For much of my life, I haven’t felt like a sick person. I’ve loved downhill skiing since I was a kid growing up in North York. As an adult, I’ve travelled to Mont Tremblant and Western Canada to hit the slopes with my partner, her two kids and my two kids, and I enjoy the sport more than most people I’ve met. I also love to draw and design things, and I merge the two in my day job as a packager. I design neat packages for products you’d buy at a store—toys, home items, electronics.
The doctor I saw ordered a CT scan and asked me to stay overnight. Wanting to believe I just had a stomach bug, I hoped the doctor was overreacting—I had never had a CT scan before. I ended up staying at the hospital for two weeks as doctors ran me through a gamut of tests ranging from bloodwork to more scans and a full colonoscopyA few days after being released from the hospital, I went to see a GI specialist. He sat me down and said, “You have colon cancer.
The chemo worked, and I went into remission, but unbeknownst to me, I was still in the middle of the hardest period of my life. Two years later, in 2016, my mom’s stomach pains worsened, and a colonoscopy revealed that she also had colon cancer. Doctors caught it too late—Stage 4—and she passed away five months later. It was an incredibly tough time for me, but I had young children to focus on. They were my motivation to stay positive.
I tried my best to stay optimistic—and to not look or act too sick in front of my kids—by telling myself, “I had two weeks to prepare for my surgery, so I went shopping for a few items that would make the six-month recovery period more manageable. I bought slippers that were way more comfortable than the ones at the hospitals, a water bottle to replace the flimsy Styrofoam cups, an eye mask to help me sleep better and ear plugs to block out the hospital noise.