|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Menopause expert Dr. Catherine Hansen, MD’96, is a Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry grad and spouse of Jeremy Hansen, the first Canadian astronaut to travel to the Moon.
Western News spoke to Hansen after her husband returned to Earth aboard the Artemis II mission, following a thrilling and emotional splashdown that she described as the scariest day of her life.
From a rural Alberta hospital where she was the only OB/GYN – on call 24 hours a day – to a new venture supporting women in midlife, Hansen’s journey has taken her across continents, serving diverse populations and patients in many stages of life. She shared her family’s approach to maintaining health amid a hectic pace of life and how she stays rooted to her core purpose of supporting women.
Western News: What was it like watching the launch of the Artemis II mission, watching your spouse rocket off this planet?
Catherine Hansen (CH): It is hard to describe, knowing that person is going so far away when it’s only a 10-day mission. It’s kind of like a long business trip, but 400,000 kilometers. Although it felt quick, it’s been decades in the making. Jeremy has been working and training at NASA for 17 years.
Dr. Catherine Hansen and her three children with astronaut Jeremy Hansen watch as the Artemis II mission launches. (Submitted)
Becoming the first Canadian to fly around the Moon, to go farther than humans have gone, it really has been a long work in progress with many ups and downs along the way. Watching him launch in that rocket, almost exactly on schedule, was a complete shock – I think even to the people who knew what was happening. They were expecting it to be called off or delayed a little bit at any moment. But the engines lit and it started lift off. It was a very terrifying, but also extremely exciting and joy-filled moment to know that he was realizing the culmination of those many years of work and all of his childhood dreams.
Those decades of work, leading to that huge moment – what has this experience been like for your family?
CH: There are hundreds of thousands of people who have touched this mission directly and indirectly. The hope and dream has always been that everyone sees a part of themselves in this, and knows that they too can accomplish big things.
It makes me, and our grown children, feel exceptionally proud, but we also feel a level of responsibility for sharing the inspiration and motivation of this mission and the people who have contributed to the science, technology, engineering and the artistry involved. We feel part of something that we hope will continue to inspire the nation and the world.
What was going through your mind during the splashdown?
CH: That was the scariest day of my life.
The end of the mission would ultimately mean that we got him back safely. That was never a given throughout all of this. The splashdown was the final moment – after they had launched successfully, inspired the world and we even got to talk with him a couple of times during the mission – so it was very, very emotional for me. I was just praying that they would come out of that six minutes of loss of signal, that we would hear them again, the vehicle would be intact, the chutes would fill and they would splash down in the ocean as planned.
You’re a proud Schulich Medicine & Dentistry grad, tell us about your own journey.
CH: I was at Western from 1992 to 1996 – this is our 30th anniversary, which is hard to believe. We had an absolutely exceptional class and made incredible memories. I still have friends from those years. Beyond that, I moved into a residency for OB/GYN at McMaster. I went back to my hometown, but remained connected to the London area. Then, I chose to do a master’s of public health at Johns Hopkins because I wanted to take a more global perspective on international women’s health. I went to Africa for a short time during my residency.
Then I started doing locums (temporary physician roles) in southwestern Ontario, including St. Thomas, Owen Sound, all over small towns. After I met Jeremy, he took me to rural Alberta, Cold Lake, which is home to one of Canada’s fighter bases. I went up there as a solo OB/GYN for eight years, 24/7 on call. We had three kids under 18 months while Jeremy traveled as a fighter pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force and I covered call for the hospital. Everything high-risk had to go to Edmonton, to our tertiary care centre – and usually by fixed-wing aircraft. So it was a very interesting career for me to follow him there.
When he was recruited to the astronaut corps, we came down to Houston. I spent 10 years as an assistant clinical professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, where I put all of my academic work from Western to good use. I did some research as well as a lot of residency teaching and OB/GYN practice. Then I moved into a bit of private practice and then onto women’s empowerment, wellness work and speaking.
Now, I’m the Chief Medical Officer at Effica Health, and we’ve launched in a couple of provinces including Alberta and Ontario. Soon, we will be a pan-Canada clinic specific to midlife and menopause, all guideline-based, credible, Health Canada-approved care. I’m really looking forward to that expansion across Canada to serve a very underserved demographic of midlife women.
Why is that work so important to you?
CH: What I’ve noticed, working in the U.S. and Canada, is that people will, unfortunately, prey on that vulnerable population. When women are most confused and uncertain, people come in with solutions that are not evidence-based or credible and often overpriced. Women are really seeking and searching for answers and getting misinformation.
For me, that’s been an impetus to share more evidence-based medicine as well as wellness modalities and a holistic approach to the whole woman. My life’s work is to lean into ensuring that midlife women have proper care. They are at the pinnacle of their careers, they’re the support person for their families, in most situations, for their workplaces and communities. Women are the rock and foundation of everything that is around them. And at a time when they need to be feeling their best, they’re often feeling their worst. Being able to impact a woman at that stage of her life will ultimately have a massive ripple effect into the world.
How do you approach sharing so much of your life publicly, including on social media?
CH: I do think it’s so important for people to be able to see themselves represented.
As we show up with our whole humanity and allow people to see who we are – and that the wholeness of who we are isn’t perfect; we make mistakes – I hope it makes people feel more included. It disrupts isolation and helps people realize they only need to show up as themselves.
In our family, you wake up in the morning and your only goal is to contribute your best, to use your skills for good – because you have them for a reason – and find the joy in it.
You and Jeremy both live such busy lives. How do you actually put that into practice?
CH: We have to remind each other that the goal is joy and through contributing our gifts, we find that joy.
One of our daily practices that we’ve implemented over the last several years as life has gotten so crazy busy, is morning coffee time. We do it virtually if we happen to be apart, and we’ll do other things together, including meditation. It’s that special time when we have the face-to-face connection and set our intentions for the day.
I don’t want to overstate and suggest we have joy all the time. That’s not true. But that is the ultimate place we aim to get back to. As Jeremy says, when we get off the joy train, we try to get back as soon as we can – and we can’t do those things in isolation, we need each other. I need him to remind me of what’s important. And I remind him regularly, too.
