Five months after experiencing her “dream come true” of becoming an Olympian, Denver rugby player Jillion Potter is facing another battle with synovial sarcoma, a rare form of cancer she thought she beat in the two years leading up to Rio Games.
Unsuspecting anything was wrong, Potter was stunned last month after a regularly scheduled cancer scan detected a problem.
“I was expecting a clear scan and some high fives and, ‘Hey, we saw you on TV in Rio,’ ” said Potter, last August. “When they sat us down, they said, ‘There appears to be a suspicious enhancement, we’re about 99 percent sure that itap cancer again.’ My stomach just dropped. We were almost to the two-year mark. To have it come back unexpectedly was really hard. , I didn’t even cry. This time it was immediate. I was very upset. I had all the emotions. I was angry, I was sad, I was afraid.”
Potter and her wife, Carol Fabrizio, went through the stages of grief all over again while waiting for the biopsy that confirmed the bad news.
“Until we got the biopsy results, you can’t help but keep that part of hope alive — maybe it’s some weird cyst, or a bizarre scar-tissue thing,” Fabrizio said. “But it’s not. It’s the same cancer.”
A fundraiser was held for Potter last Saturday at CrossFit Train in Denver. The gym near Sports Authority Field at Mile High was packed with dozens of supporters. Potter received a $10,000 check from Everyday Warrior, a non-profit with a mission to “inspire, empower, and financially support individuals in the CrossFit community who have been diagnosed with cancer and are currently undergoing treatment.”
“It was very overwhelming,” Potter said. “I was pretty nervous coming in here. This is a massive turnout, and itap so amazing to see so many people from different communities gather in one place to support us. I just feel incredibly grateful. There’s just so much hope in this room, hope and love. I find that to be very inspiring.”
Friends marveled at Potter’s positivity through her first cancer treatment and now, with the return of her cancer.
“It is just overwhelming to see this many people rooting for you,” Fabrizio said. “It also is such a testament to the person Jillion Potter is. She wears her heart on her sleeve, she is so open and warm and loving. Thatap how she is, everywhere she goes. As overwhelming as it is, itap not a surprise that this many people would come out to support her.”
Potter concedes there have been tough moments coming to grips with the return of her cancer.
“Then I thought about the other people who had recurrences (of cancer), had little hope,” Potter said. “Hopefully by sharing my story, I can give more people inspiration to get up every day and live life, to smile and see all the good things, too.”
Potter and her doctors have yet to determine a course of action to fight the cancer. She is hoping to get into a clinical trial.
“We always knew there was a chance it would come back,” Potter said. “We were just so hopeful that it wouldn’t, we thought we could beat all the odds and all the statistics. The first time you rally, like, ‘We’re going to beat this.’ This time there’s a little bit of uncertainty, but at the same time you’ve got to dig deep and know that you can. We can fight as hard as we can and do everything that we can, how we can control ourselves and our emotions, how we take care of our bodies, what treatments and therapies that we do. Everything else is just out of your control, and thatap life.”
