Overcoming an Incurable Disease & Unimaginable Loss through Love & Fitness with Bart Walsh

And I look back on it now, knowing what I know in the position that I am.

And it was at that point I decided to make a choice to change my biology.

Because when we start to think differently, we are physiologically firing new neurons in our brain to connect.

We're creating new pathways in our brain.

SPEAKER_02: What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit Grace Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe.

Twenty years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

And here on this podcast, I want to share those insights with you.

Because, friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, well, consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

What's up, my friend?

How are you today?

Welcome to episode number 229.

Friend, if you are not on my mailing list, I want to invite you to sign up today.

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It's my opportunity to take this podcast to another level, getting to send you a personal email right from me.

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It's me sitting down to write a love letter to my audience.

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Do you know what the cool things about being the host of your own podcast?

Is that you're the host of your own podcast.

You get to make the rules.

You get to do what you want to do.

And today, ladies and gentlemen, I decided to stack the deck because I have an interview for you that is by far one of the most amazing interviews that I have ever done.

This podcast is now some three and a half years old.

We're at episode number 229, and yet I'm still being blown away by the people who I meet, the people who I get to have on the show.

Today is nothing less than a pure gift.

I got to sit down with a guy named Bart Walsh all the way in Australia.

Yes.

Talk about some time differences aligning that schedule for us to record.

But we made it happen.

My interview with Bart Walsh is by far one of the most impactful interviews I've done.

And it's because Bart is a man who has the most amazing story, and he wasn't afraid to share the real bits of it all.

The good times and the bad.

Because Bart, well, he's an amazing guy.

He's had an amazing run as a gym owner, a fitness enthusiast, an amazing man.

But he's endured the pains of life from loss, from life-changing medical diagnoses, things that would bring people to their knees.

But yet Bart Walsh is not given up.

He ain't giving up because he keeps pushing forward.

My interview today, I pray that it touches you.

I pray that something Bart says today leaves an impact on you like it did for me when I sat down to record this interview.

Because Bart he suffers from a life-altering medical condition.

It's leaving his arms and legs useless.

It's horrible.

Yet when you listen to Bart, you can't help but be captivated by him, in his power, in his personality.

And you can't help but think to yourself, how dare I feel sorry for him?

How dare I think that I couldn't do it?

Because you know what?

That man is doing it.

He's been through hell and back, and yet he is inspiring people like me every day.

And oh my gosh, I can't wait to bring it over to you.

Now, what's special about this, and why I said I stacked the deck, is because this week is big for me.

It's big for this podcast.

Because coming up on October 28th, in just a couple of days, is the 20th anniversary of the day that my life forever changed.

That's the day that I became blind.

It's the day that my life was safe with the removal of a brain tube.

Yes, it's been 20 years.

And so when I knew that I had an episode coming up for this week, I knew I wanted it to be something really magnificent.

I wanted to be sure that it meant something, that it would leave an impact, like I hoped to do with my own story.

And well, I then met Bart Walsh and interviewed him.

And I realized that this was being saved for this exact.

My friend, turn up the volume, lean a little bit closer, and enjoy today's interview.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

SPEAKER_01: You know, think things are a little bit looser here.

There's there's a lot of land.

You know, people drive a bit a bit crazier up here.

It's um it's it's a great place to be, but I haven't always been here.

I used to live in Melbourne, which is down south in Australia, and um we me and my partner lived in the city.

And we're deep in the heart of it, you know, there was there was hipsters everywhere, there was cafes everywhere.

Melbourne coffee is quite um quite profound in terms of its uh uh infamy and how good it is.

So we we're living that culture, but one day we sort of woke up and went, you know, there is far too much cement here.

There is there's not enough grass, there's there's not enough trees, and we we decided to make the move up here.

So we we live in a in in Queensland, we live in a place called the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine by Name and Sunshine by Nature.

And um, we're sort of where we are, you drive five minutes and you're at the world's best beaches, and then you drive another five minutes and you're in the hinterland where it's just really dense subtropical jungle, and we we really love that that dichotomy, that that beach freedom, but also that hunk bunkered down nature jungle.

We we we love that natural side of sort of where we live, and so I suppose Queensland North, Melbourne South, and then Australia is enormous.

If you haven't had a look at a map, it's huge.

And if you want to take a four and a half hour flight across the other side of the country, uh into Western Australia, that's where you find Perth and Fremantle and stuff like that.

So it's a huge place, mate, and I'm lucky enough to have lived it at least in a couple of beautiful pockets of it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, well, that's incredible.

Now, I was kind of curious growing up, whereabouts did you grow up and what was kind of life like for you as a kid growing up in Australia?

SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a a place called Laceby.

It's a place that no one will ever know because the population is about six, and most of it is is my family.

But I grew up a country boy.

And so the nearest B town to us was was a place called Wangarata, the beautiful Australian town names.

And uh the way I describe my childhood is is quite idyllic.

You know, I had some beautiful, loving parents that were teachers that did everything they could to make sure that I was happy uh and joyful.

I had you know two older sisters and a younger brother.

We we got along really well, all of us have our heads screwed on the right way.

And um, for example, I didn't know what the word divorce was until I was probably about 17.

Not n nothing about my childhood, I think, uh could I I could be considered a a bad thing.

And because of that, you know, I I learned some very, very strong morals and some very strong lessons from my father and my mother and the people that we were surrounded by.

But the beauty of growing up in a country town is that you have you know, you have perspective, you have space.

It's funny, a lot of my friends who grew up in the same town, they they couldn't wait to to get out of there and and leave and do something else, but fast forward 10, 15, 20 years, and they've all moved back.

And I think that there's a there's a great correlation between growing up in a country town and then retiring and having a family in a country town too.

So I'm I'm really I'm I'm really blessed to have that perspective, I think.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, now amazing.

Now, was this a country town?

So I'm assuming not on the coast.

SPEAKER_01: No, so in Victoria, the northern part of Victoria, so the northern part of the southern state of Australia, it's a small little pocket.

I'm trying to think what might be a United States, like sort of Midwest-ish feel to it in in terms of Australia.

So down in Victoria.

That's my home.

SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay, I love it.

Now, now, growing up as a as a kid, were you into anything?

You know, I mean, we we all have like passions and and hobbies throughout life, you know, for you growing up, you know, did you have any hobbies or passions that you really, you know, were drawn to?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I did.

There was there's sort of two that spring to mind that were the most powerful and influential.

One was Australian rules football.

We call it AFL down here, which I still believe is one of the one of the most beautiful sports in the world in terms of at athleticism and and flow.

And uh it it's very it's very different to other sports out there.

So I grew up playing that, almost worshipping it, watching all the pros play on the weekends, and then following my team.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, explain that to me a little bit.

I've never heard of that.

I've heard of we have football here in America, I've heard of rugby, but I've never heard of this.

SPEAKER_01: No, uh Aussie Rules Football or AFL, it's um it's a game played with a similar shaped ball to um to a gridiron or a um or a or a rugby ball.

It's just maybe a little bit more round.

And it's a free-flowing game.

So you can kick that ball anywhere, you can handball that ball anywhere.

The the ground itself is about 150, about 170, 180 metres long, and the shape of an oval.

And the the reason I love it is that it's free-flowing.

You know, you start the game, you know, it doesn't there's no timeouts until quarter time or half time and three-quarter time.

And it requires an amazing amount of athleticism.

You need to be strong and you need to be stable, but you also need to be enduring.

And so during the game, the athletes they they run the equivalent of about 16 or 17 kilometres, which is almost a half marathon, every single game.

So you've got to you've got to have all of these athletic elements that that is that that's really hard to obtain.

But it's a um it's a very dramatic sport in in certain certain circumstances.

So every game, every weekend there's at least one game that the pros play where it comes down to the last second and the crowd roars, and there's this beautiful theatric connotation to it, which which I which I I I I really love.

And yeah, and and speaking of theatrics, you know, you asked other hobbies, right?

My other hobby was acting, which is a a really interesting juxtaposition to football, and a really interesting thing for a for a young boy to be to be doing in a small country town.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Where did that the acting?

I mean, I can I can imagine sports, you're you're a young boy, but acting, where did that even come from, do you think?

SPEAKER_01: I think it came from my my grandfather on my mum's side, Brian.

So when when he was younger, he was actually the star of the local television station afternoon show.

unknown: Oh.

SPEAKER_01: So every every every afternoon he had sort of a variety show that he did with a number of different characters.

And you know, he um you know he he was dressed up as a sailor, he himself had a character.

And so I think that the the theatricality comes from that side of the family for sure.

Now that I'm a bit older and I can sort of look back on why I like things and why I did certain things, and partially the reason why I like Australian rules football.

I love occasions where people come together and feel something different.

The atmosphere changes, the it's it's a potential to change a paradigm, it's a potential to change a life, and everyone's feeling this odd feeling that they wouldn't get anywhere else because of that instance, and that's why I love live theatre.

Because you can make people feel things and uh and see things differently through an art or through an act.

And it's hard to, I think, it's hard to replicate that feeling in sort of any any other medium.

So it definitely came from from my mum's side, but I just I I love I love that shared experience of of emotion, you know?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Oh my gosh, yeah, I love that so much.

Incredible.

Now, I'm kind of curious because I mean we talk about this and I'm I'm thinking to myself, like, I can just picture this and I can to picture life as as a kid, you know, and and you kind of painted this picture of this small town when when life is is kind of simple, you know, and we don't realize maybe how good we have it, you know, at at the time until, you know, like you said, how seems like then people end up coming back around later in life, they they return to hometown.

But but you, I I would assume maybe college age, did did you move away?

SPEAKER_01: I did.

So in in Australia, we go through grade one through six, and then we go to secondary school and we do grade seven through twelve.

And then uh after grade twelve, you know, the world you always start.

You can go to uni, you can get into the workforce, you can do whatever.

And so I I decided that, you know, life's pretty short.

Let's let's get this university degree out of the way early.

And uh I went straight to university and I I I ended up following the the theatric feeling in my gut.

You know, my my parents always encouraged me to do what I love, and they supported me on that.

And so the day I came to them and said, Hey, I want to be an actor, I want to go to acting school, they didn't give me the lecture of, you know, there's no money there, maybe you should consider doing something else.

They they just said, Awesome, hey, well, we support you, let's let's get you there.

And so it's it's similar in in um in where you are, Kevin, but getting into acting school is a bit different to applying to a a different university degree.

Because you have to go in and do auditions.

They they pick you for for the course.

You apply, but in the end, they pick the 30 or 40 people they take uh every single year.

So there's there's sort of a an emotional and and practical investment before you even before you even do the course.

And um mate, I was I was lucky enough to get into an acting course, a three-year acting course in another country town, a bigger country town in the south of uh of of Australia called Ballarat, an old gold mining town.

And um, yeah, I suppose that the next three years at acting school were certainly very memorable, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean that's that's really cool.

So acting school, you're you're in college.

Did that go anywhere?

Because I mean the acting business is that's a that's a tough, tough industry.

What happened following college?

SPEAKER_01: So did did and did a degree and look, I think that there's a there's a part of me, Kevin, that wishes that everyone did a part of an acting degree because you do so you do some really strange things that again give you a weird perspective on life.

You know, you you learn how to move again, you learn how to speak again, you learn the craft, you learn the craft, which really, if you break it down to it, is is speech and and movement, and every human can do that.

So there's a part of me that really wishes everyone had that a little bit of an exposure to that sort of woo-woo side side of uh side of side of acting, you know.

But at the end of third year, you do a thing called a showcase, and that showcase is your your lecturers and your university invite all the top agents from where we were in Melbourne to come and watch us showcase our wares.

And if you're lucky at the end of that showcase, you you have a chat with an agent afterwards, and then they put you on their books.

And I was and it doesn't happen very often, and I was lucky enough to get um a pretty decent agent off the back of that.

And then sort of the the game started, mate.

Like we were going in for auditions for for commercials, really strange commercials, you know, lots of live theatre auditions, TV auditions, and I was I was lucky enough to get on a few a few pretty decent gigs.

There's a um there's a a soap opera over here called Neighbours, which uh is akin to the bold and the beautiful, which I'm sure you're more familiar with.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, my grandmother knows it well.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's so so yeah, so so does my mum.

And I was lucky enough to have sort of a three or four episode arc on that, which which was pretty cool.

And uh a little role in an ABC show over here.

But it's it's funny.

You you spend all this time working towards something, and then when you start to get it, sometimes the expectation isn't isn't doesn't match with what's in your head.

And filming like doing TV shows and doing and doing movies is is great, and some people it really works for, but I just I don't have the love for it.

I d I and I didn't at the time either.

I was trying to pretend I did, but I I didn't.

It's it's really boring, it's really artificial.

You spend most of your day just sitting in a trailer waiting for your line, and then you got you know a two-minute opportunity to execute that line the right way, and then and then you move on.

And there's something about that that creative process that didn't that didn't link with me.

And so I'm sort of I'm sort of glad I transitioned out of that the way I did.

But it's just funny sometimes how your expectations don't match reality.

The dream, it's like you know, never meet your heroes.

You know, sometimes it's it's good to have that that distance and that illusion, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, well, I can't help but but make a a slight comparison, just my brain is I thought, oh my gosh, he found himself in American football.

Where where they play a snap and then we do a commercial break, and everybody sits on the sidelines for five minutes, and then we get back up and we do another round.

No, he he wanted some Australian football and he wasn't getting it.

SPEAKER_01: So that's that's a that's a great analogy, mate.

That's very true.

I I like the freedom, I like the I like the flow.

I don't like to be obstructed.

That's great.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

So so here you are, you know, in this this thing that you've worked for, and and and you're you're having success in it, but as you just explained, you you're you're having these these feelings that it's not quite what you thought.

What do you do with that then?

I mean, what happens then?

SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, I was still doing some you know live theatre, some live uh Australian rules theatre, you know.

And so that that sort of kept my my spark alive.

I was also sort of if you're an actor and you're not getting consistent work, it's you you have to succumb to a lifestyle and lean into a lifestyle that's a bit a bit different, it's a bit bohemian.

And at the same time, I was I was really struggling with that because I didn't want to live for the next 10 years, you know, maybe having a show here and then not having work for a while and and working at the supermarket in in between gigs.

And I wasn't ready to make the commitment to live that to live that lifestyle.

So there was a couple of things working against me.

I I loved the live theatre stuff, I loved that creative process, didn't really like the film and television stuff, and wanted a better quality of life in in terms of what I do between gigs.

And so to be honest, mate, I didn't I didn't really make a decision until a decision was made for me.

And and and this sort of happened in 2014, so almost 10 years ago now.

And it was one hot Australian summer in Melbourne.

I used to do a bit of volunteering for a youth leadership um organization here, and we just we just finished a conference.

And uh, we came off that conference, I was on the tram, and I s all of a sudden I felt a lump under my jaw.

And me being a typical twenty-three-year-old male thought absolutely nothing of it.

But with in hindsight, maybe not the best thought pattern there, but and then within the next two months, uh that lump grew.

To the size of a baseball.

So it was about 10.2 centimetres in diameter.

And I knew something wasn't right.

And so the first doctor I went to said, Yep, that's not supposed to be there.

Let's cut that sucker out and let's move on.

And then the night before that surgery, I got a call from his office saying, hey, the doctor forgot he had a day of leave, he's going on holiday, we won't be able to do your surgery.

And I said, That's okay.

I wanted a second opinion anyway.

It seemed weird that we're not testing it and then we and we're just we're just gonna cut it out.

So I got a second opinion, had a biopsy, and yeah, the results came back as that that lump was a pretty aggressive sarcoma, a type of a type of cancer.

And uh it was diagnosed as a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumour just under my jaw.

And so I didn't quite know how to comprehend that news, and I think in the end, I I didn't comprehend it.

And again, just like a typical 23-year-old male, I just I I swept down to the carpet and said, everything's gonna be okay, let's just let's just plow ahead.

And the choices were in front of me surgery and then radiation therapy or alternative treatment.

And so I listened to my doctors, and they said the first step we need to do is to get it out.

When it comes to this sort of cancer, we need to get it out and then do the radiation rather than do it the other way around, do the radiation and then cut it out.

Because it was growing so fast, they wanted to just get it out of there as fast as they could.

I was about to go into a surgery, and they were telling me the the extent of this surgery.

They said, look, we're gonna have to take your jaw out, and with that comes the bottom row of your teeth on your right hand side, we're gonna need to take a bit of your throat.

Um, in fact, it looks like we're actually also gonna need to take your voice box.

And so here's a here's a here's a boy who spent the last three or so years in acting school honing his voice, honing his sharpening his tools per se, and then all of a sudden it's gonna be taken away.

And in that moment, I remember it very vividly.

I got a notebook, and for the next 24 hours, I wrote down every single thing that I ever wanted to say, and I filled that notebook in 24 hours.

And I must have repressed it because I can't remember the absolutely profound things I'm sure I wrote in there because within 24 hours the doctors called back and said, Hey, that thing about your voice box, don't worry.

We found a way to operate, we can move around it, we can take a margin from somewhere else, it's okay.

And then once I once I obviously I'm speaking to you today, my voice box is okay.

Yeah, um, but once I heard that news, I just uh I threw that book out and never thought of it.

But for those 24 hours, it was a really interesting mindset because I knew I believed at that point that there was going to be my last words were gonna come up in the next week or so.

And writing down every single thing that you ever wanted to say to anyone was strangely cathartic.

And then after that point, the surgery and the radiation therapy felt a little bit easier.

And so they they did the operation, they took my jaw out, they replaced it with a bone in my leg and tissue from my quad.

And so, if you look at me today, I've got a big patch of skin on the right side of my face, and I'm I'm missing a lot of teeth, and my speech is a little bit slurred as well.

And then after that, after that surgery, which was which was quite major, um I had six weeks of radiation therapy, and I think radiation therapy psychologically was was the worst part.

Because what they do is they they make a mask of your face out of this really strange plastic material.

And every time you go into radiation therapy, you lie on the table and they pin this mask to the bed beneath you.

It's so you don't move.

I sort of looked like Hannibal Lecter, in a way.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: So every time you go into radiation therapy, which is every day, and you're getting it somewhere intricately on your face, they pin you to the bed, and then all of a sudden you get claustrophobic, you can't swallow right, you get really anxious, and then they beam radiation therapy radiation into you for X amount of time, and then you up and leave.

And psychologically, that whole process for six weeks was really tough.

And the the the byproducts of radiation therapy are also very tough, both short-term uh and long term.

At the time, you know, I was healing from a big wound in my leg, I was healing from a big wound in my face, but the radiation therapy brings on all these sorts of ulcers uh in your mouth, which makes swallowing really hard.

And um, it changes your taste.

So my perception of food was was very different for a long time.

And healing from the psychological wounds from radiation therapy and the physical wounds from this surgery, it took quite a time, I suppose.

And so within within the space of uh about four months, my my world changed, Kevin.

At the time I didn't know how to deal with it, but looking back on it now, I think I have a bit more of a grasp of of what was going on, you know, w wisdom through age per se.

SPEAKER_02: Wow.

How did you get through it?

Because I mean that not only just the treatment itself, not only just the surgery, but but that I know is just so taxing on your body physically and mentally.

How did you get through it?

SPEAKER_01: I think I boiled it down to to one day.

It was a time where I finished my radiation therapy, my body was healing enough that I could walk reasonably well.

And I just said to myself that day, let's take a step forward and let's choose to not be the victim of this.

And so what I then did was literally took a step forward and I walked.

And then for the next must have been four, five, six weeks, I walked every day for about four to eight hours.

I'm an active guy.

I I like to move.

And because of that choice, I found I found that my psychology was changing.

Because I decided to not be the victim of something really horrible, the way I started to think changed, the way I started to feel changed.

And then all of a sudden my behaviors changed.

And I look back on it now, knowing what I know in the position that I am.

And it was at that point I decided to make a choice to change my biology.

Because when we start to think differently, we are physiologically firing new neurons in our brain to connect.

We're creating new pathways in our brain.

And the more we express that pathway, the more the easier it is for us to access that pathway.

I always thought of decision making and mental health as sort of this non-physiological thing.

But the fact is, if we choose to do something and we express that positive choice, it makes it easier for us in the future to choose that again.

And so because I made that simple choice years and years and years ago, I I started to digest what was happening.

And as I mentioned, I I decided to not play the victim.

I decided that I didn't want to just roll with the punches, I wanted to start punching back.

And then from me taking that one step forward, I found this love of fitness.

I always had a love of physicality and a love of fitness, and part of being an actor is looking a certain way.

And so I got into fitness to look a bit better, look more pleasing on the screen, but I never understood the power of fitness until I made this choice.

And so walking for for four to eight hours every day for six weeks all of a sudden turned into lifting weights, and then all of a sudden lifting weights turned into expressing my body through ways the doctors said I couldn't express my body.

And I was feeling better, I was I was looking subjectively better, and because of that, my confidence was a lot better.

And because my confidence was better, I found it easier to talk about this this situation.

And that's always been and still is my downfall today.

Being able to talk about tough things or things that I think only relate to me with someone else, I find really difficult because I don't want to burden them with this negativity and it and these morbid conversations.

But because I was exercising, because I was changing my biology through these thought patterns, I found it a lot easier.

And I think with a lot of traumatic experiences, and I'm not alone here, it's you never really fully work through them.

You're always sort of understanding it and digesting it and working with it.

There's never a finite point in my life where I'm gonna go, I'm over that now.

That happened, I've fully digested it, that's not the case.

And I don't think that's good for lesson learning either.

You know, we whenever we encounter adversity, there's an opportunity to learn something and feel something new.

And if we either just brush it under the carpet or think that we're over it, we're blinding ourselves from from future growth.

And so when it comes to this trauma and and working through it, mate, it's still it's still an ongoing process.

And it's the same with some.

I know there's a lot of listeners out there that um you know are struggling with some sort of anxiety or depression or some sort of some sort of mental issue.

And it's a spectrum, you know, and we all we all lie on that spectrum somewhere.

But if at some point we say, yep, I've fixed that anxiety, I'm good to go, I can guarantee you it it's it's gonna come back at some point.

So mate, it's a it's a work in progress.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and I can agree and understand wholeheartedly, because literally earlier today, before we started this this recording of our podcast interview, at some point today, I was standing in my kitchen, I think I was eating lunch.

And you know, I I've been blind now for for almost 20 years at the time of this recording.

And yet I was standing at the kitchen counter eating my lunch, and I had the thought process about my life, about the life that was.

And you know, in many ways I I compare it to a loss, just like you.

It was a loss, it was a loss of the life that that you were living, the you know, and the same with me, it was the loss of my eyesight, the loss of of what could have been.

And just as you said, is exactly what I thought was it's it's a loss, and it never leaves you.

It just it gets easier with time, but it's always there.

Because that whole in your in your heart and your soul, it's always gonna be there.

It's it's a part of us.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

Yeah, I think it's it's and we I think we also need to understand that there are gonna be periods where you are gonna make lunch one day and all of a sudden everything comes crashing down upon you, you know, and simply being aware that there's a there's this great ebb and flow with life and understanding that that thing is gonna come back and bite you at some point, whether it bites hard or small, it's gonna it's gonna come back.

But sort of how you calm that thing down and and and how you deal with it and how you and how you move on with the respect of it that that I think is really important.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

So here you are, you the the fitness thing is is really transforming your life.

Was there any part of you that ever thought about going back into acting?

SPEAKER_01: I I wish I wish I could say yes.

But the the the truth is not not really.

And I after this after this thing happened to me, this this whole big thing, I I changed, as I'm sure you yourself have changed as well, Kevin.

And I think before this happened to me, I was I was all for the attention.

I was doing things for the attention of others.

And I look back on myself and uh it's not that I I I regret who I was, but I know that this situation changed me for the better.

And all of a sudden I didn't want eyes on me.

I didn't want to be the the center of attention anymore.

And that might be due to some you know self-esteem issues or self-body image issues or something like that, but I didn't I didn't want that attention anymore.

And then all of a sudden my my focus came to helping others and my my vocation, my mission then changed from trying to be the star of a television show or a movie to wanting to help others, wanting to wanting to show them and allow them to feel what I have felt with the power of of fitness and and looking after your body.

That became my m my sole mission, you know?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that so much.

So talk me through it.

How does that lead you to go from there?

I mean, where where does that go?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

I decided that I wanted to be a personal trainer.

I did my my personal training certificates after my after my rehab from from my surgery and radiation therapy.

And there, you know, there was there was a moment there because I was I'm a I'm I was a pretty skinny guy.

I I had some speech issues at the time, which I'm I'm slowly working through.

You know, I had uh essentially a new jaw and a new way of walking, and I felt very self-conscious about being in an industry that, let's face it, is a lot about aesthetics and and how you look.

But I um you know, I took the plunge and and managed to learn all I could about being a personal trainer, and for for many years was quite a successful one.

And uh I learned the industry, I I learned the craft, all the whilst I was exposing myself to every corner of the fitness industry, from you know, Spartan races to to weightlifting to CrossFit to Pilates to you know bar classes.

I I I loved all of it, and I sort of became fitness agnostic at that point.

You know, I'm not I'm not tied to one style of fitness, I I love it all.

And so I I decided that the only way for me to help more people other than the clients I was serving was to get into management and and by proxy help more people by helping their trainers.

And so for a while there, I was um my role was uh to help trainers be successful in their own personal training business, which I found great, great joy from and and learnt a lot of lessons from.

And then once I sort of made the move up here to Queensland, the stars aligned, and I became the head coach of Jets Australia, which is uh a quite a large franchise down here in Australia.

We're also in the UK and Netherlands and Thailand and and Vietnam and New Zealand.

So there's we're we're we're sort of everywhere.

And uh I'm I'm lucky enough now to be in a position where, again, by proxy, by by helping the members directly or helping the trainers indirectly, where I I have uh a platform where I can help a lot of people.

And I I feel very grateful and very responsible for the position I'm in at the moment.

But I wouldn't change it for the world.

So I mean I w I worked my way up through the ranks and I understood my craft, and I'm sort of sitting here today in a studio below our um our head office with a big smile on my face, 6 30 in the morning before anyone else gets in, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

So I I I consider myself pretty blessed.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, amazing.

Now, roughly timetable.

How long has it been today since that diagnosis of of the lump in your neck?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great, great question.

So there was a lot of follow-up appointments with with cancer specialists.

So the diagnosis was in 2014, early 2014, February.

Uh so it's not nine years ago.

And thankfully, as far as we can tell, that uh the cancer hasn't come back, which is great.

They said if if it did come back, it would be in my lungs.

I'm not I'm not sure how how that sort of works, but so every time I went to to get a checkup, they always did an x-ray of my lungs just to make sure there was no lumps in there or anything like that.

But from from the cancer point of view, everything is hunky-dory, which um I'm I'm pretty chuffed about, which I suppose, from a fitness point of view, is just a another another tick in the box of the beautiful adaptive nature of the of my body.

Because I'm I'm here now, nine years later, I'm missing 12 centimetres of my leg bone.

I've got my leg bones in my jaw.

My my my jaw is what was my leg, and um you know I'm I'm functioning pretty well.

So it's a um it's it's a testament to the to the medical system and the beautiful adaptive nature of of of our bodies.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.

I love that.

Now, as we continue though on on this journey, at some point in time, though, something would happen, and I'm gonna ask you to fill in fill in the gaps for me because your medical issues would not be over.

SPEAKER_01: No.

Here's another side story for you, a side quest, if we will.

Ever since I was 19, I noticed that my legs were were getting skinnier, just below the knee, so from my knee to my toe.

And it always baffled me because I do a lot of exercise and I do I do a lot of leg training in particular, and nothing ever budged.

In fact, they're getting progressively smaller and smaller and smaller.

And it wasn't until two years ago that I decided, all right, we've got to figure out what's going on.

I know there's something wrong here, and I know deep down it's gonna be progressive, but I needed I needed to understand what was going on.

And, you know, being a fitness professional and seeing your legs the size of broomsticks, again, it's it's it's a whole lot of body image issues come flooding to you, and a lot of self-confidence issues.

So I finally saw a neurologist two years ago.

She was quick to diagnose a condition called chako-marituse or hereditary motor sensor peripheral neuropathy.

Gotta love the beautiful medical term.

Yeah.

And basically that condition is an umbrella condition, and it's it sort of covers a lot of genetic, genetic issues or genetic problems in a number of genes.

And the condition itself mainly affects males, usually in the third decade of their life.

So I think it's something to do with after puberty is fully finished, that's when you start to see the effects of it.

And what it means is that I'm slowly losing the use of my peripheral nervous system.

And so it starts distally, so it starts right at the top of your toes and right at the top of your fingers.

And then as you progress with age, those nerves just start to to deactivate and start to start to waste away.

And so if you look at me today, that you could you can you can notice that my my my shins are the size of broomsticks, my quads are are are quite strong because they're compensating for the lack of musculature, and I can't really feel anything below my knee.

And so the prognosis of this condition is hard to tell.

It's progressive, so it'll it'll continue to get worse.

My my balance is very poor, and I can tell because I do uh as I do a lot of exercise, I'm I'm beginning to see balance issues in the way that I exercise, and they're progressively getting worse.

And the condition will progress to uh to a point to what point it's hard to tell.

Some people who have this condition either have to have have to wear stints on their legs or perhaps move in a wheelchair.

So there's a point in my life I know within the next five to ten years, where I'm gonna need some sort of support to just just to walk around.

And what that support is, I'm not sure of.

But and it's also included stuff like uh driving.

So I'm I'm starting to start starting the process of getting hand controls in my car, so I don't have to use my feet because it's it's quite dangerous not being able to feel your feet and operating pedals.

I knew it was coming.

I knew there was something wrong with my body, aside from the cancer, but I didn't know it was this.

And so just like with being diagnosed with cancer, I'm still dealing, I know I'm still dealing with this news, even though I like to think that I'm on top of it, but I I know I'm not.

And the thought what sickens me the most is the thought of me losing my physicality makes me sick to my stomach because that's that's my identity, that's my income, that's my vocation, that's fitness is what fitness and spreading the power of fitness and the knowledge of fitness is why I'm put on this earth.

And the thought of losing that is un unsinkable to me.

And so I know as years pass and I digest this condition a little bit more, and we notice the the degradation of this system, of this condition, I know I'll adapt and I'll know I'll understand it, but in terms of dealing with that process, I'm I'm still very, very early on.

SPEAKER_02: Because it's like right now you're losing you're losing the thing that healed you, the thing that saved you was the was the fitness, the thing that that propelled you into this new direction out of cancer, and now the cruelty of life is trying to take it from you.

SPEAKER_01: Very slowly.

SPEAKER_02: But of course, in time you'll remember though that the body's only as strong as the mind.

And you'll come to a point just like you did before, when you'll realize that you can keep going.

And you can keep making an impact, maybe even greater than you have, because of what you've gone through and what you're going through, and what you're showing to people that it can't stop you.

It only brings out new amazing parts of you.

And listening to your story, I can tell you one thing: that Bart Walsh is not going to be stopped by his physical body.

Because you got the power of your mind that has gotten you to where you are today, and I think that's a pretty darn amazing thing.

Now, we've talked a lot about your career side of life, but you're also a family man.

You've got a you've got a wife and a and a and a kid.

Talk to me a little bit about being a dad, being a husband.

SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of friends that have just become dads, myself included, and all of them have in a past said the same thing.

Oh, it changes you, you know, it it it changes everything about you.

And I never fully understood it until it happened to me.

And I used to suffer because of my past.

Um I used to suffer from a a lot of anxiety and a lot of mental thought process and issues.

And as soon as he came along, that all stopped.

Because my my perception of what's important and my perception on the world changed fundamentally because as bad as it sounds, nothing matters but him.

Nothing matters.

Those small little things I used to stress about, I don't stress about them anymore because it's totally irrelevant to his welfare and and his happiness.

And I I love being a dad b because of that perspective and because of what they teach us.

You know, they they teach us this other this other side of patience.

It's it's incredible.

And I my my wife Jane she watching her raise this little boy has just filled my cup so much.

She she steps up to the plate every single time and doesn't complain.

And I know she's not the only mum out there that does that as well.

So mate, I'm I'm so our little boy just turned one, I think, two weeks ago.

He's just started to walk, he's he's weaning off his his milk, he's eating more solid foods, his personality, he's not just a little potato that's sort of just goo-goo guy's ass now.

He's he's a he's a he's a human, he's a little boy.

That whole process went so fast, but I'm enjoying that process so so much.

Again, not not just because because of him, but because of what he's teaching me and what and what perspective he's giving me on the world, mate.

I I I I love being a dad.

SPEAKER_02: Oh man.

Talk about just like this the circle of life, you know, where where you you you give life and then he reminds you about life.

You know?

That this this this child that you've created is now there to remind you what living is.

SPEAKER_01: He means a lot to us.

Not just because of who he is, and I think I don't share this story very often, Kevin, but he's he's actually our second child.

We had a beautiful little boy uh about a year and a half before we had Lysander, and his name was Aurelian.

He he unfortunately passed away about 30 minutes after he was born.

So we we we went through a an entire journey with him.

So at the at the 20-week scan, we we we knew something was wrong, and the doctor sort of gave us a choice to to finish his journey there or to or to see his journey through.

And obviously we we chose the latter.

And so from from the 20-week mark to the 36-week mark to where where he made it, you know, we we knew his his chances of surviving were very slim.

But we we wanted him to have his own journey and we wanted him to see his his journey through.

And we're we're lucky enough to say that you know he we got to meet him, he he got to meet his mum and and give her a little kiss and got to meet his dad and give him give me a little cuddle before he he very gently passed away afterwards.

And so we Lysander, our our one-year-old who's with us at the moment, you can tell that there's a there's a little angel on his shoulder, you can tell that there's some esoteric energy that's that's guiding him and and looking after him.

And I I I grew up Catholic, and so I've always had a an understanding of this omnipotent presence of of God or the universe or whatever you want to call it.

But again, I never understood its real power until this whole journey happened.

So, you know, being a father to me is so much, it's so it's it's so important to me.

And to be a good father is is is even more important, but it's only exemplified by the journey we went through.

And I want to I want to say as well, like I don't I don't share this story too often only because as soon as I do share it, I know it can trigger a lot of things for a lot of people.

And my recommendation is if you know if if you have gone through some sort of situation like this, or you or you're dealing with a situation like this, the the best thing that I have done is to learn how to to talk about it and learn to talk through it.

And it might seem really petty, but it takes me back to the start of our conversation, Kevin, where as soon as we start doing a new pattern, it becomes easier to do that pattern because our brain is changing.

And if we if we can come to terms with, you know, telling this story when when when appropriate, and everyone has a totally different story.

The better you get at telling that story, and the better you get at digesting and working through that story.

Mate, um I'm loving, I love being at that to two beautiful little boys.

I'm jazzed for the rest of my life because of that experience that's happened to me.

SPEAKER_02: Man, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for you being so willing to be so open, so real, so raw, to share something so personable.

Your journey is is like so many.

It has the ups and it has the downs.

And when you share stuff like that, I can't help but just hope and pray that that right person, that right father, that mother is listening today, and they can be reminded that I'm not the only one, that I can find comfort in knowing that here this guy on this podcast today has been there.

And right now, he's given me a little glimmer of hope that there is light on the other side of the darkness.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you for for sharing that.

Bart, I I just want to thank you for sharing your entire journey with me and my my audience today.

It means the world to me, and it's just it's a true honor to have you on my podcast.

SPEAKER_01: No, it's my pleasure, Kevin.

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.

Bart, for anybody who wants to follow you, I don't know.

Do you do you do social media?

Do you have any resources, anything, uh, podcasts of your own, anything that we could direct somebody to?

And of course, any of that, I will be sure links are put in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01: Great.

Yeah, I've uh you can follow me up on Instagram.

I'm not very good at it, but I'm I'm on there a little bit, uh Walsh.fit W A L S H dot F-I-T.

And if you're if you're keen to look to level up your fitness and learn a little bit more about the philosophy we're trying to teach here at Jets Australia, have a listen to the Personal Best podcast powered by Jets Australia.

It's a two times a week podcast.

We we we touch on on subjects that are very applicable to people going through common fitness and health issues.

And we like to do it in a pretty lighthearted way.

Me and my co-host Jacob, we have a lot of fun.

But there's some really great applicable information that you can find on that podcast.

Personal best powered by Jets Australia.

SPEAKER_02: Amazing.

Amazing.

We don't have to just end it here.

We can continue to have you in our ears in our life, because once we get a little bit of you, we want some more of you because you're an amazing man.

Yeah, dude.

Thank you so much.

And for you listening today, I know today's interview, maybe it has you kind of got the emotions going.

Maybe at one moment you're smiling, the next moment you're tearing up.

And you know what?

That's awesome because that's life.

And that's how life is.

And getting to have an interview like this today, to get to share it with you, that's why I do this podcast, is to bring you people that are just like you to remind you that you're not the only one, and to be that glimmer of hope on a dark day to remind you that if they can do it, so can I.

My name is Kevin Lowe, host of Grit Grace and Inspiration.

It is your turn to get out there and take on the day, but I'm gonna go.