A Good Run
A Good Run features the extraordinary stories of everyday runners. It's hosted by Christine Fennessy and Rachel Swaby.
A Good Run
Road to the Mountains with Jill Wheatley
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jill Wheatley was a runner, until a freak accident took away everything she loved about her life. The aftermath of that day was so hard for so long, that pushing through and trying to regain some of the pieces of her former self felt impossible—until she went into the mountains. This is the story of a runner who rebuilt herself (and her running life) one hard step at a time.
If you loved this episode of A Good Run, drop us a line and let us know, share the episode, or tell us your own story.
A Good Run is hosted by Christine Fennessy and Rachel Swaby. It's mixed by Mark Bush. Our theme music was written by Danny Cocke.
See you on the road.
Have an idea for the show? Want to say hi? Text us from your mobile device at the link below—and make sure to include your contact info so we can get in touch!
Hey there, I'm Rachel Swabe. And I'm Christine Femacy. And together, we are the hosts of A Good Run, a show about the extraordinary stories of everyday runners.
SPEAKER_02A good run explores how and why running can be such a powerful force in our lives. How lacing up your shoes can be an act of bravery, salvation, defiance, or pure guts.
SPEAKER_01Today, we'd like to introduce you to Jill Wheatley. Jill is a runner whose entire world changed in a heartbeat.
SPEAKER_00I had no value as a human anymore in society. I look different, I feel different, I can't connect. So I'm just gonna go to the mountains and I'll figure life out. I was born and raised in northern Ontario. From my earliest memories are like playing in this mud and sticks, and no matter the weather, just being outside.
SPEAKER_02As a kid, Jill learned to ski and pretty soon started racing. She trained hard for it too, year-round. And that meant running in the off season. And while she didn't love it, running had a strange hold on her.
SPEAKER_00Hills were kind of my thing. Going uphill, I really liked to challenge myself.
SPEAKER_02When Jill got to high school, she tried out for the basketball team. She got cut. So she tried out for the cross-country team instead.
SPEAKER_00It was still wasn't something that I really enjoyed, and it was something that I was doing because I felt like I should do it. And I really struggled with the self-belief that I was good enough. But I had this competitiveness within myself, like just always wanting to improve.
SPEAKER_02After graduating from university, she struggled with what she wanted to do. She started thinking about how important sports and being outside had been to her as a kid.
SPEAKER_00I thought if I can share my passion for outdoors, for physical activity with today's youth, then maybe that's where I could find a little bit of purpose in my life.
SPEAKER_02She decided she wanted to teach physical fitness to kids. So she went to teachers college. But her first job didn't last long thanks to budget cuts. But before she left, she had a talk with the school's president. He'd just gotten off the plane from Singapore.
SPEAKER_00He came back from a two-year teaching gig there. And he's like, You gotta try it. And honestly, I think it was by 11 o'clock that night that I had a job in Singapore. My contract was for two years. You know, I'm super young, single, I have no commitments here in Canada. I could go, I could travel, I could teach, like work on developing my resume, and I'd be back in two years and then start to like adult a little bit. Then I had a friend, she had been there for a few years, and invited me to run with her, but it took so much convincing, not because I didn't want to, but because I had this mental battle of am I going to be able to keep up? Everyone's better than me. I don't want to slow anyone down. Fitness has always been a priority because I know my mental health is so dependent on physical. Like I need that outlet. And running became something very quickly in my first year in Singapore, where yeah, I could bike a little bit, but it's an island. And so during the week we would run city streets, but in the dark before work, and then weekends we would do longer runs, and suddenly I was running 20 kilometers and really enjoying it.
SPEAKER_02She started doing marathons and she started to travel a lot: Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia. When her two-year Singapore stint was up, she was definitely not ready to head home and settle down. Instead, she got teaching gigs in Russia, then in Switzerland. And everywhere she went, she ran.
SPEAKER_00Running was always there. Running has been something that has been sort of with me.
SPEAKER_02When she couldn't get her visa extended for Switzerland, she headed north to Germany.
SPEAKER_00I was able to get a job just three hours down the Autobahn at the Munich International School. I had a great team. It was a joy to go to work. I was coaching cross-country and track. And I just think of that in those students who I have zero doubt came to Phys Ed class with a different mindset than they did other classes because they saw my passion for what I was teaching. So the way I feel about health and wellness and sharing that with others, the joy that I feel, I feel it's contagious. I lived on a farm in a little loft. So there's cattle below me, there's sheep and shovels and corn and fields and the highest mountains in Europe, just outside my window. And I had the typical Subaru with a road bike on the top, a mountain bike on the top, so two bikes, and then in the back there were skis and snowshoes and anything I needed to play in the mountains. And depending on the weather, I could make my choice. But for that first year in Germany, that's where I was definitely getting more into trail running.
SPEAKER_02She loved running the hills near her house, and she usually ran to work. If she had a problem, she'd work it out along the way. When she started the day with a run, her mind and her heart were in a better place. It didn't take long before her friends got her into road cycling. And pretty soon she was competing in duathlons across Europe and doing pretty well. So, on a lot of counts, Jill had it all. She had a job teaching physical education and sports science to kids, and it felt meaningful and important. In her free time, she was surrounded by nature doing the sports she loved. But on September 3rd, 2014, the second week of her second year teaching in Germany, she lost all of it.
SPEAKER_00An autumn day where, you know, the season's starting to change, and the leaves are bright, but the light is pretty gray, the clouds are low, and it looks like rain is on its way. I had rode my bike around Lake Starnberg. So it's about a 75-kilometer ride that I would train around right from my house and then come back, switch my clothes, grab my things, and head to school.
SPEAKER_02Her colleagues were into the idea of holding class outside, not when it looked like it was going to pour. But Jill embraced her northern Ontario spirit. No way was she keeping her 10th graders inside.
SPEAKER_00In that class, we were working on striking. And this particular day was our first day with baseball bats and balls.
SPEAKER_02Jill divided the kids into three groups to practice different skills. In one of the groups, a 16-year-old boy stepped up. It was his turn at bat. He was strong, really strong. He'd never played baseball, but he was a cricket player. Jill was helping another student in a different group. She didn't see the pitch or the swing. She didn't see how the ball flew in a direction the boy never dreamed possible. She took a line drive to the right side of her head.
SPEAKER_00And me kind of didn't fall straight over, but it was like, oh my goodness, um, like wavering and then down on my side, trying to hold myself up because I knew if I hit if I go on the ground, I might not be getting up full stop. My students, they knew that this was not Coach Wheatley playing one of her ridiculous jokes. I believe two of them ran to go get help.
SPEAKER_02Jill had been hit hard in the right temple. And so what came next is a blur of memories.
SPEAKER_00I answered the questions in the emergency room in such a way that they sent me home. But I don't remember.
SPEAKER_02Her friends drove her home, and she remembers that ride because it felt like being inside a washing machine. Her head throbbed so much, like her brain was literally bouncing inside her skull.
SPEAKER_00And then I remember being curled up in my bed in the barn in Holtzhausen, the little tiny hamlet where I lived, alone. And I had my frozen berries to make my smoothies with. And seemingly I got up and tried to use that because I didn't have ice to soothe my head. But then I have memory of vomiting, and I didn't have anywhere to vomit other than try to use that bag.
SPEAKER_02Nothing about her body felt right. But she only had a black eye. It looked awful, but it was just a black eye. The doctors had cleared her.
SPEAKER_00In my mind, I was in so much pain that I lied there, sort of drifting in and out, but questioning myself because coming back to growing up and skiing and toughen up, you want to be the hardest worker on the hill, and you're gonna work through injuries and you're gonna get through this. So toughen up, Wheatley. And you're just a phys ed teacher. Like, you're not the medical expert in the hospital. Like, if it was anything worse than what they said was a black eye, they wouldn't have sent you home. Who are you to question? So the ball hit the right side of my head between my ear and my eyebrow. And from that moment of impact, my right eye blew up actually the size of a baseball. So that was September 3rd, and it was that upcoming weekend that I was supposed to compete in the world duathlon championships in Zofingen. And so in my bed, in and out of consciousness, vomiting, thinking it's just a black eye. Of course, you can ride a bike and you can run. You've got another eye.
SPEAKER_02The race was a big deal. And one of Jill's friends was flying in from the UK to join her. But when he landed in Germany, Jill wasn't there to pick him up from the airport.
SPEAKER_00He actually ran from Munich Airport to Holtzhouse, and this would have been like hours and hours. I have no idea. He ran to my place, broke in.
SPEAKER_02And what he found horrified him. Jill was in bed in the fetal position, barely conscious. There was a vomit on the bed and the floor. He got Jill into her car and rushed her to the hospital.
SPEAKER_00And that hospital put me in an ambulance and rushed me to a neurotrauma hospital. And the MRI showed multiple fractures, and my brain was bleeding and swelling.
SPEAKER_02Jill had a type of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, called an acute subdural hematoma. The force of the baseball had broken blood vessels in her brain. They started to bleed, and the blood began to accumulate and put pressure on her brain. Jill's throbbing headache, nausea, vomiting, memory loss, they were all symptoms of a TBI. Acute subdural hematomas are serious. They can cause neurological damage and even death. In fact, they're considered among the most lethal of all head injuries. Jill didn't leave that hospital for months. Every day, the extent of her brain injuries became clearer. Her right eye remained closed. She had limited movement in her left. She had trouble concentrating, processing information, remembering things. Doctors would show her images and point to areas of her brain and try to explain why these things were happening. But for a long time, she was in denial.
SPEAKER_00For me, it was like brain injuries only happen in the movies. It was just hard to believe that my brain was literally like broken.
SPEAKER_02She became extremely anxious. Any movement at all made her head throb, made her nauseous, and left her totally fatigued. But she worried that people would think she was lazy lying in a hospital bed all day. She didn't know her own body anymore.
SPEAKER_00My coordination, my balance, my depth perception, because at that point I could only see a little bit out of my left eye. And then just sensations like hearing that was just so sensitive to noise at that time. Like it felt like my hearing had been heightened. And then, of course, trying to adapt with the limited eyesight that I had even at that time.
SPEAKER_02Her memory issues made her feel like a failure. She was constantly asking the same questions.
SPEAKER_00I could not remember something somebody told me. For example, you're going to see Dr. Wolf at 1 o'clock. You ate a banana for breakfast. The working memory was incredibly impaired.
SPEAKER_02Her friends would try to help. They wrote things that happened during the day on little sticky notes. Stuff like Jill had a headache at 3 p.m. It was a 9 out of 10. Or physical therapy at 4 p.m. Little reminders that helped her feel more in control, more like herself. But where she felt the furthest from who she had been was physically. There's one picture from that time, and there aren't many, of that first walk.
SPEAKER_00It was like I needed to learn how to walk again. Having been such an active athlete my entire life, and suddenly I was like I couldn't walk. And getting up six stairs, the tears streaming because I couldn't lift my legs. My struggle to accept surfaced as anxiety, anger, and then impulsive. Like just I was someone that I am so not proud of, but I did not know how to handle, like throwing things, breaking things. A doctor would say something, and if I had something in my hand, like that pencil would be broken in two. I remember having a computer charger or something and just throwing it. I was becoming somebody that I didn't want to be. What I've seen in the movies with traumatic brain injury, oh, you know, the association of unreliable, incapable, slow stigma just sort of became like the starring role. It was all I could focus on. I was so, you know, coming back to that fear of judgment of not being enough, and I am so caught up in shame. Like, right initially, like people don't tell anybody I have a brain injury because I'm gonna be treated differently for the rest of my freaking life.
SPEAKER_02Early on, doctors had been hopeful her right eye would eventually open.
SPEAKER_00Two more weeks, two more weeks.
SPEAKER_02Just give it some time, they said. Six months after the accident, Jill was transferred to another hospital that specialized in neuroophthalmology. After hours of tests, the doctor finally had an answer.
SPEAKER_00My vision would not return, and they put the number of 70% vision loss. So I have no control over my right eye at all. It's essentially it's paralyzed and then limited movement in my left eye. I think coming back again to the shame and my value as a human being less because I have yet another label. And what my parents and my siblings, what are they going to think? Like they have a disabled sister now, and just so much shame that I don't really belong anymore, and I'm not that athlete adventurer traveling the world, and now I was going to be in the care of others for the rest of my life. So there was um a heavy sadness when I first moved to Germany. It just felt like okay, life is coming together. I have all of this independence, I have enough work and life experience now that I can do all of the things I want. You know, I had paid off my debt, I was saving money, I lived in a loft in Bavaria. Like it sounds a little bit dreamy, and I was strong on a bike, whether it be mountain bike or road bike, I was a strong skier, I could do all of these sports by myself.
SPEAKER_02And all of it the independence, the freedom, her identity as an athlete and adventurer, it was all connected to the one thing that Jill could never operate again: her gray Subaru Forester.
SPEAKER_00I could choose to do whatever I wanted with these wheels, and that moment when Dr. Paul put a big X through driving was one of the most like soul-crushing moments. Losing that sense of autonomy because I couldn't drive anymore was something that led me to the depths of darkness. I'm going to be dependent on other people to get to the places I want to do the things, and not even sure that I can do the things anymore.
SPEAKER_02Jill's traumatic brain injury hadn't just affected her cognition, altered her mood, and left her nearly blind. It also damaged the area of her brain that controls appetite. Not only did she rarely feel like eating, thinking about food repulsed her.
SPEAKER_00From the initial impact, when the ball hit my head, and then I was instantly nauseous, and hours later vomiting, even food poisoning, when you're sick for a couple of days or a day, and you just have associations with food from that time. Sometimes it takes a while to build that relationship back to getting to eat. Originally, they just labeled me anorexic, and I was livid. I was so angry because I am educated enough. My athletic background, I was a health teacher. I know what anorexia is, and this was not it. And I just felt again, it was just like toss her over, give her this label next. Because I was refusing to eat, it was like, oh, she's anorexic.
SPEAKER_02Jill's weight plummeted after the accident. And because she was so malnourished, her doctors couldn't effectively treat her neurological issues. She just wasn't eating enough to help her brain recover. And because she didn't speak German, she wasn't able to enter a treatment center for eating disorders in Germany. Her health spiraled, and eventually her brother assumed power of attorney over her so he could make decisions on her behalf. He flew from Canada to Germany to bring her home, and he was able to get her into an eating disorder center in Canada. But not long after that, she had to be medically transferred to a specialized facility in Denver, Colorado. Weighing less than half her original body weight, her condition was life-threatening. Doctors inserted a feeding tube and gave her a diagnosis. Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder. Another label. For Jill, it was too much.
SPEAKER_00I really didn't think life was worth fighting for. Like I put my brother through and my entire extended family through hell, but basically just like, please just let me go in your basement, just let me die. Because I didn't think this was worth fighting for, but I wasn't, like I was still refusing to eat, refusing to take the medication, refusing like the feeding tubes and So I was literally taken to a court where the state of Colorado was given authority. I had no options but to take the medication because, like the doctors, I remember vaguely sitting in a wheelchair in this courtroom and Dr. Smith telling the judge that if she continues to take out these tubes that are keeping her alive with the nourishment and the medication, that she will be dead in three days. I'm like, three days is too many. Like I hope it's tonight. Like I don't want to wake up tomorrow. Being told I was gonna you're gonna get out of the hospital and you're gonna go and live with your parents, and you're gonna have a white cane to walk around like this is not deletely not a chance. No, thank you. I'm done. I didn't want the tubes in my nose because I didn't want that medication. I remember calling it fake nutrition or something like that, and I didn't want pills keeping me alive. That's not living. And so if I was going to get better, I would have been able to do it by myself, not with all of this focus and attention, only to get me to a place where I'm still going to have to be reliant on other people and not be able to be living life in the mountains the way I feel it is meant to be lived. That same doctor, Dr. Smith, who was the one leading the court case, after the first six months, he came in my hospital room and he said he did not feel like I was at a place healthy enough, stable enough to be released from treatment. And so he was going to renew it. And I lost my mind. Like when he said that, the disbelief. I don't remember exactly what I shouted, but I remember looking outside, and with the little eyesight that I have, I could always see the range of the Rockies. And he's like, Well, what are you going to do? And I pointed, I want to just go out there, and I like with my finger, I'm pointing to the mountains, and I'll figure it out. I had no value as a human anymore in society. I look different, I feel different, I can't connect. So I'm just gonna go to the mountains and I'll figure life out. Let me be with nature and so it was actually not long after Dr. Smith told me that he was renewing the court order that a switch flipped that if I don't start cooperating with what he's suggesting, that they're not gonna let me die in this hospital. Like I wanted to die. So if I cooperate for a little bit, then I can get out to those mountains and I can die there. Horrible as it sounds, that was my motivation.
SPEAKER_02It's early December 2016, and Jill is in an Uber on her way to the Denver International Airport. It's been 26 months since the accident. And in that time, she's been in seven hospitals in three countries. She is finally stable enough, cognitively and physically, to be released. She should have been excited, but instead she felt confused. She was alone for the first time in months. No doctors, no nurses, no alarms, no constant monitoring of her every move. She could go wherever she wanted. But she'd lost her job, her German residency, her apartment, her car, her bikes, and so much of her health. There was nothing left of her old life.
SPEAKER_00No place to call home, no independence, and no idea what to do. The only sign getting to Denver Airport was like, maybe, maybe I am meant to try to find something in the mountains.
SPEAKER_02One of the first things Jill did was fly back to Germany. She had to prove she was alive to access her bank account. She reconnected with family and friends, and then she made a plan.
SPEAKER_00So because of the lack of eyesight and limited depth perception that I have, I decided I would travel in mountains for one year, avoiding snow because I thought I could never navigate in gray light or accumulation of snow, you know, with the eyesight that I have.
SPEAKER_02The idea was to hit 13 different mountain ranges in one year. She'd walk, hike, run, whatever she could do.
SPEAKER_00And then maybe I would have found some light on my trail, some kind of direction as to what next in life. And that was 2017.
SPEAKER_02Her first official stop was Andorra, along the border between Spain and France.
SPEAKER_00I was so thankful to be out in the mountains. The trails are beautiful, but my body is one that I'm just unfamiliar with because of what it had been through. So I was trying to dig deep and be thankful just that I'm out there, but the tears were just like, I don't know this body, and running used to feel so good, and it was so damn hard.
SPEAKER_02Hard for many reasons. The biggest being she only had one eye, and that eye had just 30% vision.
SPEAKER_00If you take your right hand and cover your right eye totally, and then take your left hand and basically put it on the top of your left eye, so you can just see out the bottom of your left eye, that's what I see. So what I can see is quite clear, but basically the range I see is extremely limited. I have as many scars on my hands and knees as I anywhere else in my body, just from the falls. Your eyes work together to create depth, and when your vision only comes from one eye, I don't have that. So I have adapted, but those initial runs in Andorra and in France, I would fall a lot. Like I always wear sunglasses, but if the sunglasses didn't fall, I would take them off and pound on them because I was so angry. Little roots and rocks, they just simply blend in, and I just can't see that depth.
SPEAKER_02But she was running, certainly not like she used to.
SPEAKER_00I slipped initially pretty quickly, just with respect to trying to accept the way my body had changed and accept that I wasn't going to be able to run the way I was when I was at my fittest, and probably never would again. And I think initially always wanting to run by myself was reflective, perhaps, of that relationship with not being enough, doubting, always thinking I'm going to be the slow one or I don't want to hold anybody up. But then more time on foot and more time by myself and just building that relationship with my body and with running to know that I can just feel better mentally. And it just seems to have this magical way of making everything, all of life's challenges seem a little bit more manageable.
SPEAKER_02After Andorra she went to France, Italy, Slovenia, and India. By the time she was exploring the Himalayas, Jill had been out of the hospital for less than a year.
SPEAKER_00So a friend came and met me in Nepal. He wanted to come to Nepal to run the Anaperna 100. He's an elite trail runner. And then it was like, well, you've been running, you've been in Nepal, you're at altitude. He's like, why don't you just sign up and do it with me? I'm like, not a freaking chance. 5,000 meters elevation gain, and oh, just do the 50K. Yeah, okay, 50K in the Himalayas.
SPEAKER_02They did a few runs together, scoped out sections of the course, and the whole time Jill held her own. She had mostly figured out how to run safely with her limited eyesight. She still fell, but not nearly as much. Running downhill was tricky and sometimes scary and probably always would be without any depth perception. But she'd found a new stride.
SPEAKER_00And then he's like, well, if you get yourself to the start line, like that's a win. And this was 10 months I had been out of hospice.
SPEAKER_02So Jill did something out of character. She gave in to the vulnerability of it all. Yep, she was most likely going to fail spectacularly. She was most definitely an imposter, and she had no business entering a race. Never mind a 50K. But she signed up anyway. The morning of the event, she rode a bus to the start line with the other racers. Once they arrived, she took her place in the corral to wait for the 4 a.m. start. It was torture.
SPEAKER_00I did not belong there. I've got my sunglasses on because I'm trying to hide. I've got a headlamp on. It's dark. There's people. It just feels like chaos. I like to be organized. I like Excel spreadsheets and time and space. And there was none of that. And I thought, okay, with my vision, the daylight is my friend. Darkness does nothing to help me. Except add to the stories in my mind of what could go wrong. And the gun went off. And I just had energy that I don't ever remember having in my life. Where for the first time I'm like, well, maybe my brain injury and everything that I've been through has prepared me for hard things, and the sun is gonna come up, and I feel really good, so I'm just gonna keep going and hope for the best. And I was passing people. I'm laughing thinking about it. And with a race that had so much elevation gain, coming back to those early days ski training in Northern Ontario in the offseason, like uphills I always enjoy. And despite what my body had been through, I was finding strength on the uphill, on the climbs and passing people.
SPEAKER_02The downhills were hard, and she still felt like an imposter, but she kept going.
SPEAKER_00There were big clouds coming in, and there was still, I think it was 700 meters, the last climb, like a 700-meter gain. And the rain started, and I was smiling and laughing, and so excited to do that last climb. It was like I was for the first time in my life, I was considering that this might be part of a fairy tale. Something was good was actually happening. And I got to the finish, and it was just disbelief. And the cheers and the cameras and you know you're third, and well no, I had no idea what place I was in.
SPEAKER_02Not third woman, third overall in the 50K race. Later that night, she went to a tea house to collect her prize, a certificate and a small trophy. Nothing fancy. But Jill could not have imagined this moment. She had fought treatment for close to two years after her accident. She'd stopped fighting when she decided that it was the quickest way to getting released, so she could be in charge of whether she lived or died. Just 10 months ago, she'd made a plan to travel into the mountains so they could help her decide. On this night, she had her answer.
SPEAKER_00I remember wanting to. Whoa, this doesn't usually happen, but I remember wanting to tell my brother because he's the one I really do feel like he almost lost his sister. And it was him giving the state of Colorado permission to the doctors to put a court order on me. And he was told he needed to fly to Germany because she might not wake up tomorrow, kind of thing. And so just yeah, remembering that um wanted to tell him and just so much disbelief that this was happening like just 10 months ago, yeah, believing that still I was just going to the mountains to try to be away from society. And yeah, I'm away from society in the depths of the Himalayas, but I'm actually capable of still contributing to society, and maybe I can take this and turn it into something that uh reminds me that I do still have value as a human, and maybe I can share and help other people. The little trophy that I have is in his home on his mantle now.
SPEAKER_02Jill finished her one-year tour of the world's mountains and then returned to Nepal. She lived there for five years. She became a climber and summited seven of the world's 14 mountains over 8,000 meters, including K2. She now lives in Canmore, Canada. She's told her story a lot in newspapers, magazines, documentaries, podcasts. And she'll say that she's learned to shift away from focusing on what she's lost to what she's gained, to what she can do. Not every day is great, of course. She can live with that.
SPEAKER_00The accident has just given me so much more appreciation for my body. I am not worried about being on a podium or being the fastest or setting records. I am just so thankful that I have two feet and a heartbeat to be able to do this. I'm out and I'm physically able and mentally able to do that independently. Running provides that. Perhaps a feeling that I never thought was going to be possible again.
SPEAKER_01Jill, you have our heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your story and for inspiring us all. And speaking of inspiration, we will be bringing you more stories like Jill's. Our plan is to make a bunch more episodes. You will be able to cue them up and take us with you on your long run.
SPEAKER_02In the meantime, we would love it if you took a minute to leave us a rating and a review, or even send us a story suggestion. Our contact info is in the show notes.
SPEAKER_01A Good Run is hosted and produced by me, Rachel Swabey, and by me, Christine Fennessey. This episode was engineered by the one and only Mark Bush, and the theme music was written by the wonderful Danny Cock. Until next time, see you out there.
