"We have to take everything negative that happens and find something positive."
Nathalie Doucet knows about the bottom.
She knows how it feels to come back; to open her eyes and see her husband, panicking, sitting on her stomach and trying to revive her. She looked into his eyes as she struggled to speak, trying to tell him that she was aware ... and then, the horrifying realization that her right arm couldn't move. Her right leg was useless. Her right eye was dark.
On June 1, 2011, at 9:30 p.m., Doucet went from an able-bodied mom to paralyzed in less than 15 minutes.
A hyperactive kid growing up, Doucet played all sorts of sports and found her primary love in gymnastics. She competed for 12 years, and after completing high school, became a personal trainer at a local gym. In 1999, she made her debut in a Ms. Fitness competition; she won the Atlantic Canada Fitness and Figure Championship in 2008 as a mother of two.
Happily married to Chris (a former bodybuilder and now MMA fighter,) the couple lived an active life with Alexandre, 9, and Danie, 5. It was when little Danie Doucet was 2 years old that they noticed something was not right. The toddler was always falling, and couldn't walk properly. She had seizures. The eventual diagnosis was grim. Danie Doucet has a rare neuro-muscular disease that is slowly attacking all of her muscles.
“I gave up everything that year, stopped going to the gym. Why bother? I stopped everything,” Nathalie Doucet says. “I felt bad doing exercises when I knew my little girl will someday be in a wheelchair.”
When she hit the floor on that dark night in June, her husband faced a heart-wrenching dilemma. His wife was convulsing. He couldn't wake her. The children were asleep. He was alone. He carried her to their bed, and after what seemed an eternity, reached her parents. “I tried very hard to let him know I was OK, but couldn't feel anything on my right side,” Nathalie Doucet says. “After my parents came over he rushed me to the hospital. They first thought I was having a stroke or some bleeding in my brain. We were freaking out.”
Even after eight days of tests, doctors weren't sure she'd ever walk again. She struggled through some very tough therapy, and was sent home after two weeks. She took a walker, but no diagnosis; the attack could happen again. She was 33 years old. “It's quite a slap in the face when you're a mother of two and always running around, and then one day your husband has to carry you to the washroom, and wash you, and do everything for you,” Nathalie Doucet says. “It's very, very hard.”
Determined to recover, she was upgraded to a walking cane after doggedly pursuing her physiotherapy. Every day, she would push herself to walk a little faster on her treadmill, and after three months received the doctor's blessing to drive. “After a few days in bed, I took a notebook and started to write down stuff. I started by writing my progress, then started to write down stuff I wanted to start doing when I got better, like yoga, nutrition, [and] meditation,” Nathalie Doucet says.
Over the next seven months, Nathalie Doucet was reminded often, her stroke – whatever it was – could strike again at any time. “I did have a few more 'episodes/strokes' but they never lasted long, maybe one day. I feel them coming,” she says. “I get very light-headed and then all of a sudden my right hand tingles and everything on my right side goes numb. I'm OK again by the next day.”
Limited only to walking, Nathalie Doucet longed for the day when she could return to working out, and she already knew where she'd start: CrossFit. Some friends had been posting about it on Facebook since 2010, and despite curiosity, she'd never done it. “It's when you're not allowed to do exercise that you really crave it,” she says.
In February of this year, her neurosurgeon told her he no longer believed exercising would affect anything. She immediately asked about CrossFit. “He only told me to take it easy,” she says. “I was so excited that as soon as I got home, I emailed Karine from CrossFit Dieppe and told her that I had the OK to start.”
Nathalie Doucet's first CrossFit visit came on Valentine’s Day. It was love at first touch. She immediately fell for the sensation of the floor under her hands, the powdery chalk on her palms and the stretch on her wrists from the pull-up bar. “I was like a kid in a toy store,” she laughs.
She was breathing hard after a single round of the warm-up. Then she did her first pull-up. On her third visit, she registered for the CrossFit Games Open. “CrossFit has really changed my life,” she explains. “It's my 'me' time. I love how I feel during and especially after. I missed that drive and that competitiveness. I love the atmosphere. It's really like every CrossFitter describes it – a community.”
Nathalie Doucet and her family don't complain about the small stuff anymore. “After a few WODs, someone asked me why I was smiling when things were hard during a workout. Why I was smiling when I couldn't lift the bar for my snatch? Why I was smiling when catching my breath?” she says. “Ten months ago, I was in bed and had to use a walker. I couldn't walk by myself. I couldn't go to the washroom all by myself. Now I can run 800 meters. I can do 12 pull-ups in a row ... I'm loving life again. I have goals again.”
"We have to take everything negative that happens and find something positive,” Nathalie Doucet says. “We have been through a lot of rough times and probably more to come, but I think it has gotten us closer as a couple and a family.”
Sometimes, the best wins in CrossFit are the daily ones; some of the biggest things are the little things. Nathalie Doucet is winning.
