In September 2006, I found out that my sister Judy had a re-occurrence of breast cancer. We both had breast cancer in 1998 however we did not have to go through chemotherapy or radiation. We both had mastectomies; Judy had one breast removed, I had both breasts removed.
This time round, Judy had to have chemo and radiation. Her first chemotherapy treatment was in November and I went to the Cancer Center, General Campus with her.

As we went through the chemo journey together, we found out that once a patient is finished with his/her chemo treatments, there is a ritual whereby the patient rings the “Victory Bell” and all the other patients applaud.
When I finished writing my poem I decided to cross-stitch it, which took me six months to do. Judy was really touched by the poem when I first showed it to her.
 
The poem was written for cancer patients and their families to provide some comfort knowing they are not going through the chemotherapy journey alone. It is such a frightening journey.

RING THAT BELL OF HOPE

She didn’t want to tell us, for two months she had known it was back.
She was two months alone & frightened, afraid of how we would react.
How would she tell her sisters, dear God … the one who had eight years earlier survived it with her?
The breast cancer had returned, the pathologist report confirmed it for sure.

She finally gave the doctor. permission to tell me what was going on.
I could not get to her fast enough, why had she waited so long?
I walked in the door, she started crying, we hugged and I held her so tight
She cried, “It’s highly suspicious of invasive”.  I said, “Don’t worry, it will be alright.”

The surgeon we met that afternoon was wonderful; he made us feel so much better.
He explained everything he was going to do, each procedure to the letter.
He spent two hours with us, knowing my sister was frightened and scared.
With his words of comfort, his compassion, we left his office feeling well prepared.

Surgery to remove lymph nodes was scheduled and then he would take it from there.
But definitely chemo and radiation were necessary as part of her follow-up care.
She would have to have a bone scan, chest X-Ray and stomach ultra-sound.
Because this was a recurrence she would have every test this time round.

And thus began the appointments, tests, blood work, chemo and radiation.
This was the path her life would take; the next eight months would test her determination.
We learned all about “AC” and “T” drugs and the side effects to expect from each one.
November 24th, was the first chemo appointment; the treatments had begun.

By the end of the third week she was upset, all her beautiful hair was gone,
but she had already purchased a wig and looked fabulous when she put it on.
She had matched it to her natural hair style, the colour was exactly right …
but she hated the wig; it was itchy, she was glad to remove it at night!

One thing she discovered that we both had not been told.
She would wake up during the night because her bald head was so cold.
When all her eyelashes were gone she noticed something she had not thought about.
More dust particles got in her eyes because there was nothing to keep them out.

Adriamycin, the “Red Devil” was the chemo drug that scared her the most.
She was so happy and relieved when on January 26th she had her final dose.
Taxol was not as frightening, the side effects were not nearly as bad.
Bone pain and just plain exhaustion were welcome compared to what she had had.

We heard the bell, for the first time during chemo session number three.
We looked at each other puzzled, what was this, what could it be?
When everyone started to clap, we knew what this ritual was for.
This person had survived the treatments and did not need chemo anymore.

The bell reminded me of “It’s a Wonderful life”, when the angel gets his wings.
Each one of these patients had a “Clarence” to help them cope with everything.
A round of applause is fitting after the ringing of the “Victory” bell.
These people have survived chemotherapy; they have fought the fight from hell.

Dedicated to my sister Judy and everyone affected by cancer.

Please, never lose hope!!

With all my love and admiration,

Beth Staton
(Cancer Survivor)

 

 

 I’m writing about my son Mark, he is a rodeo clown / barrelman and is expanding his work to include Promoter of rodeo events and “ Bull-ridings”.  His grandma had to have a surgery due to her breast cancer, and all is very well with her! So Mark decided along with his wife Sara, to host a BULL-BASH with proceeds going to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Bull riders from the WPB, World Professional Bullriders, came to compete and a great many wore Pink shirts along with the volunteers and audience members. The RCMP officer that evening, Bill Coultard, even had on a hot pink shirt. The most memorable part of the entire show was the Bucking chutes, as Emery Erickson, the announcer said “These are the only chutes in the WORLD that are painted PINK. We all can’t tell you of how proud we are of our son, how Blessed we are as a family to have our kids support causes near to them.   Mark’s 9 year old sister Jessica donated her hair, as well as money, to Locks of Love, for girls who are going through chemo and have lost their hair.  She also walked in the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure last fall in Calgary, with a lady, Michaela that she befriended at T.P.P.  Jess asked her to walk with her, and they did and now they are planning to donate hair and do a head shave this fall.     The best part is that our kids do these “things” from their own hearts …….making us the Proudest Parents in the world!!!!!!!! With kindest regards …..and a definite prayer for a cure Ted & Shirley  

Hello,

I am a 3-1/2 year breast cancer survivor.  I have participated in the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Run for the Cure with my family for the past 4 years.  My mother also had breast cancer 23 years ago but died from it. Last year I spoke at a cancer fundraiser and shared the recipe below.  Feel free to share this recipe in any way you like.  The ingredients to this recipe are based on my personal experiences.

Recipe for the Breast Cancer Survivor

1/2 cup courage

1/2 cup humour

1/2 cup positive attitude

1/2 cup of love from family and friends

2 tbsp special touch from your oncology team

2 tbsp of care given as needed

1/2 tsp spiced drugs

2 tsp personal seasoning

2 tbsp of body awareness

1/2 cup of priority & goal setting

1 cup of knowledge

1.  In a large mason jar layer courage, humour, positive attitude & love from family and friends providing a

     solid base to comfort you.

2.  Layer around the edge your oncology team, medical care systems, spiced drugs, personal seasonings &

     good body awareness!  Fill the rest of the bowl with your own homemade goals & priorities.  Cover gently

     with knowledge.

3.  When ready, simmer a soothing pot of survivor soup.  Add fresh attitude, 3 cups of warm thoughts. 

     Simmer gently with your watchful care and everlasting zest for life until ingredients are soft & tender.

Cuddle with family and friends. Serve in thanks.

Written by Donna Biagini and Kim Moreau

In October of 2006 my daughter found out she had breast cancer.  On December 22, just one week before her 28th birthday she was told that the cancer was in her liver, bones, and lungs.  She is a single mother of two girls, at the time age 3 and 5.  The three of them moved in with my husband and I, and our youngest daughter.  I have multiple sclerosis, and my husband had cancer in 2005 and a heart attack in 2006.  My youngest daughter is 9 and she was the strongest one in the family!

Robin started radiation and chemotherapy.  The day after her second chemo treatment she was unable to get out of bed.  She was taken by ambulance to the hospital, and we were told that she had a severe infection and to call any family members who might want to see her before she died.  Within days I was inundated with offers of help.  One friend took all three girls, my daughter and two granddaughters and cared for them in her home for 2 or 3 weeks.  My husband and I “moved in” to the hospital. Robin did survive that crisis, although she was still paralyzed, confined to bed and totally dependent on others for all her needs.

I brought the girls home and drove them to school and day care.  Robin had been working at a day care before she got sick and the day care was continuing to care for the girls without being paid.  I went to the hospital every day to feed Robin lunch, and her dad went every evening to feed her supper.  One of the Knights of Columbus at Holy Family Parish phoned to ask what they could do.  I suggested a ramp   into the house would help, they didn’t think a ramp was the best solution, so they bought and installed a lift so I could get into my house more easily.  One lady with 6 children of her own, including a 1 year old, drove to my house every week, picked up my dirty laundry, took it to her home washed, dried and folded it and brought it back.  Another lady asked a few mutual friends if they could contribute some money, and showed up at my door with an incredible amount of money, and told me that people she didn’t even know had been phoning her asking if they could donate.  Several times I had  people come to my house bringing meals that they have collected from their friends.  Thousands of people have been praying for Robin and all our family.

Robin has confounded all her doctors.  She has not only survived but she got better!  Although she is not walking on her own yet, she has regained movement in her arms and legs.  This is more exciting than the first time she leaned to walk, because then I expected her to learn, this time I didn’t.  She can feed herself and wheel herself around.  Because of the lift she was able to come home for Thanksgiving and her daughter’s birthday.  We don’t know if she still has cancer, but what we have right now is a miracle.

The whole point of this letter is to thank all of those people who have done so much for all our family. I don’t even know who many of them are.  Thank you, thank you, thankyou.  Thank you for the gifts of food, money, clothes and all the work you have done for us.  Thank you for all your prayers and sacrifices.  We could not have lived through this year without your support.

I believe that every person in the world has the opportunity to be strong, not only physically, but emotionally as well. However, I am not convinced that each person knows that they have this hidden strength, and therefore they do not go looking for it. I think that strength in only discovered after a sort of test or right of passage. This test separates the brave from the cowards, the noble from the liars and ultimately the free from the trapped or isolated. I realized that there is a journey to be made when discovering ones strength, when I volunteered for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure in October of last year.

 I saw thousands of people who were physically strong, and only a select few that were emotionally strong as well. I met a young girl with bright blonde braids and a huge smile. She had lost not only her mother, but also her only sister and her aunt to breast cancer. She was so young, however, she was old enough to know how severe these losses were.  I saw that she had made a sort of transition. That she had taken this test of courage and understanding, and she had come out strong. Not just physically, but she was now emotionally strong. She was now brave and honest and practically invulnerable. She had lived through the impossible and had experienced the days she had hoped would never come. She had clearly learned what it is to be strong and therefore, she had accepted this tragedy and now knew what being alive truly was. She was no older than twelve years old, and in a way, she was stronger, than Hercules.

I believe that in a single experience, a person can find that he or she in much stronger than they had previously thought. And that sometimes there is more that one test in finding inner strength, courage and determination. I came to believe this when I saw a movie based on a man named Joe Simpson. The movie, called Touching the Void was about Simpson and his friend Simon Yates and their plan to climb the Peruvian Andes. They were skilled mountaineers and knew exactly what they were doing. However, after a series of devastating events, Yates was forced to let Simpson fall over two hundred feet into blackness. Due to truly miraculous events, Simpson survived, but his leg was extremely broken; his shin had slid into his knee causing both his knee and his shinbone to break in several pieces. He could obviously not walk, and he was forced to practically crab walk down a huge mountain, alone, for three days with no food and scarcely enough water. He became delirious and frustrated, but he thought of this as some sort of test; if he could get through this he would be stronger and he would also have a clearer idea of what it means to be living. He made it down the mountain and to base camp where, luckily, Yates had not yet left. Simpson had started this adventure physically strong, but was now emotionally strong as well.

I believe that there is a test, and that if you are willing to take it and try harder than you ever have, you will find your inner strength, and with it the courage to live your life to its fullest.                                   

 

 

Thank you to all of the London Life employees,  and their friend and family who’s motivation, innovation and teamwork resulted in raising over $27,000 for the 2007 Canadian Breast Cancer CIBC Run for the Cure.  Congratulations and here’s to sending out the challenge to other corporations in London for the 2008 run, see if you can take the Corporate Spirit Award from the London Life Thinks Pink Team!. We encourage healthy competition to raise funds for such a good cuase!

 

Yes, I’m a survivor.  I’ve joined the other team.  I didn’t want to, however, in life sometimes you don’t have a choice.  In January 2006 I found a lump…FEAR took over me.  Surgery in March, with two lumps out, 24 lymph nodes infected, it spread to my liver.  I worked that year.  Single Mom, at age 40, what was I going to do?  I had 8 rounds of chemo  that started in May.  I found laughter to be my best medicine.  I  found joy in every little thing.  Learned so much about myself, that I spun the cancer into a positive.  I have amazing coping skills I never knew I had.  I went to Barbra Streisand two days before my last chemo.  Wow!  In January 2007 it was back.  The nasty darkness.  Chemo February 2007 to June 2007 seven hard rounds.  I couldn’t work this time.  It left me very sick and very angry…very angry.  I visualized myself on the really bad days, standing on a stage telling my story.  And that is what I did.  September 2007 I was the Guest speaker for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure in Kitchener, Ontario.  Yes, I shared my story.  And you can’t stop me now.  My book will tell it all.  I AM A SURVIVOR!!!!  

As children, we often believe that people are indestructible.  I know I did; especially when it came to my parents.  My mother and father seemed invincible to me.  And so, I took their love, and support, and life for granted, as we often do with those we care about the most.  Then I grew up and began realizing the value of our time here on earth.  On July 10, 2003, my sky lowered and darkened.  I spent the day at the ROM trying to occupy my mind since as of late I had been having inexplicable anxieties.  And then the call came from my father: my 46 year old mother, the strongest woman I have ever known, had just been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.  It came as a total shock.  You see, my mother is a very private person who hates to burden her loved ones with any unnecessary stresses.  So, her and my father had been keeping her various tests and appointments from us, just in case it was really nothing to worry about.  I rode the subway home that day and the screeches on the tracks had never been louder.  I became consumed with sorrow and fear.  All the worst possible scenarios played in my mind over and over again.  At 23 years old, was I to lose my mother? My best friend? My number one supporter? When I arrived home that day, my family sat around the kitchen table in tears.  My mother was the only one who didn’t cry.   Soon after, my mother had a lumpectomy in her right breast and removed 20 lymph nodes, 2 of which had already been infected.  She spent 7 months in and out of hospitals undergoing rigorous chemotherapy and radiation.  It was hard to look at her; her skin yellow, her head hairless, and her body puffy.  And she was strong as ever.    That year, I began raising money at my university for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure and have been committed to this fundraising event ever since.  It has almost been 4 years since the end of her treatment, and my mother is feeling better than ever.  Now, we all participate in the Run for the Cure, which has become our way of celebrating my mother’s strength and survival.  As an artist, I needed to find a way to express mine and my mother’s story.  During her recovery, I wrote the song “Owl Eyes,” which was recorded this past year, to commemorate her fight against breast cancer.  The song is not only about my mother’s perseverance, but about the perseverance of every woman or man who struggles with the disease.  My hope is that it inspires strength and determination within breast cancer patients who are feeling beaten down or too weak to go on.  By supporting those diagnosed and sending out positive energy, we can fight this disease together.  To listen to Owl Eyes please visit www.myspace.com/andrearamolomusic. Andrea Ramolo is a Toronto-based actor and singer/songwriter.  . 

 

As told to the Lethbridge Herald

The very moment after the surgeon told her she had breast cancer, everything in the room lost its clarity for Diane Gallant.

Sights and sounds morphed into slow motion as the physician’s mouth continued to move, but no longer made sense. Blood pounded in her head like a tribal drum. Her first clear thought, she remembers, was to call upon God to help her. Her second was to wonder, “why me?”

The day she was diagnosed - in June 2006 - was the same day Diane and her husband Wayne took possession of their new home west of Lethbridge. Wayne had just purchased Mountview Dodge - now Lethbridge Dodge - and the couple was moving from Cochrane after 20 years there, coming back to Lethbridge where they had both been raised.

They were excited to be embarking on this new phase of their lives. Son Russell, 24, was about to begin law school but decided to take a year off and help his dad at the dealership. Daughter Jeni, an education student who wants to teach French immersion, was only too happy to move to the University of Lethbridge. Everything was falling into place.

But first there was this business of a lump in her breast to be taken care of.

“We drove down here to do a walk-through of the house, then we had to race back to Calgary for a doctor’s appointment at 2 p.m.,” she recalls.

She wasn’t worried at all. There was no history. And she’d taken very good care of herself. She expected nothing; and then the doctor dropped the “C” bomb.

“Why me? I thought, I’ve done everything right in life. I always wear my seatbelt, I wear my helmets, I eat pretty well. My mother has 10 sisters, all between the ages of 58 and 78, and not one of them has had breast cancer. Not one. I answered all the questions - I had my kids at the right age, I nursed both of them, I took the pill but only for a short time. Why the hell me?

“And then I thought, OK, it’s me. Thank God it’s me, and not my daughter or my mother.”

Diane had found the lump on her right breast that Mother’s Day, while she was away at a horse competition with Jeni. Until that day, she’d gone dutifully for an annual mammogram since she was 40, and they’d always been clear. Now, within a few days and after numerous tests, she learned the lump that got her attention was merely a cyst, but the cyst had served as a beacon that led to the discovery of cancerous tissue beneath.

As the news began to sink in, Diane and her family were faced with a couple of days to discuss her options. Would it be lumpectomy or mastectomy? She had three surgeries in six weeks, followed by several months of intense chemotherapy.

It was during her chemotherapy that Diane learned about the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation in a way that proved to be life-changing. She read a newspaper article about the cancer drug Herceptin, which she knew was one of her medications. The article extolled its the virtues and called upon the Alberta government to join other provinces in adding it to the provincial drug list. The cost per patient, she learned, was $40,000.

“I took the article with me to the doctor. No one had asked me if I had insurance, or how I would pay for this medication, so I asked him who was going to pay for it. He told me that coincidentally, the government had announced that day it would cover Herceptin, but he said even if they weren’t going to, the Canadian  Breast Cancer Foundation would pay for it.

“There’s where my determination comes from. I decided to run in the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure, and I said to my husband if I could get 500 people to sponsor me for $20 each, that would be $10,000.”

By the time the run happened Sunday, Diane had raised more than $12,000 along with her team, Jugs and Jocks, and earned the Ford Determination Award for raising the most money. That determination is growing, and Diane intends to make the run an annual event.

“I learned three things through this,” she says. “Number one, I am a lot stronger than I thought I was. Than I ever knew I was. Number two, I don’t have control as much as I thought I did, and I’ve learned what I do have control of and don’t worry about the rest. And third, there’s just a lot of stuff in life that doesn’t really matter.”

I am 48 years old and was diagnosed last December.  At first I was told don’t worry its probably nothing, but nothing turned into 8 chemo treatments, 16 radiation treatments and a mastectomy which I had just two short weeks ago.  I got the results of my pathology reports last Friday and I am happy to report all came back negative.  This is a poem I wrote the night before the first stage of my treatments.

Today is the day my journey begins
Don’t know where I’m going but know where I’ve been
The things that I’ve seen and the things I have done
Have let me to know there’s no army of one
We are many strong, our soldiers are great
We stand side by side challenging our fate
For some it’s been lost the battle too long
They strengthen our hearts no memories gone
I’ve been shown my path for all I will fight
To shine for all those darkened by night
So think happy thoughts from this faith has grown
Our soldiers are many we don’t walk alone
My prayers are to all for what has been done
We don’t stand alone there’s no army of one

Each of us will handle what has been given us in different ways.  I was blessed with many angels along the way and have learned so much about myself and life.  My heart is with  all of you

Karen Scott - No longer a future breast cancer survivor but an actual real life survivor