Cancer has become one of the most fearsome diseases of our time. No one wants to hear their doctor say the word. But amidst all the dread and worry, stories of hope arise too. Three local cancer survivors tell their story.

Nancy McNaughton

In 2013, Nancy McNaughton was just getting back on her feet. She’d weathered the hardship of a recent divorce, found new employment, sold her long-term home, and moved into a comfortable condo. Her future was beginning to look bright again and Nancy revelled in the possibilities that her new life would hold—

Until October of that year, when everything changed. 

Discovering a small growth on her abdomen, Nancy’s doctor confirmed the news: a cancerous tumor had developed at the site of her colostomy, a surgery she’d had over 30 years earlier due to Crohn’s disease. She was scheduled for surgery in April 2014. The procedure would eliminate the tumor, a hernia, and redirect her colostomy to the lower intestine. She faced months of anxious waiting.

Before her surgery date arrived, though, Nancy found herself in the doctor’s office again. She’d awoken that morning to stroke-like symptoms. Tests revealed a massive bacterial infection in her body that had already affected her heart. Five weeks of antibiotic treatment was followed by surgery for the installation of a mechanical heart valve. Her cancer surgery was postponed in order to provide time for healing. 

“I’ve always called it my stroke of good luck,” Nancy says, “because they would have opened me up [for the cancer surgery], full of bacteria, and I could have died.”

Her colon surgery finally came and went and, apart from a difficult healing process, the doctors were optimistic. Within three months, she returned to the hospital for routine follow-up tests. 

“The [surgeon] looked like he was almost ready to cry when he had to come in and tell me that I now had stage-four liver cancer,” Nancy recalls. “My first thought was, ‘I’ve never heard of anyone surviving liver cancer before.’”

Her oncologist recommended a series of chemotherapy treatments as an attempt to shrink the cancer spots on her liver. It was ineffective and by March 2015 she underwent her third surgery to remove a portion of the organ. This led to another round of 12 chemotherapy treatments to combat any cancer cells that may have remained behind.

“The chemo was the brutal part for me because it caused postural hypotension,” says Nancy. “Which means as soon as I stood up, I’d black out because I got so dizzy.”

At the same time, she was battling persistent low blood pressure, requiring hours spent in hospital for intravenous rehydration.

“I was just starting to feel better [after the chemo was completed] and getting more positive when they said, ‘We’ve now found spots in your lung,’” she says. “By then my body was very broken down, atrophied, and weak. It took a year, for sure, to recover from the chemo and it affected every part of me.”

Nancy underwent surgery one more time to remove a lobe from her left lung. Thankfully, her oncologist didn’t believe more chemotherapy would be necessary. 

A full year has passed since her last surgery and Nancy is doing well. She’s almost made a full return to work and life and is hopeful that things are turning around. In spite of the many invasive surgeries and the loss of organs, it’s the negative physical effects of the chemotherapy that she still struggles with today. 

“I believe that I survived because I’m surrounded by wonderful people who kept me upbeat, a wonderful family, and a fantastic community,” Nancy says. “You always run into people who might know your name, but everybody knows your story because you live in a small town. You might think of that as a negative thing, but I had people coming up to me that I had never really known who said, ‘I’m praying for you.’ You realize that you’re not alone.”

Nancy returns to her doctor regularly for follow-up tests and, while some cancer markers still show up in her bloodwork, doctors have indicated that her scans reveal no recurrence of the disease. Since the onset of her cancer journey, she’s worked on building a healthier lifestyle, believing that poor food choices and stress likely contributed to a reduced immune system which can lead to cancer.

Becoming a hypochondriac, she says, is one of the fallouts she’s experienced through all of this, as every ache and pain now makes her wonder if the cancer has returned.

“There’s still a [worry] sometimes, but I don’t think everyday about cancer,” she adds. “It does make you look at your life and [remember the positive aspects]. I wouldn’t change my life. I still feel blessed. I feel like every day is important.”

Through the experience, Nancy can offer some wisdom to those who are newly diagnosed, including this advice: always take a family member or friend along to each appointment, since emotions can block a person from hearing much of what the doctor has to say. For Nancy, chemotherapy caused a kind of brain fog which reduced her ability to focus on the doctors’ instructions.

Finally, she says, it’s really important to overcome feelings of being a burden on those who want to care for you through your journey.

“You learn how incredible the human body is,” she marvels. “I’m missing a lot of parts, and [I’m still here].”

Rachel Vertone

At 27 years of age, Rachel Vertone had everything going for her—a wonderful marriage to her husband Jayme, a beautiful nine-month-old daughter named Adelyn, a comfortable home in Ste. Agathe, and a great job as a police officer for the City of Winnipeg.

Shortly before Christmas 2016, Rachel began to experience extreme stomach pain which led her to her doctor. A series of tests were run, making them wonder about the possibility of appendicitis. Scans also showed the enlargement of lymph nodes in the area.

Exploratory surgery was performed and, while her appendix was fine, the surgeon did a colon resection and removed portions of her lymph nodes for testing. Her biopsy tests came back normal, but the pain persisted. Months later, she was advised to do another biopsy on her lymph nodes. A week later, she received a phone call from the surgeon confirming a diagnosis of follicular B-cell lymphoma, a blood cancer affecting immune cells that normally fight infection.

“He said this was very rare for someone my age,” Rachel says. “It happens typically to people in their 70s and up. Typically, people my age get Hodgkins, but I got the non-Hodgkins [cancer], which is technically incurable.”

Rachel called back to the doctor’s office three consecutive times to confirm the diagnosis before the truth of it could sink in. Still, the hardest part was breaking the news to her husband and family.

A visit to the oncologist brought more devastating news: the chemotherapy he recommended had the potential to make her infertile. 

“The first thing that he told me was, ‘You can’t have any more kids,’” Rachel recalls. “Jayme and I were heartbroken. We were grateful that we had one, but we really wanted a sibling for Addy. We always pictured a bigger family, so we were devastated.”

While waiting to receive a bone marrow biopsy, she began to seek out options for post-treatment pregnancy and found a fertility clinic in Winnipeg that could freeze her eggs. The couple decided it was worth a try. But Rachel first needed to determine the date of her next ovulation, and that’s when she discovered, in the midst of the chaos, that her cycle was late. 

A pregnancy test revealed that she was already expecting their second child, throwing further complications into her cancer diagnosis. The only alternatives, the oncologist told her, were to take narcotics to ease the pain until she gave birth or to proceed with chemotherapy treatments and risk the odds that it wouldn’t hurt the unborn child.

Rachel didn’t like either option. 

Upon a recommendation from a cousin, a practicing pathologist, Rachel discovered that safer alternatives may be available at the Mayo Clinic. The couple made the trip to the United States and were told, in fact, that she was eligible for an advanced targeted chemotherapy treatment that wouldn’t harm the baby.

“[The chemo] attaches itself to the specific cancer cells and pops them and I could actually feel it,” Rachel says. “I was laying in the bed and I could feel [the cancer cells in my] neck getting hot and popping.”

The treatment eliminated the abdominal pain throughout the balance of her pregnancy. She gave birth to a healthy daughter named Emily in January 2018. Rachel began her oncologist’s recommended chemotherapy treatments a few months later, and will continue with maintenance treatments until 2021 to keep the cancer at bay. She says the cancer will always be dormant in her body, but it should be manageable, similar to the way that diabetes can be managed. 

“Technically, I’ll never be cancer-free, but I consider myself cancer-free,” Rachel says. “All my scans have been clear since June. Considering I have a blood cancer, there’s nothing that shows in my blood that it’s off.”

Early in her diagnosis, Rachel began attending monthly meetings and events at a cancer support group for young adults. It’s something she would recommend to anyone dealing with cancer. Not a single member of the support group has lost their battle with cancer in the time she’s attended, which provides a hopeful outlook on the chance of surviving the disease.

“You can have your family or spouse around you to help, but there’s a different comfort talking to someone who’s been through it,” she says. “You just look at them and you don’t have to say anything. They just understand exactly where you are and why you feel the way you do. That helped me cope a lot and to just stay positive.”

She has, unfortunately, witnessed many a young lady in this support group who has been forced into premature menopause due to chemotherapy treatments, long before they’ve even had a chance to dream of having children. So far, Rachel hasn’t experienced any menopausal symptoms and is still hopeful she might be among the lucky ones. 

Rachel has also decided to change her diet and lifestyle, opting for a pescatarian diet which excludes red meat. Red meat, she says, has been shown to put a cancer patient at greater risk of contracting a secondary cancer. Throughout the course of her treatment, she researched the effects of every drug or treatment being prescribed. She says she’s not one to take anything at face value.

As for others receiving the news of a cancer diagnosis, Rachel offers the advice that helped her along the way: stay positive.

“It’s such a crappy thing to hear, but you can go two ways,” says Rachel. “You can say, ‘This will ruin my life, why me? This is here to destroy me,’ or you can say, ‘This sucks, but I’m going to make it through this and do my best to keep on going.’ You’ve just got to pick the road that you want to be on. [The way I look at it], this experience was hard, but it changed who I am and it made me a better person. I’m excited to go back to work because I have a different sense of compassion and a different sense of what I’m meant to do and how I can help others.”

Last year, Rachel was chosen as the honored hero of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada and was given an opportunity to speak at their annual event.

Shari Davey

When Shari Davey received her breast cancer diagnosis in 2014, it took her by complete surprise. She had no symptoms and the diagnosis arrived after a routine mammogram. Even being called back for follow-up testing wasn’t overly worrisome when friends told her that it was a fairly common practice. She went in alone and was put through a second mammogram. The technician broke medical protocols by indicating that her likelihood of cancer was high.

Shari remembers calling her husband, Bob, feeling hysterical. He managed to temporarily calm her. At the following doctor visit, the doctor officially broke the bad news: she had stage-one breast cancer.

Even so, she did her best to remain optimistic.

“Because I was stage one, there was really never a time when I didn’t feel that my outcome was going to be a positive one,” Shari says. “I never thought cancer was going to kill me.”

The surgeon’s first action was to perform a lumpectomy of the small tumor. She also performed a biopsy of the nearby lymph nodes and later determined that they were free of cancer. She advised her to consider radiation treatments to follow the surgery, just in case.

Her oncologist, on the other hand, indicated a significantly reduced chance of recurrence if she included chemotherapy in the treatment plan. 

“I have a feisty little oncologist that was also my dad’s oncologist. So when she suggests something, it comes across as more than a suggestion,” Shari says. “But I have complete faith in her and, ultimately, you have to decide that you’re going to trust these people, and I did.”

Her treatment plan began with four rounds of chemotherapy at three-week intervals. Years later, remembering the aftereffects of chemotherapy still brings back tears.

“Chemo is just brutal,” says Shari. “It’s everything you’ve heard and then some. You can’t really express how terrible it is until you’ve been there.”

She came to expect complete debilitation a few days after each treatment. Suffering from extreme fatigue meant that a good day was being able to make it from the bed to the couch. Pills were prescribed for nausea, but they made her jittery and anxious. Food tasted terrible and she ate little. Not long after, her hair began to fall out in clumps.

 “I was emotional about losing my hair, but it wasn’t the worst part,” she adds. “My husband got out the razor and shaved my head. I think after everything I was going through, it was just another piece of the puzzle. In a small way, it even made me feel a little bit better, because now people would know I have cancer instead of wondering, ‘Why does she look so awful?’”

Through it all, though, she was astounded at the level of care she received.

“CancerCare Manitoba cares,” says Shari. “They have just been truly amazing. They go out of their way. When you think of how many people get diagnosed every day, and yet you never feel like a number in their system. You feel like you’re somebody special.”

She also appreciated the many doctors and surgeons who provided her with recordings of their in-office consultations. Recordings she could take home and listen to again because the excessive amount of information was too much for her to absorb all at once.

With only a brief period of recovery, she faced radiation treatments which required a trip to the Health Sciences Centre for 21 days in a row. Still suffering from extreme chemo fatigue, her husband or one of her grown children would accompany her and try to keep her spirits up. Doctors also prescribed a medication that would send her into menopause, since her type of breast cancer was hormone-driven. All the drugs, she says, have side effects of their own. 

It wasn’t until all the treatments were complete that Shari fell into depression. 

“The second year was emotionally difficult,” she recalls. “It’s hard to get your life back on track when cancer was everything you put your energy into. You don’t know how to move past that.”

She can see now that the months of treatment kept her distracted from focusing on her emotions. 

 “That emotional business afterward was so unlike me. I couldn’t get over the fact that I couldn’t just say, ‘But it’s over.’ And to sit in a doctor’s office and have her say, ‘Have you thought about suicide?’ and to say, ‘No, but I think others would be better off without me.’ That was my answer. The depression is definitely a part of it and I think its timing was so shocking to me.”

The doctor prescribed antidepressants and recommended a consultation with a psychosocial oncologist. Since then, she’s learned to practice mindful meditation and has found a cancer support group she still meets with regularly. The women in the group, she says, have developed long-term friendships that she doesn’t see ending anytime soon. 

“There’s a bond there,” Shari says. “They get it. And a lot of people have come up to me in town and say, ‘I had it ten years ago,’ or ‘I had it 20 years ago.’ You need to hear success stories.”

Her faith and her family have also been the backbone of her strength. 

“My pre-cancer attitude was ‘Life is good’ and I wasn’t willing to give that up,” she adds. “I’ve always been a sort of turn-it-around kind of girl and in my spirit I’ve always had a positive happy energy so that was too good a thing to let it slip away.”

Shari continues with regular testing and follow-ups. So far, her cancer markers have been mostly stable. After two years off work and another two years on half-time shifts, she finally returned to full-time work as a Kindergarten teacher at the Niverville Elementary School in the fall of 2018.

If she could offer any useful advice to the newly diagnosed, she’d tell them to take advantage of the many supports CancerCare Manitoba offers, and to do it proactively rather than waiting until they’re emotionally destitute.