Moving Forward

Former Xterra World Champ Jamie Whitmore continues as the eternal optimist as she fights to regain her life and active lifestyle following the discovery and removal of a cancerous tumor.

At Xterra Temecula this spring, Jamie Whitmore surveyed the swim start, scanning the shoreline for her rivals. Yep, Melanie McQuaid was there. So was surprise entrant Michellie Jones, and of course the usual cast of upset hopefuls. And at the North America series opener, it was imperative that Whitmore, last year’s Xterra USA National Championship winner, be there to make her presence felt.

One of the most infectiously cheery chicks in triathlon, the 32 year old from Elk Grove, California is known for her merciless behavior on the race course, while ripping the legs off her competitors, and for being half of one of the fiercest rivalries in triathlon: the annual summer feud between Whitmore and her Canadian arch nemesis, Melanie McQuaid. The battles, accusations and excuses that surround their head-to-head battles helped build Xterra into a true, hard-fought series. But more importantly, they helped fuel the desire of each to kick the other’s ass.

Unlike at other races, Whitmore’s usual focus and disarming smile on the start line at Temecula was tempered by a visible hurt, hidden behind the veil of that sweet smile. It wasn’t the hurt she’d experienced for the last eight months. Not the pain from when doctors cut her from belly to sternum or when they scooped a cancerous tumor the size of a grapefruit from her left glute and hamstring. Not the suffering of rehab, and re-learning to walk. Or from the innocuous little fall that morning when her foot failed her and she tumbled to the ground.

No, this was a new hurt that made her heart just ache. Because when the cannon went off, Whitmore was still on the sideline. The sport that helped define her was taking off. And as she leaned on her cane, she was being left behind.

“Every day, I’m still in disbelief that this happened to me,” Whitmore says. “I’m sitting here, watching this race. I should be out there, I should be swimming. I can’t do anything right now. It’ll be months before I can get on a bike trainer. It’s very hard to take.”

The epilogue to this is anyone’s guess. While doctors are confident that they removed all the cancer, it’s likely that the tumor, which had wrapped itself around a nerve controlling her foot, may well have ended Whitmore’s career as a professional triathlete. Or maybe the nerve, severed during removal of the tumor, will miraculously re-attach to one connecting to her toe, bringing her foot back to life and allowing her the ability to ride a bike and run again – perhaps to the point where she can race Xterra again.

Good thing Whitmore believes in miracles.

Discovering and battling a nightmare

It was at Xterra Worlds in Maui last October when Whitmore noticed things were just not right. While she still finished third, it was an off performance. “I was cramping five miles into the bike and I ran through the cramps, but didn’t think anything of it,” she says. Following a two-week respite after Maui, she remembers, “my hamstring was so tight, I could barely bend over. I tried to run and it was excruciating pain. So I took more time off, thinking I’d torn a hamstring.” December came and she tried running – and the pain was still there. A month later, the pain had spread from the hamstring into her glute and the top of her calf. And then the numbness started. “The last weekend of January, the pain went off the charts, and I wasn’t even running anymore.”

While symptoms pointed to sciatica or a bulging disc, the MRIs of her back were clean. “Then one day I was going to the bathroom,” says Whitmore, “and I was getting perennial numbness on my left side. We called a doctor friend and he said ‘Go to the emergency room right now, tell them you want an abdominal CT scan and ultrasounds.’” It was then that doctors discovered a large mass in her left upper hamstring/lower glute… and misdiagnosed it as an ovarian cyst.
As doctor analysis continued for several more weeks, the numbness extended throughout Whitmore’s leg, the pain so intense she was unable to sleep at night. “You cannot just turn off nerve pain,” she recalls. “It’s unlike any other pain.”

More exams. An OB/GYN said the mass was harder than a cyst should be. With blood vessels surrounding it, an attempt at getting a biopsy via a minimally-invasive surgical process caused her to bleed excessively. “They immediately had to slice my stomach open, stop the bleeding and admit me to the hospital.”

By then, Whitmore wasn’t even walking anymore and her leg began to atrophy. And her doctors were throwing the worst-case scenarios at her, one after another, in one large unfeeling helping. “One doctor was saying I might never walk again, that I might not be able to go to the bathroom again, that they might have to take part of my uterus,” she says. “I was crying the entire time I was hearing this. Finally, I asked the doctor what he would do if he were me, and he said get a second opinion – and I was out of there.”

With Whitmore’s husband Courtney Cardenas on the warpath to find out exactly what was going on in Whitmore’s leg, she was recommended to two specialist centers – one focusing on cancer in Texas, the other nerves in San Francisco. She opted for the center in San Francisco. “The nerve pain at that point was so great, I wasn’t even thinking about the cancer element.” Calling a sarcoma specialist in on a day off due to the growing pain, Whitmore’s dad drove her two hours to San Francisco. “I screamed the whole way,” she says. “I don’t even remember that drive.” The pain was so great, Whitmore was administered a volley of nerve blockers and antidepressants including Methadone, Nortryptaline, Neurontin and Dilaudid. “I’d never even smoked marijuana in my life!” she says with a laugh.

A needle biopsy by the UCSF docs found the truth: spindle-cell sarcoma, a fairly rare nerve tumor. Three percent of them are cancerous, as Whitmore’s was. “They realized it was growing out of my sciatic nerve, opened it up and saw it was squishy, and watery. If they went at it and it opened up, all the cancer cells would spread out – I’d be a dead duck,” she says.

An armada of specialists used surgical precision to excise the tumor. Unfortunately, it came at a cost; the tumor had choked out the sciatic nerve that goes to the foot, and doctors could not risk cutting into the tumor to free it. So they opted to cut the nerve that controlled movement of Whitmore’s foot. “They tried to save it, but really, it was an easy decision. It was cancer,” she says. After a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery, Whitmore was relieved of the grapefruit-sized tumor from her left glute muscle.

After that came recovery for a woman now 16 pounds under her racing weight. It was four days before she could take a step with a walker, and the cut nerve caused her to have “foot drop,” a common nerve injury in stroke patients. That, along with her lack of feeling and muscle strength in the left leg, led to – and still leads to – stumbles and falls. “They told me on a Friday they were going to send me Monday to a center where they have seniors doing rehab. My dad said ‘Let’s work on this over the weekend.’ And by Monday, the physical therapist was blown away by how well I was walking.” She was sent home with a prosthetic and the occasional PT visit. “I’ve had to learn that nerves are not like muscles, that they’re like a battery; and when they’re down, they need rest,” she says. “Being an athlete, I want to push, to feel like I’m building on something. I felt like I was in somebody else’s body. That’s been hard.”

One foot in front of the other

Whitmore graduated from walker to cane, the latter of which she hopes to ditch entirely. Whether or not she is able to run again remains a big question. The lack of control in her foot means her ability to kick for balance in the water, to leverage out of the saddle on the bike, to nimbly run on off-road trails may be gone. Or it may not.

“The doctors say we don’t truly know how nerves work.” They initiate hope that while the main lines were severed, there’s the slim chance that the nerve controlling her foot can attach itself to others in the area, bringing it back to life. And leaning on her strong Christian faith – which sees her bikes emblazoned with Powered by God decals – helps. “It’s a long shot and will require a miracle, and of course, I believe in miracles,” she says with a smile. “Tons of people have been praying for me.”

Triathlon responds

For her Xterra tour foes, the news of Whitmore’s departure from the Xterra series was not met well. While it meant McQuaid’s fiercest rival was out of the way, is simply wasn’t what she, or anyone, wanted. Victories became slightly hollow. At Temecula, Whitmore waited at the finish line as her rival came across in first place and plopped down on a cooler next to Whitmore, sharing a chat and a laugh. “Jamie was an awesome motivator for me. It was really important for her to be kicking my butt all the time, calling me on any weakness,” McQuaid says. “She’s a really positive person and totally didn’t deserve this.”

Fortunately, our little sport showed that it is filled with people with big hearts. “At Sea Otter, Tinker Juarez said he was praying for me. And Ned Overend came over, sat down and asked me questions for 40 minutes, and said he’d been reading my blog,” she says. “I mean, how cool is that? Ned Overend, reading my blog! Macca came over to talk to me at Wildflower, Chris Lieto has been praying for me. Even Melanie! Who knew? Her little tribute video, in a time when there were not a lot of smiles, cracked me up. I’m rooting her on all year. Top dogs, all top-notch athletes and people.”

Her bike sponsor, Cannondale, used bikes as raffle prizes for fundraisers during a charity ride, while her sponsors, including Mona Vie, Zeal Optics and TYR have honored her contracts. Add old sponsors like Jim Felt of Felt Racing and fans that are helping out with gas cards and grocery store gift cards, and she is getting help taking some of the sting out of the growing hospital bills. “We wouldn’t be making it without the help of so many people,” she says. “It’s little things, but it all adds up and helps just… getting through.”

Jamie Whitmore: the comeback

Whitmore’s life has been turned on end, and forever changed. Her training days now consist of getting the leg stronger, undergoing occasional checkups to ensure the cancer is gone, and hoping for a miracle. With more radiation on the horizon to ensure the cancer doesn’t return, doctors are harvesting eggs, at their own cost. “I told my family I want to be able to go to the bathroom on my own, to be able to walk and have kids,” she says. “Anything after that is gravy.”

Her weekly to-do list has one major item on it: get healthy, make sure the cancer is gone. Beyond that are things like rebuilding the strength to walk. Racing? It’s a goal, but it’s way out there. “It’s one day at a time, and I’m not used to that,” she says. “I remember when they removed the catheter, I prayed I could pee on my own. And I did it. Milestones like that: peeing, taking my first steps, walking with a walker, walking with a cane, walking with just my brace, weaning myself off methadone – they’re all the little things that mean so much.”

And she’s trying to bring some normalcy to her life, at the risk of irritating her doctors. “I’ve been to the pool a few times and the doctors said not to count what I’m doing, I’m not supposed to train. But I did swim 1,200 yards with a pull buoy, so I was like, ‘sweet!’”

The potential end to one of the finest rivalries in multisport is not lost on Whitmore or McQuaid.

“Whatever else people took from the rivalry, it was passion,” McQuaid says. “We’re both really passionate about the sport, we’re specialists, we put everything into it, we’re freakin’ good at it, and we’re fighters. On the race course, it’s a claws-out fight to the death, but after the race, I love her. I’m missing her already.” Whitmore returned the sentiment. “I’ll be rooting for her – gotta keep true to the people who perfected Xterra,” she says with a laugh. “I know she’ll race like I’m right behind her.”

As Whitmore took in the scene at Temecula, she wore the custom plastic brace that helps keep her ankle and foot in line, emblazoned with that line of inspiration: Powered by God. “It’s tough to see the race, but this is therapeutic for me to get out here and hang out. These people cheered for me, so now I get to cheer for them.”

She assures us there will be a comeback. “I’ll be back.” Whitmore says. “It may be as a pro, it may be as a challenged athlete – maybe both.” Whatever it is, McQuaid says, “I wish her success, and I don’t doubt that she’s gonna do something incredible.”

You can read Jamie’s blog at www.jamiewhitmore.com. Fans can get in touch, help her with rising expenses and wish her well.