What happens when you are diagnosed with the illness that you have spent the past 17 years researching?

This was the situation that Shaunna Burke, associate professor in exercise and health psychology at the University of Leeds, found herself in when she was diagnosed with incurable stage four breast cancer in 2024.

After spending her career working to help cancer patients with their exercise goals, she is now due to tackle a major challenge of her own; running a marathon on Mount Everest later this month.

Burke’s research has been intertwined with mountains, exercise and cancer from the outset of her career. During her postdoc she found herself scaling Mount Kilimanjaro with breast cancer survivors to observe how setting meaningful goals was influencing their recovery.

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She has since focussed on prehabilitation for cancer patients and how to ensure that they are “as ready as possible” physically and psychologically for invasive treatments.

Is it a blessing or a curse to know so much about your own diagnosis? For Burke, it was “predominantly helpful”. But she said that knowledge can only go so far. “I was very overwhelmed. It’s a shock to the system…[But I knew] what I needed to do right from the get go.”

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Cancer Research UK that the earlier patients begin a prehabilitation plan for their treatment – which can include lifestyle changes encompassing diet, physical activity and mental well-being – the more likely they are to leave hospital soon after cancer surgery, and cope better with the side effects of the treatment.

Burke said she began running from her house to her radiotherapy sessions, and gradually began leaving her car further away from the hospital to boost her activity. She also created her own diet plan to enhance the effectiveness of her treatments.

“It felt surreal to be applying learnings from my research on prehabilitation to my own life”, she described. And while Burke had always been active before her diagnosis, even becoming the second Canadian woman ever to summit Everest in 2005, these runs took on a new meaning. “Now my physical activity has been about survival, my motivation has been through the roof.”

Her diagnosis “opened her eyes” to the gaps in current research, and she said more research was needed on how undertaking exercise directly before chemotherapy could influence the efficiency of the treatment, as well as how medical providers can go about preparing and sustaining patients’ “psychological and physical resilience” throughout their treatment.

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Speaking cautiously because the research is still in its preliminary stages, Burke said she felt that this exercise had helped ease the side effects of her radiotherapy and treatment, even completing a half marathon after her ovariectomy, which she said helped sustain her psychologically.

While she has not yet disclosed her diagnosis to her research participants, she said it has fundamentally changed her relationship with them and her understanding of their issues.

“I thought I understood patients in terms of what it meant to be diagnosed and how that changes people’s lives. But it’s not until I was diagnosed that I realised that actually you don’t fully understand other people until you actually walk in their shoes.”

On top of her marathon, which she is using to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, she said she is also planning on climbing Everest again next year.

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“For me, going back into the mountains proves to myself that I’m still able to live and live fully, and challenge myself and do things that I used to do before my diagnosis”, she said. “It puts life into perspective.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com