How Climbing Helped Trevor Ponting Through Brain Cancer

I'm Trev Ponting. I'm a sponsored skater and snowboarder. I've been living in Japan over the last 20 years, travelling back-to-back seasons between Japan and New Zealand. I started climbing about 13 years ago when I met my wife. I've been very passionate about climbing ever since. Recently I had diagnosed with brain cancer and I've been learning to live my life after brain cancer and to relearn some of the things that I've been passionate about and talented at, climbing, skateboarding, snowboarding. And I'm starting to get my life back. Having good days at the crag and getting stronger. Still returning back and forth to the hospital for more treatments and more tests to keep an eye on my tumour. At the moment it's a case of month-to-month. There's no change and no new growth. So I've come to terms that I'm living with brain cancer and getting on with it. Climbing and soon to be snowboarding with the season just about to start again. When I came out of hospital after about 76 days in hospital, having a tumour reduction surgery and radiotherapy, everything that I've gone back to, I've kind of had to relearn how to do again a little bit and get strong again. And now I'm starting to climb okay. Not back to where I was before brain cancer. But I'm having fun and I'm out there and I'm still doing it. And without climbing, life wouldn't be so happy. For now I'm living here in Niseko after hospital. I would have liked to have returned to New Zealand to see my friends and family. But because of the restrictions with coronavirus, we've come to terms of having a summer in Japan, which has been quite nice. And there's been a few climbing trips and I've been getting to know the local climbing community a lot more. There's a nice handful of crags around the area of Niseko Hokkaido, which is enough to keep strong and keep you entertained. And the local Japanese climbers have all been rather friendly. And me coming to climb at the crags and watch my headgear is and why I have this. This is a treatment called Optune, which is an electric pulse therapy. It's sending electric pulse across your brain. So I wear a bunch of electrodes stuck to my head, which are wired to a backpack that I wear when I climb, when I sleep 24-7. And it's helping keep the tumours at bay and hopefully bring me back to strength. Climbing has been interesting, getting my strength back. And not to the point where I was before I went to hospital with cancer, but I'm getting close. Loic up here shooting. We're going to go and climb a big cliff. Say hello to Loic. We've got about a 20-minute quite hard hike in front of me. I should tell you things before I do in the background, in the sea in the background. Yeah. All right, we'll leave you to it so we can get on with our mission. Bloody phone call and it likes to grab on to anything it can. So yeah, I've been a skateboarder and a snowboarder my whole life. And about just over 10 years ago, I found climbing and for me it was the perfect sport to replace some of the things which I need from skateboarding and snowboarding. So climbing was something that you could go out and do and feel the adrenaline which you'd feel from skateboarding and snowboarding. But you can do it without getting injured. You want to skate to this level where you're feeling the adrenaline kicking in. You're also risking injury. So climbing's the ultimate solution for skaters and snowboarders which are now getting a little bit older and don't want to take the falls. And I find climbing is relatively safe. Climbing now has become a big part of my life for the last 10 years and will be for the future. So life has its changes. Going to hospital, getting told you have a brain tumour, life before cancer and life after cancer. Also when you're in hospital and they rehab you to release you from hospital to go back to your life and back to the world. Wasn't really ready for the world of coronavirus which has been a hard thing. Restrictions on travel. I would have liked to have gone home to my family and friends and have support from these people for my recovery. But we've had to come to terms with staying here in Japan for the summer and looking forward to the winter as we said. So after the winter we'll look at trying to get back to New Zealand and back to friends and family. So hopefully my recovery keeps on going as well as it is now. So for everyone out there, anybody that has been fighting the war with cancer and keep your chin up and keep going, keep doing the things that you love. These things will bring you back to the person that you once were and hopefully you'll be doing everything that you are doing again. I'm enjoying my climbing out there. I'll be out there snowboarding every day soon and I climb as much as I can and it's one day at a time, one week at a time and soon you'll be back to full strength.