“We are the miracle that God gives other people.”

That is the lesson, in essence, that Janice Frye would like people to learn from a serious illness that nearly took her life three years ago. Laying in ICU at the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City, the then-32-year-old realized, “I was dying.” But her thoughts were not of fear or of what she’d miss out on. She asked herself, “Have I helped people to understand and know when they have been God’s miracle to me?”

Today, on this side of life and a slow recovery, Frye said, “I’ve tried to be more careful this time around to make sure people know that they impact me. I’ve definitely seen miracles, fast forward these past few years. This happened to me, but this isn’t my story.”

To help tell her “story,” SVI Media recently met with Frye, who lived for 12 years in Auburn and is the newest DJ for SVI Radio Network. The daughter of Kent and M.L. Pearson, also of Auburn, will headline as “The DJ after the Workday” daily from 5 to 7 p.m. on Swift 98.7 FM. Listeners may remember Frye on air several years ago for SVI Media.

“We couldn’t be more excited at SVI to have Janice back on the air,” said Duke Dance, general manager of SVI Media. “The fact that she is not only still here with us on the planet is a miracle in and of itself, but to have the ability to be on the air after what she went through is incredible. She brings such great energy and genuine enthusiasm to our programming.”

Frye and her husband, Adam, temporarily moved to Spanish Fork, Utah, recently where Adam Frye is doing some regional work with heating and air. The two travel between Utah and Afton, where Adam still owns Fire and Air on Main Street. Janice has started up her own marketing consulting company, working with nonprofits, and will work remotely for SVI Media. Whether on the airwaves or in life, Frye brings compelling experience to her endeavors.

Raised in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, near downtown Salt Lake City, Janice Pearson Frye always had an “idea brain” and loved creativity — to, as she put it, “write your own future.”

“I’m a believer that my power to choose is a really powerful tool. I get to choose how I see the world, what things have weight in my life and what things don’t get to be part of it or get to be smaller than they need to be.”

Much of that perspective comes from her family. On her mother’s side is a hereditary disease called Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL), which causes cysts and tumors to spread throughout the body — mostly non-cancerous. But it can play havoc. A surgery to remove a tumor paralyzed her maternal grandmother. The Pearson family, with M.L. Pearson also suffering some effects of the disease, cared for the older woman while Frye was a young woman.

“We used to have popcorn parties with my grandma. She’d stick her tongue out — she couldn’t use anything past her neck — and we’d put popcorn on Grandma’s tongue. She was obviously much worse than me or my mom, but I don’t remember hearing my grandma complain.”

That resilience benefited the younger Frye when she was diagnosed with VHL in middle school. “I was just struggling,” she related. “I didn’t want to be with friends, I didn’t like the lights. I wanted to be in dark rooms.”

Her mom recognized the symptoms and got her daughter tested. They found non-cancerous tumors in her brain. She had her first brain surgery when she was 12. She’s had five over her lifetime.

Returning to school following that first surgery, Frye took counsel from her mother. “I remember my mom cautioned me to be careful when people feel bad for you, that pity is different than compassion. To be grateful that people care and have compassion for you, but don’t stay in that place. I’m grateful for that experience because it really did shape me.”

Following high school and a short time abroad in England, Frye entered BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho, majoring in broadcast journalism. She also met Adam Frye, whom she married in 2010. The following year, they both graduated, and in 2012, moved to Auburn. Janice Frye worked for several years for Rocky Mountain Yeti and did some DJing for SVI Media.

Then some six years ago, doctors discovered cancerous tumors in her kidneys. Treatments included immunotherapy, and it reduced the tumors, but it had the unfortunate consequences of turning her body’s defenses upon its own nervous system. Frye was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes pronounced muscle weakness.

Things went downhill quickly. On a snowy March night in 2021, Adam and Frye’s mother drove her to the University of Utah. During the trip, which Frye only slightly remembers, her oxygen dropped to 40 percent. “I ended up at the Huntsman Center [part of the University of Utah’s medical system] in their ICU for two weeks,” Frye said.

After steroids returned her ability to breathe, Frye was moved to the rehab facility — where she spent the next four weeks relearning how to walk. She recalled being unable to even roll over in bed. “It was hard,” she told SVI. “There were a lot of hard times when I just remember thinking, ‘This is my life now.’”

In some ways, this is where Frye’s story begins — that belief in her ability to choose. “I had that sit-down moment with myself. ‘What do I need to be happy? If I can go to the bathroom, I can be happy.’”

So, in rehab while in a harness she repeatedly kicked that little physical therapy ball. It’s the principle of “the small and simple things,” she said. “It was those things that seemed pointless, but just doing them every single day over time, it’s crazy how that adds up.”

And there were the miracles. A needed wheelchair and parents who were nurses to help in her recovery back in Star Valley. Her employers at Rocky Mountain Yeti who helped navigate the insurance. A recent biopsy that shows her cancer hasn’t spread.

There were also the innumerable kindnesses. Her wall at rehab was covered with cards from her congregation in Auburn with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Little children sent her a quilt on which they all traced their hands and wrote their names. Frye not only was lifted by these acts of charity, but also “to be gracious recipient of that kind of love was a gift to me in so many more ways than they realized.”

In the three years since, Frye helped Yeti open shops in Montana and uses her skills to grow non-profits. The latter, she said, is because “working in retail doesn’t feel really important after an experience like that.”

She and Adam are temporarily settled in a little white townhome in Spanish Fork, where she is nurturing her interest in indoor gardening. She even has a little lime tree.

Frye is excited for the possibilities. “Waiting on the Lord,” she said, is an active word. He lets us go where “we thought we wanted” then gets “us where we need to be.”