This grandmother of 3 beat breast cancer in 2022. Now she's crushing MABA.

If you need motivation, encouragement and/or inspiration in the final week of MABA (or any other time for that matter), I present to you Carla Beck.

Sign up/log your burpees here.

This week’s interview is with Carla Beck, a nurse in suburban St. Louis whose story perfectly illustrates Fall down. Get back up. Together.

You had what sounds like a terrifying 2022. Tell me about it.

At 48 years old, I’m considered fairly young to be a breast cancer patient, but due to losing my mother at 62 from breast cancer, I started my screenings at an earlier age. I had a scan done in December of 2021, and everything looked fine.

Due to insurance changes, I was switching doctors in 2022 and she wanted new scans done. That’s the only reason I had another scan done in April. When this scan came back questionable, I knew right away that God had His hand in this because I wasn’t due for a scan for several months. My cancer was caught very early, but it was also aggressive, that’s what led to the five surgeries, including a double mastectomy in August. My final procedure was in December.

I was so fortunate not to have to go through chemo or radiation, but seeing my disfigured body in the mirror after the bandages were removed for the first time was gut wrenching. I fell to the floor sobbing. I’m blessed with an amazing husband who has been by my side for 30 years, and he helped me overcome the hardest year of my life. He’s helped me to accept my external scars with grace and humor (the best medicine).

Internally the journey has changed me forever. I don’t think you can go through something like cancer and not change.

My family has always been important to me and my three grandkids are my life. When I was having a bad day, just seeing their smiles brought me out of any funk I was in. 

And then there is my work family, they had my back through all of this. My immediate group of PACU nurses covered shifts so I could make my appointments, covered while I was out for a total of 11 weeks recovering from surgeries. But above all of that they showered me with prayers and love. The day of my mastectomy surgery they all wore matching hats in support of me. The way my entire department cared for me was unreal and something that I will never forget!

I have always been someone who likes to do for others and doesn’t like the attention to be on me. I hate change and like to have my life planned out weeks in advance and to have control over situations. So when this hit me, it changed me because I had no control, I had to rely on others and someone else had control of my life and whether I lived or died. This was harder than the physical pain that I was going through. Learning to let go and learning to trust others is a very hard thing to do, but I’m learning. 

You would be excused if you wanted to take it easy in 2023. But you’re not taking it easy. MABA is no joke, and yet you have not missed a single day. Why are you doing it?

I was released from my doctors care on January 1, 2023. What better way to start my new year than with a challenge and a new lease on life? I started off slow, barely making 25 burpees in a modified style.

By the middle of the month I was able to add the push up into my burpee and able to complete 40. At the beginning of the MABA challenge my goal was 775 for the month, I’ve already surpassed that and still have 10 days left! My new goal is 1,200.

This was just what I needed to get me motivated for this next year ahead! Having a healthy lifestyle and being in good physical shape definitely helped me recover quickly and kept my mental health in check as well.

I saw a whole bunch of people on the MABA scoresheet with MHJ in front of their names—yours is MHJ-Carla—and thought, who the hell are these MHJ people and what are they doing on my MABA scoresheet? So, um, who the hell are you guys and what are you doing on my MABA scoresheet? How did you get involved?

MHJ stands for Mercy Hospital Jefferson, we are a group of nurses, doctors, nurse anesthesiologists, techs, and support staff who work in the peri-operative department—this encompasses all departments involved in surgical procedures. We do different challenges throughout the year to have fun while working out and keeping a healthy lifestyle. 

One of our CRNA’s (Luther Mieser, F3 LightsOut) is a member of F3 and invited us all to join the MABA challenge. He challenged the men to 100 burpees a day and the women to 25. So that’s who we are in a nutshell, a group of healthcare workers who enjoy a challenge and a good workout. We’ve done a month of kettle bell swings, 30 miles in 30 days, and planking for 30 days as other challenges this past year. 

Some people might want to stay home and hide from life after a year like you had. What advice do you have for people who have been through something serious—be it cancer or something else—to restart their life?

Find the positives in the situation and don’t dwell on the negatives. I got knocked down, but I was grateful that I didn’t have to do chemo or radiation. Find a support team—I know I used mine!

Take chances and try something new. You get one shot at life, there’s no sense in living with the “what-if” attitude. For me, 2023 will be different. I switched nursing positions at work, stepping out of my comfort zone, leaving friends that I love, but after this past year I’m going to start trying new things.

Beck’s work family. She’s in the center in the back.

The MABA home stretch

I’ve been saying for months that I don’t care about the total number of burpees that we do, and I mean it. I care about the relationships we build as we do the burpees. BUT: we’re on pace for 1,990,139 burpees. It would be, what’s the word, stupid to do that many and not do 2 million, right? So log your burpees if you haven’t been, do a few more every day, and we’ll get there.