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.”