Meet Sherise

After hearing from her family doctor, “I don’t think it’s cancer, it’s soft like nose not hard like forehead”, the hardest question Sherise ever answered was from the surgeon “You’re here alone?” because she wasn’t expecting him to have results yet.

All that mattered was how was she going to tell my two boys. Sherise had to face surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. But not just one surgery on the breast with cancer, but two because the tumor grew while waiting for surgery and there was cancer in two out of four lymph nodes. Her oncologist and radiologist developed a treatment plan which would take Sherise away from her boys for most of the summer doing chemotherapy and a month and half straight doing radiation in Saskatoon. Because it is a certain type of breast cancer, Sherise receives bone infusions every six months for 3 years and take a pill everyday for 10 years. Her process started in March 2019 and ended November 5 2019 with her ringing the bell just in time for my 47th birthday.

In Sherise’s Words

Having to do chemotherapy and radiation in Saskatoon created financial stress I wasn’t prepared for on top of having to be away from my children and battle this disease I was never expecting. Medical EI, and then, disability from work was not going to cover all monthly costs without the added cost of having travel to and from treatments/radiation.

When I received the email I was being given this amazing gift of support, even after I have, for now, finished my and this generous gift lifted that stress much sooner than expected.