5 years ago today

5 years ago today,

I found a lump in my right breast.

5 days after my 46th birthday.

And 5 years ago today,

lived Janice, Marloes, Libby, Yvette 

and Natalie.

Fast forward 5 years to present day.

4 of the women in peace may they rest,

and 1 “living while dying,” as they say.

5 years from then marks today the day,

when statistically only one would be left to be.

I hate knowing the last one left is me.

While I am clearly not a poet, I hope you can feel my pain and frustration. These women were my friends. All five of us were diagnosed under the age of 50. For the five of us, there are thousands of others in our situation. Our current Canadian Breast Cancer Screening guidelines are failing us, our families and our friends. I will continue to use my story to advocate for better screening guidelines in Canada. I will fight until I can no longer.
Getting It Off My Chest, episode 0001 – My Breast Cancer Screening Story

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The moving goalposts

As I reflect on my year the term “moving goalposts” came up regularly in my life. However, the best time it was used, and which makes me smile every time I think of this DM exchange with a friend, was below. My friend noticed that I had changed my kids’ Terry Fox School Run target because they had hit their target so early, we didn’t want donations to stop coming in. He noticed because he gave a significant donation that brought them over their BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). 

What I realized in this reflection is that we are generally taught to move our goalposts to achieve a better result. You often hear people say “raising the bar”, which is a similar concept. However, nobody ever talks about moving in “the other direction.” Yet, as I continue my palliative treatments, I’ve had to do that regularly and I have beaten myself up over it every single time. There are times I didn’t move my goalposts and I failed to achieve what I had set out to do, not for lack of trying; I am no longer able to perform at the same level I used to. Let me tell you – it’s hugely demoralising, and I’ve cried over it so many times this year. When I say I’m not able to perform at a level, I’m not talking about racing on my snowboard, beating a hiking time on a certain trail, or anything of the sort. I’m referring to the day-to-day things, like cleaning my house, doing my laundry, making meals, etc. I hit my wall sooner than I did in the early years of my cancer treatments. I still think I can be SuperMom who is able to shop, make dinner and clean my house before taking my kids to their extracurricular activities. 

2023 was the year I finally figured it out. It’s OK to move your personal goalposts whenever and wherever you want to move them, work being the exception as it would likely be seen as sandbagging. The reality is that you know what you are physically, mentally and/ or emotionally capable of. If it means that you move the goalposts and things you planned to do don’t get done, that’s OK. The world won’t end, I promise!

The goalposts

There are obviously times when the goalposts can’t move. You can’t leave a 4-year-old waiting at a bus stop alone or have them cook their own dinner, for example. Child Services would be visiting very quickly. While I have often asked others to help, I have always felt guilty that I was a burden to them. Thankfully, I have an incredibly wise boyfriend and a persistent therapist who continually remind me that those around me wouldn’t help if didn’t didn’t want to do so. It’s taken me a few years, but as I was driving through the mountains a few days ago, it all started to make sense.

The field full of teammates

For the times when the goalposts truly can’t move, not because of a self-imposed constraint, but because there are real consequences to moving them, I have teammates! I needed to reframe how I saw those who have been cheering me on and helping me along the way. They don’t see me ad their “pitiful” [insert appropriate noun: sister, daughter, girlfriend, mom, friend, acquaintance, patient, customer…]. These individuals choose to help because I contribute to their lives in some fashion, even if it isn’t often obvious to me.

Going into 2024, I will remember I have every right to move goalposts where I need to and when it’s permissible. For the times it isn’t possible, I have the most compassionate and amazing teammates along side me and waiting for me to simply pass the ball to them.

To A.A.B, I am dedicating the title of this blog to you. To all those my team, please accept my heartfelt thank you. I’m ready to head into 2024 with a different outlook on adjusting my goalposts.

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#1 Terry Fox School Run Fundraisers in 2023!

Kids running at the Terry Fox School Run in 2023

There are so many things for me to be proud of when it comes to my kids. I think I have the best kids in the world! OK, so does every other mom, so this isn’t a unique perspective. Having said that, I can unbiasedly say that my kids are the best Terry Fox fundraisers in 2023! Imagine the pride I had when I received the following email this morning.

#1 Terry Fox School Run fundraisers for 2023
#1 Terry Fox School Run fundraisers for 2023

This year marks the 5th year my kids have been running as part of their school’s Terry Fox School Run, and every year, they have grown their fundraising efforts. The don’t simply rely on “mom” to spread the word via social media; they work hard at raising funds. They ask their friends’ parents at their extracurricular activities and they knock on doors for donations. In fact, they door knocked twice this year, hitting up hundreds of homes. Their efforts were noticed in the community. They had a visit from our Ward’s City Councillor to talk about their story, which he shared on his social media. They were also interviewed by CBC’s reporter Tom Ross, and their story aired on CBC News Calgary on September 22, 2023. Click here to listen to the segment.1

It’s hard to believe that in the month after the segment aired, the kids’ donations went from $10,000 to a whopping $21,100. I’m floored at how much they have collected this year.

I’m so grateful to still be here to watch my kids grow up. In 2018, Victoria asked her grand-parents to donate. In 2019, I remember how fearful Victoria was the first time we knocked on someone’s door. But she was enthusiastic; she did the knocking and I did the talking. Things started to change in 2020. Victoria did the knocking and some of the talking, with Nicolas and I standing by her side at the door. In 2021 with Nicolas started helping his big sister. He did the knocking and she did the talking. I was told to stay on the sidewalk and only to come if someone needed a tax receipt. Last year, Nicolas did the knocking and some of the talking, while Victoria ran off to the next house to do her “spiel”. 2023 was the year the kids partially split up, increasing on the numbers of doors they knocked on. They both did the knocking, they both did the talking, but at different houses. Still a little shy, Nicolas would sometimes give his big sister the stage and act as the “QR code provider.” I stayed back and only helped with income tax receipts.

As I sit here writing this post, I find myself smiling ear-to-ear. I’m lucky to be a “stage 4 breast cancer unicorn” (meaning I have outlived my life expectancy) as I am able to witness my kids, who are only 9 and 7, raise over $35,000 for cancer research so far. The magnitude of what they have done this year is beyond incredible. As Victoria so eloquently put it, “I hope that it goes smoothly like this every year.”2

  1. Ross, T. (2023, September 22). Two Calgary kids have hit a huge milestone raising money for the Terry Fox Run this year [Radio broadcast]. CBC Calgary News ↩︎
  2. Victoria Kwadrans, age 9, interviewed by Tom Ross, in a CBC Calgary News segment on September 22, 2023 ↩︎

Are you proud of my kids and my fundraising efforts for cancer research? If so, feel free to buy me a coffee or contribute towards some of my uninsured medical expenses.

Survival guilt : living among the dying

I know it sounds strange that I would claim I have survival guilt, which is typically reserved to victims of a unplanned traumatic event such a car crash, a property fire, large-scale tragedies or crisis. Yet, I believe that’s what I am feeling.

I met a woman at a local breast cancer group for young women in Calgary on July 4, 2019 for group coffee meetup. Like me, she also was a young mom. Her daughter was 11 months old when I met her. She had felt a lump in 2017, but busy with life, and soon after a pregnancy and then an infant, she didn’t have time to follow up until she found it again around 7 months after she had her daughter. That is when our paths converged through the breast cancer “club”. She told me it was stage 2b.

Ten days ago, my friend died. It boggles my mind. Statistically speaking, she should have lived much longer than me. With what they consider a locally advanced stage breast cancer, with emphasis on “locally”, she should have had a 95.6% chance of surviving the next 5 years. Unfortunately, mine was stage 4 de novo, meaning it was terminal from the time of diagnosis. My chances were only 22% for that same period. This is my second friend in 3 years who were supposed to outlive me.

Aside from the stage of our disease, she and I had the same diagnosis: triple positive, with low HER2 expression. We had same treatments and compared notes almost weekly throughout our treatments, post-surgery and radiation. We were being treated by the same doctor and she was initially three weeks behind me. Eventually, she finished her treatments first because I had an anaphylactic reaction to the second type of chemo we received, so I had to pause for 6 weeks, which allowed me to get approval to get onto a different version of the drug, one made with a bio-synthetic base as opposed to Castor Oil, which was the ingredient I was actually allergic to. That’s when she caught up, and then finished her treatments and had her surgery 3 weeks ahead of me.

I understand that we each make our treatment choices. My friend had an underlying medical issue that required her, if she couldn’t live with the symptoms of that disease, to go back on her old medication, knowing they were contraindicated given their immune-suppressing nature. She started those treatments a few months after finishing her radiation treatments. She debated whether to restart the drugs knowing they were immunosuppressants and that it opened a door up for the cancer to grow again. Unfortunately, it came back for her. She immediately moved to her second and then last line of treatment. We shared the same bone mets radiation and orthopedic oncologists. We truly were “Bobbsey twins” when it came to our cancer diagnosis and treatment. Unfortunately, between her underlying medical issue and need for immunosuppressants while in treatment, and other treatment decisions she made, her cancer continued to spread while mine didn’t. Logically, these explain why she and I have had such different outcomes, I still feel guilty.

  • I think back to so many conversations we had. Did I do enough to try to convince her to listen to her doctor?
  • Why couldn’t I help her more?
  • Why do my kids get more time?
  • I can’t sleep, other times I wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes lying still in bed and sometimes crying quietly, because I have outlived two of my local friends who were in earlier stages than me and didn’t make it.
  • Why am I a unicorn? What makes me different? What do I have in me that they didn’t?

Today is her funeral. I can’t make it today because I have my kids with me and I don’t want to upset them with the knowledge that another friend of mine just died. But I don’t know that I would have gone even if my children were with their dad and I was available. I don’t know that I could look into her husband or daughter’s eye and not want to vomit on them because it makes me sick to my stomach that I am here and she is not.

Selfish? Perhaps. I think saying it’s self-preservation is more accurate.

My friend L, I’m sorry I can’t be there for your family, in particular your daughter. Know that I am thinking of you. I hope you are in a better place where there are no demons haunting you as they did here. <3

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Mommy Has Cancer has its first story

I’m so excited to be able to be launching my Mommy Has Cancer animated comic strip series about a young family with a gravely ill parent navigating their uncommon life.

While I am still working on the actual website, the first video will be launching through Wellspring Alberta’s Online Digital Storytelling Film Festival on March 22, 2023 at 7:00 pm MT. I hope you will join me for the launch of my first short video.

You can easily register using a computer with the following link. **

** If you are using a mobile device to register, you will have to click on “Desktop Site” (bottom right) > Public Classes and Events > Digital Storytelling: Film Festival – ONLINE – Speaker (Code EXP34849) > and you’ll be able to register from there. I have notified Wellspring Alberta about the mobile registration issue and hope that they will be able to click through the link directly.

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Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t.

Since restrictions have eased, I’ve been out more and have had the opportunity to meet some new people. When they learn about my cancer, several of these individuals have told me how sorry or awful they feel for me. Many of them were even fighting back tears as they said it. The thing is, I don’t feel sorry for myself. This statement usually surprises them.

Don’t get me wrong; when I say I don’t feel sorry for myself, it’s not to say I don’t feel anything or am numb to what I’m going through. I have simply have come to terms with my diagnosis and prognosis. As a result, I have chosen to live life as if it was my last day on this earth. It truly is a choice. I could choose to let it consume me, or I can choose to take advantage of every single day I have left. I have chosen the latter, and I live this out using three key approaches to life.

  1. I’ve said goodbye to living in the past

Instead of focusing on the things I used to be able to do, I focus on the ones I can still do, have modified how I do it or new things I have learned to do.

I also process information differently than I used to. I take information and split it out the things within my control from those out of my control. For those out of my control, I simply “park” the information and move on. If it is something I can control, then I focus on what I can do about it. Many people get “scanxiety”. This is a phenomenon where individuals have very high anxiety and stress in the period of time (typically one to two weeks) after the scans are completed and when they meet with their oncologist gives them their results. Since I know there is nothing I can do in that time that would change the result of the scans, I simply keep myself busy and occupy my mind.

  1. I set short-term and flexible goals for the short term

I’m a strategist and a planner. That was what I did for a living. So this is probably the hardest aspect of my philosophy for me to live by. I used to set annual goals for myself personally and professionally. Unfortunately planning is difficult with stage 4 cancer. The past 2.5 years has taught me is that I need to be cautious about planning too far into the future. Like many cancer patients, I live “scan-to-scan”. I therefore focus on setting myself goals for the upcoming 3 months.

Something I do to make me feel like I have some control over the cancer is to help fundraise or advocate for cancer patients through various organizations. As a Terry Fox Ambassador, I do guest appearances at schools to for the annual Terry Fox runs. It helps raise funds and educate children about cancer research. I have also been profiled as a patient in Alberta Cancer Foundation’s campaigns to highlight some of their programs I’ve benefited from to help them raise funds to maintain and grow their cancer programs. More recently, I’ve been talking with Dense Breasts Canada about what can be done to help women obtain earlier screening. There is more to come on this in a few months. Even though I can’t take the cancer out of me, I feel like I am able to find ways to contribute in other ways.

My biggest goal is focus on identifying memories I want to make with my children and boyfriend and focus my day-to-day life around those. For example, this winter, there wasn’t a way that my boyfriend and I could even contemplate taking a vacation together. There were too many challenges preventing us from it: COVID-19, parenting schedules, work, etc. thinking outside “the box”, we planned a weekend where we “brought the vacation to us”. We picked a weekend, selected four beach-themed movies to watch over the course of the Saturday, cooked tropical foods such as Jamaican jerk chicken, prepared a selection of “resort beverages” and listened to reggae and Latin-American music. We also cranked the heat up in the house, wore our bathing suits and lied on beach towels while watching TV. I even put on a bit of sunscreen to add scents to the experience. We had a blast on our “imaginary vacation”. While it definitely wasn’t the same as going away to the tropics, it allowed us to have fun while creating an unforgettable, fun and playful memory.

Who doesn’t have a bucket list these days? Mine might look a bit different than others in the sense that the one I have created has less “big ticket” items that require long lead times. I only add items that are realistic and feasible given my late-stage cancer and I don’t attach any timelines to any of the items. I love adding new ideas to my list and love being able to tick items off as opportunities arise. And that brings me to the third way I focus on living my life.

  1. I live in the moment

I also look for ways to make things fun and feasible, even when circumstances are less than ideal. I think back to the day on which I had reservations to go to the Calaway Park (our local amusement park) earlier this season. It was a wet and miserable day, but my kids were eager to go and had been talking about it for a week. Instead of rebooking, we decided to make the best of it. We got fully decked out in rain gear for the occasion: rain pants, rain coats with hoods and rain boots. My son even took a pair of water goggles so he that he “wouldn’t miss anything”. We talked about all of the advantages on going on a rainy day: no line ups, no sweating, no need for sun screen, and best of all, we would not get wet on the “Timber Falls” log ride. This is by far my kids’ favourite ride. The kids and I had so much fun. They made a point of running through the splash park. I’m pretty sure the attendant was in disbelief when the kids asked if he could turn the water park on in the rain. We all ran through it fully clothed, screaming and laughing. Then we made it to Timber Falls. 2021 will definitely be the year etched in our minds as the year we did the ride 16 times. No, that isn’t a typo. We did the ride once when we got there and another 15 times in a row at the end of the day. And why not? There was no line up and my kids kept asking me to do it again. I sincerely hope they always remember me as the best mom ever for doing the ride 16 times with them in one day. And that is what I mean by being present. I only have one life, and I know that it will likely be shorter than most. It’s up to me to make the most of what I have left to live.

Calaway Park in the pouring rain and couldn’t have had more fun!

Living in the moment means I don’t let opportunities pass me by.  When my boyfriend found out The Reklaws were playing in town, we didn’t hesitate to buy tickets for the show. It was on my “bucket list” and was a memory I wanted to create with him. So we jumped at the opportunity.

Looping back to the beginning, I mentioned that I made people’s eyes tear up when telling people my story. My boyfriend was there for one of those encounters. A few days later, we were talking about the reaction the people we met had and how strong they thought I was for having the outlook on life that I have. My boyfriend loves country music so told me to listen to Tim McGraw’s song “Live like you were dying” as he said that it encapsulates my vision of life. Tim’s McGraw’s song perfectly encapsulates how I am approaching my life living with stage 4, incurable breast cancer.

I hope this blog explains why I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. Instead, I’m hoping I can inspire people to appreciate life every single day, whether you are sick or not.

Despite my cancer, my life is full. I am happy, and I can sincerely tell you that I always find something special in every day that I live. I know that when I die, I will have lived life to the best of my ability, created memories with those who are the most important in my life and hopefully inspired others along the way.

Whether you feel sorry for me or not, you can always buy me a coffee or contribute towards some of my uninsured medical expenses.