiko was 37 years old. While the couple’s son, Roman, was too young to comprehend his mother’s death, Hawrylak had had to prepare his 4-year-old daughter, Regina.
“When you see leaves changing or flowers fading after they bloom, you explain about the cycle of life: ‘People are born, they live and they die, just like this flower, and that’s what’s happening with Mommy.’ And you just prepare her,” says Hawrylak. “She didn’t understand that the death was permanent, and she asked when [Mommy] wasn’t going to be dead anymore.”
Not long after his wife’s funeral, Hawrylak bundled the kids and the family dog into the car and drove back to the family home in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture.
“My own mourning and coping, I guess, got put on the shelf because I was working and raising these two kids by myself,” he says, “I remember almost nothing about that period.”
Compounding the immense strain Hawrylak was already under, he was left without a job after the business unit he worked for in Tokyo was sold. He sought solace in junk food and ballooned to 103 kilos. Suffering all the symptoms of metabolic syndrome and prediabetes, he was rejected for life insurance.
“I was so distraught by everything and I was big and out of shape, drinking too much, not eating well and basically living on sugar. I was sleeping three hours a night because I was so tense. I had these heavy-duty stomachaches but was afraid to go to the doctor. I was sure I was going to die. So I thought I really needed to take the bull by the horns and get my fitness back,” he says.
Hawrylak bought an indoor rowing machine and found relief in hypnotic, hour-long sessions late at night. He gave up beer then all alcohol. Even though he had shed 5 kilograms, he wanted to find a goal that would necessitate long-term lifestyle changes. The Seven Summits, the challenge of climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents, proved the incentive he needed.
In the summer of 2013, after months of intense training, 20 kilos lighter and buoyed by the encouraging words of advice from staff at the Fitness Center, Hawrylak flew to Tanzania to climb the 5,895-meter Mount Kilimanjaro.
“It was a bit of a farewell to my wife. I brought her photo up to the top and showed her the view, as the Japanese would do,” he says. “And I felt like something had closed and was behind me, and I felt very empowered by that.”
Set to tackle his second mountain, Russia’s Mount Elbrus, at 5,642 meters, this summer, Hawrylak says the changes to his diet have proved transformative.
“Quitting the sugar became the most profound change in my life of anything,” he says. “It was everything I needed. My sleep patterns improved and my emotions flattened out from the extreme. And my weight just dropped dramatically over a four-month period.”
Hawrylak remains devoted to his rowing and even broke a world record for over 50s (he turned 50 last year) during a trip to Britain earlier this year. “We overshot the record by almost an hour and almost broke the record for 30 and up,” he says of the 100-kilometer challenge with his online indoor rowing team.
Recently remarried, he is reflective about the past four years of trauma and recovery. “I feel like I’m 25 years old and I’m just getting started on everything,” he says, “but I have a life of experiences behind me to do it better this time.”
For fitness and dietary advice, talk to the professional staff at the Fitness Center.
by Nick Jones
Photo by Enrique Balducci
