When: Tuesday 7 December - 10.40pm
Where: RTÉ One
Online: Island of Ireland only
Jim Stynes is no stranger to overcoming extreme tests. For him, a challenge has always been something he would go in search of. Like rising to the top of a sport, he never grew up playing. Or leading the oldest club in the AFL back from the brink of extinction. Even uncovering a teenager's gift to the person most blind to it - themselves. Jim chooses challenges.
Until 2009, when one chose him.
Sporting icon, inspirational facilitator, author, club president, thriving businessman, philanthropist and family man, Jim Stynes is everything that society deems successful. A Brownlow Medalist who also holds the record for the playing the most consecutive AFL games, twice named, Victorian of The Year and even the Queen has honoured the beloved Aussie Irishman with an Order of Australia Medal, not just for inspiring greatness in young people, but for building The Reach Foundation to foster it.
But Jim's gift was his curse. In Every Heart Beats True: The Jim Stynes Story we learn how a successful lifestyle can become an addiction. And how his way of life spiralled out of control, at a cost to his family and ultimately, his health. How would you live differently, if you were told you only had nine months to live? And what would you be willing to do to stay alive? The answer for Jim? "Whatever it takes."
Over the past 15 months, family and friends have been left spellbound at his remarkable yet highly controversial approach to a diagnosis that gave the husband and father of two only nine months to live. Since June 2009, Jim has had no less than 16 tumors removed from his body. Some as large as grapefruits, while smaller more aggressive tumors riddled his brain. The fact that he is alive today is nothing short of a miracle. Or is it?
In this brutally honest account, Jim risks ridicule as he welcomes us into his daily routine and exposes a cocktail of conventional and unconventional therapies. Most are confronting, some are agonising, others. unthinkable.
From chemotherapy to radiation, raw food diets to coffee enemas, Reiki to a renewed focus on family, Jim embarks on a search where he leaves no rock unturned. We hear intimate stories from those closest to him and see a raw and exposed side of Jim rarely seen in public.
