BURSTBefore the snow sets in, a Princeton City Councillor plans to climb 100,000 stairs.
George Elliott, a Princeton councillor since 2018, is embarking on a fitness journey to test his limits and pave a path for a healthier lifestyle.
The diagnosis
For Elliott, the challenge is a personal one.
The former writer for the Similkameen News Leader was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2020.
According to John Hopkins Medicine, congestive heart failure (CHF) is a chronic condition where the heart muscle does not pump blood well. Blood backs up, and fluid builds up in the lungs and body tissues.
It all started in 2019 with a bowel blockage. A couple of months later, in 2020, Elliott landed in the hospital due to a blood clot in his arm.
“One of my arms fell asleep on me… I went to the hospital to see what was going on, and I got rushed by ambulance, lights and sirens, to Kelowna, and it was determined at that point that not only did I have a clot in my arm, but I had one in my heart as well.”
Elliott was told that he had Atrial Fibrillation, an irregular type of heart rhythm where the upper chambers of the heart beat faster and out of sync with the lower chambers.
His congenital heart failure diagnosis also came out of this operation, not from his own doctor, but from his very angry surgeon, who almost lost Elliott on the operating table.
“There’s no nice way of putting it. He was pissed off at me and he said, ‘How come you didn’t tell me about your heart condition?’ And I looked at him, and I said, ‘What are you talking about?’
“Up to that point, I had no clue. Absolutely no clue.”
He was also told that he was only at 10 per cent heart function.
“All that blew my mind was, ‘gee, I had been tired a lot and I couldn’t figure out why I was so damn tired.”
The doctors told Elliott that this was essentially a death sentence diagnosis.
“He (the doctor) said that typically patients who are told that they have 10 per cent heart function give up and die. I thought, okay, you haven’t asked me what I think about this.”
Elliott was astounded; it felt to him as if the doctors had written him off.
He was not a typical patient to be diagnosed with something like this, he shared, as he does not drink, smoke, and eats fairly healthy. He has also been a runner his whole life.
“I basically asked the cardiologist to his face. I said, ‘So what do I do? Is this fixable and what do I do to fix it?’ All of a sudden everybody’s attitude changed and before I knew it, they were giving me information on making lifestyle changes and things like that.”
Fast-forward to February of 2022, Elliott had a tumour removed from his kidney. He did not know it was cancerous until it was removed.
Starting his fitness journey
Elliott was on a year-long waitlist to have his tumour removed. During that year, he became determined to improve his health. That is when he started climbing the stairs at Miner’s Climb.
“I built up my strength thinking that it would speed up my recovery after my kidney operation. It did. It still took me a year before I got back on track, but I felt a lot better. My doctors were impressed.”
Recently, he was told he may have another health hurdle coming his way. This time, Elliott did not wait for confirmation.
“I’m just gonna get on those stairs and just climb them like a madman. So, instead of going once a week, I started going three times a week and thinking to myself, ‘I wonder how many stairs I could do.’
He realized that he had already climbed almost 59,000 steps since May and completed 242 round trips and thought, “maybe 100,000 is within reach.”
Marking milestones, Elliot was told by his doctors that his heart function is now up to 45 per cent.
“My cardiologist, in Kelowna, has told me as recently as my last visit with him a year ago that, if half of his patients were as proactive as me, he’d be out of business.”
He also works full-time at Save-On-Foods in the produce department, lugging around bags of produce weighing 40 to 50 lbs.
“I keep track of my steps at work, and I walk sometimes five, six kilometres a day in an eight-hour shift.”
Elliott plans to take on more fitness challenges as time goes on.
Inspiring the community
At first, Elliott wanted to keep a really tight lid on his health issues.
“Then it dawned on me. I thought, if I share this in a big way, and to me, that’s online, maybe I can help somebody.”
Since then, Elliott shared that multiple people have reached out to him, inspired by his health and fitness journey.
“I dragged a lot of people down the path that I was following. I’ve had people since tell me that they’ve started to pay a little more attention to their health…It’s nice to see that I’ve had a positive influence on some people.”
“The point I’m making by doing all this is just showing people that, if you take care of yourself, you can do really well as you get older. As long as you’re healthy, and you listen to what your body is telling you and respond to that, you can do really well as you age.”
Elliott encouraged people to start their fitness journey, regardless of how small the start may be.
“If you do 100 stairs, that’s a start. Even if you just do 10 stairs, that’s a start, and then build on that because that’s how I did it.”
He added that he finds climbing stairs quite simple since it requires no equipment or training.
“It’s really simple and elementary. You just lift your feet and keep lifting them and moving forward. I’m trying to get across that you can improve your health by doing some of the most basic, simple things that maybe we don’t think are gonna help.”
Elliott’s outlook on life
Despite being put in a situation that was life-threatening for him, Elliott does not hold any resentment towards his doctor, who failed to inform him of his congenital heart failure.
“I would never criticize our medical professionals in any way possible. I would think it’s a highly stressful job and things happen. I totally get that.”
He said that he has moved on, changed doctors, and chooses to focus on his progress and his current medical team, which has been vastly supportive of him.
“I don’t see any need to do anything to make him pay for his mistake. I don’t see any reason for that. I’m here partly because of my efforts and the encouragement of my medical team and other people. It’s a positive at this point, so why would I spend any energy on something negative?”
“I’ve turned it into a positive. Like I say, I’ve got people in my medical team now that are really pleased and supportive of everything I do, and, there are people in town that are highly supportive of what I do, and I’m sure there are tons of people in town who are quietly cheering me on, and I think that’s cool. I’m not doing it for any recognition; I just want to help people realize that you sometimes have to take control of your situation and do what you can to stay healthy.”
While Elliott has set this goal for himself, he does not equate not achieving it to disappointment.
“Half the fun is the journey. If I don’t hit the goal, I don’t hit the goal…I don’t think it’s not within reach, but if I don’t get it, it’s not going to ruin my winter, that’s for sure.”