Eight weeks after her eighth heart attack, this world-renowned jewellery designer hopped on a plane for her first international fashion show in London, despite her cardiologist not wanting her to fly.
But against all odds, Nelson Mandela Bay businesswoman, Jenni Gault, “showed up and showed off,” as she puts it, because she has never allowed her health to interfere with her life.
One would think that eight heart attacks, a stroke, 18 transient ischaemic attacks (TIA) and many other health issues would dampen her spirits, but Gault’s health journey has actually motivated her to be extremely brave, and courageous enough to summit Mount Kilimanjaro in October last year.
Not even her two full hip replacements due to bone degeneration or the fact that she is actively battling breast cancer for the past four years and has had a double mastectomy, could stop her from tackling yet another mountain, Mount Everest, that she will be climbing within the next week.
“I’ve never let my health interfere with my life. I’ve always been very positive and upbeat about it. There are many different ways of handling health problems and I respect that everybody’s got a different way and everyone’s journey is very different, but for mine, I call my life an adventure and it really, really has been an adventure. It never kept me away from any of my international shows,” she said.
Gault explained that the first of her series of eight heart attacks occurred in 2007. That was also when she had the stroke and TIAs.
“Only three years later, she was diagnosed with bone degeneration and had a full left hip replacement. A full right hip replacement followed in 2012. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, had a double mastectomy and underwent chemotherapy for three and a half years.
Speaking about her mountain climbing adventures, Gault said that believe it or not, she had never been an outdoorsy person. Up until Kilimanjaro, she had never even slept in a proper tent overnight, but following a wonderful visit to Robberg in Plettenberg Bay, she loved it so much that she decided there and then that she wanted to climb Kilimanjaro.
“My adventure to the top of Kilimanjaro was a seven-month exercise. I went from walking 3km a day to walking back-to-back days of 20 and 30km. I went from having no backpack at all to wearing one of between nine and 12kg, which is exceptionally heavy. It was an amazing, amazing expedition. It was incredibly hard and Kilimanjaro only has a 60% summit rate. My summit day period was 35 hours during which I had one nap of one hour and two mini naps of 30 minutes each, so it was extremely tough,” she said.
“Walking through the rainforest is where you first start. It is just exquisite. Day two, you start walking above the clouds. It is absolutely incredible, very, very peaceful and beautiful. Everyone should try to do this at least once in their lifetime.”
According to Gault, although she has a positive attitude towards her chronic medical conditions and is very driven, she does have her bad days just like everybody else.
She mentioned that since COVID, her studio has been very different to what it was before but there is nothing that one can do about that.
“I don’t believe in looking back on yesterday. We cannot change that. I do believe in looking on today and tomorrow because we have an enormous amount of control over that and I do believe that we should dream big.”
She described her greatest lesson learnt as learning the willingness to go out and find funding for her expeditions, which she found incredibly difficult, but it taught her that if you want something badly enough, only you can do something about it.
“I wanted to get to the top of Kilimanjaro but the odds were stacked against me. Medically and financially there was no way that I was going to be able to climb it and it would’ve been so easy for me to say that I can’t do this so I won’t.
“However, it doesn’t matter what our mountain is, if we attack things like that with a mental attitude of never being able to do this, then of course, you will never be able to do it. It really depends on how you feel about success.”
