Accomplished triathlete taps strength and determination to cope with serious health issues

Jan. 26, 2025
Triathlete Jeanie Brookbanks-Smith has tapped deep wells of determination to cope with Budd-Chiari syndrome and Polycythemia vera. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.
Triathlete Jeanie Brookbanks-Smith has tapped deep wells of determination to cope with Budd-Chiari syndrome and Polycythemia vera. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.

In August 2023, Jeanie Brookbanks-Smith completed the Boulder Sunset Triathlon. That might have been just another race for the nurse and mother of three who has been a top-tier competitor for decades. Yet crossing the finishing line this time was extra sweet, and she savored the moment.

“I literally wanted to kiss the ground when I was done,” she said. “I cried when I finished. It was wonderful. It was huge. It gave me a sense of getting back what I thought was going to be taken away from me.”

In the previous few years, Jeanie had overcome a liver condition affecting just one in a million adults called Budd–Chiari syndrome.

She also suffers from:

  • Polycythemia vera (PV), a rare, chronic blood cancer caused by her bone marrow producing too many red blood cells.
  • Multiple auto immune disorders that causes Jeanie’s immune system to attack her tissues in different, adverse ways.

Yet she is back now in the race in a big way, with her competitive spirit as strong as ever.

An accomplished triathlete, Jeanie's strength and resilience serve as an inspiration to others who are dealing with health challenges. Photo by Kevin Smith, courtesy of Jeanie Brooksbank-Smith.
An accomplished triathlete, Jeanie’s strength and resilience serve as an inspiration to others who are dealing with health challenges. Photo by Kevin Smith, courtesy of Jeanie Brooksbank-Smith.

Jeanie’s health struggles

During the last few decades, Jeanie has completed so many triathlons she’s lost count: somewhere between 25 and 30, she guessed. A triathlon is an endurance multisport race that includes swimming, biking and running.

“I think it’s just some drive I have to be the best that I can be,” said the 54-year-old Connecticut native. “I am a firm believer in mind over matter, and how much your mind can do … how much good or damage it can do. It goes both ways.”

A registered nurse, Jeanie is now pursuing a career as a licensed health and wellness nurse-coach so she can use her knowledge and skills in training and fitness to help others navigate their way through illness to a better life.

“It’s about mindfulness and the mind-body connection that affects so many things.  It could be about quieting the chatter in your head, work-related issues, loneliness, depression. The list is long, and it could be about anything you are dealing with,” she said.

Jeanie has many fans who talk about her iron will and determination, along with her warmth and compassion. Family, friends and UCHealth physicians on her health care team praise Jeanie for being upbeat in the face of multiple serious health issues, even remembering a friend’s birthday on one of Jeanie’s worst days during a hospital stay.

“She’s so amazing,” said Dr. James Burton, UCHealth transplant hepatologist who specializes in the care of patients with acute and chronic liver disease before and after liver transplantation. “She has had some bad luck with a poor hand of cards, but she has made the absolute best of what was dealt to her.”

Agreeing was another of Jeanie’s UCHealth physicians, Dr. Brandon McMahon, who specializes in hematology and oncology.

“She has a great attitude. She’s extremely driven, and she doesn’t let this hold her back in any way. It’s very inspiring to take care of someone like that.”

Dr. James Pomposelli, transplant surgeon at the UCHealth Transplant Center on the Anschutz Campus, said Jeanie keeps beating the odds: “She’s a full-out fighter. She has three beautiful daughters, and she just doesn’t give up.”

So how did Jeanie, a fitness enthusiast who has run three marathons and dozens of triathlons, become so ill?

A traveling nurse, Jeanie lived throughout the U.S. before landing in Colorado

Jeanie and her husband, Kevin, with their three daughters. Family members have been great supporters as the accomplished triathlete has navigated health challenges. Photo courtesy of Jeanie Brooksbank-Smith.
Jeanie and her husband, Kevin, with their three daughters. Family members have been great supporters as the accomplished triathlete has navigated health challenges. Photo courtesy of Jeanie Brooksbank-Smith.

Jeanie knew she had the aptitude and disposition to be a nurse since she was in high school and worked at a nearby nursing home. She graduated in 1993 with a nursing degree from University of Connecticut.

She spent the bulk of her early years as a nurse in critical care, and then as a travel nurse in Texas, California, Boston, Florida and Hawaii. Travel nurses work temporarily at hospitals in high-need areas. By the time she was in her late 20s and living in the Aloha State, she began running and thought, why not a marathon?

Jeanie had competed three marathons in Honolulu and Maui then traded her flip flops for skis when she took a job as a traveling nurse at University of Colorado Hospital. She then met her husband Kevin, a triathlete in his spare time, on a blind date. They married in 2003, settled in Greenwood Village and went on to raise a family that includes three daughters now 19, 17 and 15.

Jeanie worked as a nurse at metro Denver hospitals and surgical centers while raising her famil. It was while she was training for a race that her first major health issues surfaced.

Dealing with stage 3 kidney failure when she turned 40

In 2010, Jeanie was preparing for a triathlon and noticed a lot of pain in her left calf. While she thought it was related to her training, it turned out to be a 17-inch-long blood clot attached to vascular tissue in her leg.

She was placed on a blood thinner and began suffering from migraines and was diagnosed with stage 3 kidney failure due to hypertension. As doctors monitored the blood clot, things got scarier when a dental visit for a root canal showed her blood pressure to be 204 over 110.

She ended up in the ER and tests showed she had APLAS, which stands for antiphospholipid antibodies, a disorder that can cause blood clots to form in arteries and veins. In addition, she was dealing with multiple autoimmune disorders, for Jeanie, this meant vitiligo, a chronic condition when patches of her skin lose pigment or color and eventually, alopecia, which causes hair loss.

Jeanie also was suffering from hypothyroidism, where her thyroid gland was not making enough thyroid hormones.

But in typical Jeanie style, she didn’t’ slow down and instead, tackled her health setbacks as bumps in the road.

Medication kept her autoimmune disorder under control, and her blood clot gradually disappeared as well. She stayed hydrated and followed a healthy diet to stay on top of her kidney disorder, and her migraines improved too as more than 10 years passed.

“When I look back, that was all nothing compared to what I was going to go through. I thought, ‘I can deal with this.’ I’m still skiing, I’m still doing triathlons, and then I got to Mother’s Day 2021 …”

Any celebratory plans for Jeanie on that special day would have to be put on hold.

Jeanie is a triathlete who has dealt with health challenges. Here, she poses with some of her many medals. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.
Jeanie is a triathlete who has dealt with health challenges. Here, she poses with some of her many medals. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.

Genetic mutation leads to prolonged hospitalization and major health scare

In early May 2021, Jeanie had a strange feeling of her “belly being full” despite not having eaten. Thinking she might have a bowel obstruction, she went to a local hospital and after some bloodwork and a liver biopsy, she was told she had Budd Chiari syndrome. But after three days, she was discharged and told that this condition could be monitored at home.

Budd Chiari syndrome occurs when veins carrying blood away from the liver clot or become too narrow. With nowhere for the blood to go, the liver becomes enlarged and tender, eventually causing cirrhosis, or severe fibrosis (scarring), along with fluid buildup. If left untreated, the liver can become so damaged that a transplant would become necessary.

For Jeannie, the culprit causing this rare condition was a blood abnormality in a gene called JAK2, which only was discovered about 20 years ago. This mutated gene, which leads to the production of too many red blood cells, put her at a higher risk for blood clotting in her liver.

Unbeknownst to her, it was also fueling a type of chronic leukemia, or blood cancer, called Polycythemia vera (PV), which doctors would learn about a few months later.

Feeling worse after leaving the hospital that day in early May, Jeanie’s luck would turn when a worried friend, a UCHealth physician, got her an appointment soon after with hepatologist Burton, also the medical director of liver transplantation at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.

When he saw Jeanie, he was alarmed: She had jaundice, which meant her skin had turned yellow, and she had ascites (fluid in the abdomen), because of the increased pressure of the blood exiting her liver. She was diagnosed with acute liver injury, as her liver was congested with blood and not working well, and he felt she would need surgery right away.

“I don’t think Jeannie knew how sick she was,” Burton said. “She was fortunate to come to a center like UCHealth where we could diagnose, manage and take on a high-level liver disease case like hers.”

Jeanie Brookbanks-Smith, a triathlete, overcomes Budd-Chiari syndrome and Polycythemia vera to inspire others with her strength and resilience. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.
An accomplished triathlete, Jeanie’s new mission is to tap her nursing experience to help other people navigate health challenges. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.

Jeanie was seriously ill and struggled to recuperate from surgery

The liver performs many critical functions, including filtering blood of toxins and wastes. It helps support our immunity, metabolism and digestion to create the nutrients our body needs.

Key to this process is the portal vein, which carries blood from the abdomen to the liver where blood is filtered and processed. The blood exits the liver through the hepatic vein before emptying into the inferior vena cava, the vein that delivers blood from the lower body to the heart.

But because Jeanie’s hepatic vein was clotted, blood could not get out of her liver, so she underwent an operation performed by Pomposelli called a portacaval shunt to solve this dangerous problem. During the lengthy and complex procedure, he connected her portal vein directly to her inferior vena cava, completely bypassing her liver to relieve the congestion.

“The whole point of the shunt is protecting the liver from injury and developing fibrosis, relieving pressure in the liver, and avoiding a possible transplant surgery in the future for her,” said Pomposelli, also a professor of surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The portacaval shunt, in essence, solved the liver clotting problem that Budd Chiari syndrome had created for Jeanie. But the surgery aftermath brought more challenges, as her body fought off infections and other complications that required her to the return to the ICU.

Family and friends supported Jeanie and her family as she continued to convalesce.

“She was just a rock star the whole entire time. She never complained, she just kept doing whatever she had to do,” said Jeanie’s sister Donna Downes, who came from Connecticut to help Jeanie that summer.

For her older sister, seeing Jeanie suffer after so many health obstacles over the years was heartbreaking.

“She was very stoic through all the ups and downs. I would say, “Jeanie you can cry, you can complain, you can let it out.’ But she just had incredible strength.”

The day after the shunt surgery, Jeanie’s close friend Robin Roberts-Drane recalled a conversation in her hospital room about tough issues such as a living will and decisions about extreme measures to prolong her life if necessary.

“She told us, ‘If I can recognize my kids and interact with them, I want to live. I want to do everything I can.’ It really spoke to her zest for life and what she values over all things – her love of her husband, children and family.”

Jeanie and her husband, Kevin, enjoy time outdoors at Cherry Creek State Park. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.
Jeanie and her husband, Kevin, enjoy time outdoors at Cherry Creek State Park. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.

The memory of her mother keeps Jeanie’s spirits up as she finally leaves for home, but she braces for another health hit

Jeanie said the memory of her mom, who died in 2015 of pancreatic cancer, was with her every day.

“I prayed to her every night. I swear that’s what got me through this – prayer. She was listening. She kept telling me, ‘You’re going to live, you’re going to live.’’’

Donna agreed that their mom’s spirit was at hand.

“We both felt our mom’s presence. Our mom was giving Jeanie the strength she needed to get through this.

“We just took it one day at a time; we had faith she was going to be OK, and we just prayed really hard. She had such a strong will to live and such a strong sense for her daughters and husband and her entire family. She just would never feel sorry for herself.”

By early July, Jeanie was finally well enough to be discharged, but her health ordeal was far from over. After some follow-up blood work a few months later she learned she had the rare blood cancer, Polycythemia vera (PV).

“I kept saying to my friends, ‘I can get through this, as long as it’s not cancer.’ But then I was diagnosed with PV, which I’ll have for the rest of my life.”

While PV is not curable, it can be managed and treated with medication.

“Her blood disease is controlled and she’s doing well now. She’s very stable,” said McMahon, also a professor of medicine-hematology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Jeanie resumes her life with her husband, daughters, and once again pursues triathlons

Following a year-long break from triathlons, Jeanie returned to the sport in 2023. She has since participated in multiple events. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.
Following a year-long break from triathlons, Jeanie returned to the sport in 2023. She has since participated in multiple events. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon, for UCHealth.

In the more than three years since her portacaval shunt procedure, Jeanie has centered her life on her family, her career and her passions.

She is on a medication regimen to manage her PV, as well as side effects from her thyroid and auto immune disorders. She gets routine bloodwork, each time hoping for normal results, imaging to ensure her shunt stays open, and biopsies to review her liver for any tissue scarring.

She is excited about a new career that will channel her focus, discipline and fitness knowledge as a nurse and holistic health coach.

“I want to concentrate on health and wellness. Anybody who deals with chronic disease knows how difficult it can be to navigate the health care system. I want to teach people to be the best version of themselves, as I can speak from a lot of experience.”

That perseverance is part of Jeanie’s hardwiring.

“When she hits a roadblock, she goes around it. When a door closes, she finds a window. If the window is locked, she will find another way out,” friend Robin said.

After taking about a year off from triathlons, Jeanie was back to it in 2023, and this past summer and fall, she competed in several, including the Boulder race that meant so much to her.

Her times might be slightly slower compared to when she was at her peak, but she is OK with that. She feels good and said she is trying to be at her best each day with no predictions on what the future might bring.

“We only have one life and it’s up to you to make the most of it: Be your own best advocate and don’t sweat the small stuff. Surround yourself with people that fill you with joy and be that person for somebody else.”

About the author

Mary Gay Broderick is a Denver-based freelance writer with more than 25 years experience in journalism, marketing, public relations and communications. She enjoys telling compelling stories about healthcare, especially the dedicated UCHealth professionals and the people whose lives they transform. She enjoys skiing, hiking, biking and traveling, along with baking (mostly) successful desserts for her husband and three daughters.