Dawn Park poses with her trophy for first place in women’s figures at the 2014 provincial bodybuilding event in St. John’s.
Park, a Deer Lake native who owns Park Fitness in the airport town, didn’t get a chance to defend her provincial women’s figures bodybuilding title in St. John’s a couple of weeks ago because she recently had surgery to remove a tumour from her saliva glands.
Park was immersed in her training regime until the spring of this year when she started experiencing headaches and a lot more pain than normal. Things got a little more serious when she suffered a mini stroke in July.
She had a bunch of tests peformed and it was discovered she had a tumour that had to be removed.
“I can usually push through quite a bit and you kind of just feel the normal aches and pains and push it off, but then it was kind of getting too much that I couldn’t push it off,” Park said of the slow-growing tumour.
Her doctor felt a lump in her face and asked her how long it’s been there. She wasn’t even really worried about it because years ago she went to doctor and was told cartilage was built up on her jaw.
“It was getting bigger but I never really paid attention to it,” she said. “I knew the tumour was there, but I didn’t know it was a tumour. I thought it was just built-up cartilage from TMJ over the years, problems with my jaw, but I just didn’t know what it was.”
After her surgery, Park was supposed to take it easy for at least three weeks. She didn’t listen, instead choosing to return to the gym to help train a few of her clients for a few days before realizing her body wasn’t up to it so she stopped.
“I actually called my doctor and told him I’m really sacrificing my mental health for my physical health right now,” she said.
Park is in her comfort zone when she’s reaping the benefits of regular excersise so adjusting to life without a daily appetite of fitness has been tough because it’s the thing she does to deal with the stresses in life.
“Now I’m laid up for quite a while and I’m kind of getting ansty now,” she said. “I know when I go back I’m going to have to ease my way back into it.”
2015 was suppose to be an exciting year for Park with participation in the national bodybuilding championships in Halifax at the top of her priority list. She was suppose to be one of the featured athletes on the television show “Radical Body Transformation,” with taping for the show scheduled for next month, but that’s been put on hold until Park is fit enough to do the show.
“Every six months I’m going to have to keep getting checkups to make sure it’s not coming back or that there’s no cancer cells evident, but right now it looks really good and hopefully in the next few weeks I will slowly introduce myself back into the gym. But I will be doing that as soon as I get the OK,” she said with a hearty laugh.
