In 2013, Leaf Worsley — already being treated for breast cancer — had to face another of a woman’s greatest fears: having a child diagnosed with cancer.
A high school math and science teacher in Bancroft, Leaf was on maternity leave in August 2012 when she felt a lump under her right arm. At first, she thought it was an infection related to breastfeeding — but the lump continued to grow.
Leaf went to her family doctor in Bancroft and was referred to the Breast Assessment Centre at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC), where equipment has been totally funded by community donations. By the time her assessment at the Breast Assessment Centre was finished, she and her husband didn’t need the doctor to confirm the diagnosis.
“I remember that we just knew at that point,” Leaf says. “We went and told our families. Then we waited for the news about how bad it was.”
And the news was bad: Leaf had Stage Three breast cancer — meaning the cancer had extended beyond the tumour.
Yet you don’t hear self-pity from Leaf. A sensible and practical woman, she appreciated that the Breast Assessment Centre was close to home and that they were able to complete all the diagnostic tests in a single day.
“The beginning of the journey was the hard part,” she explains. “I can only imagine if I’d had to go back home and wait for news, and then wait again and again.”
Leaf’s Story
Video by Impact Communications (Jeremy Kelly)
Leaf’s course of treatment began with eight sessions of chemotherapy at PRHC’s cancer clinic. With her typically positive perspective, she describes the first four sessions as “a breeze”. However, that feeling was short-lived: by the fifth session, Leaf could barely walk because of sores on her feet.
“I remember thinking I must look like an old lady, hunched over, as I tried to walk down the hallway,” she says.
But Leaf was determined to do everything possible to fight the cancer into submission. At one point, the doctor at PRHC’s cancer clinic suggested dropping the dose, and Leaf refused.
Remaining grounded in the day-to-day practicalities of life, Leaf is thankful that the PRHC cancer clinic was close to her home in Bancroft. Being a one-car family, it made life a little easier on everyone.
She’s also grateful for the expert, compassionate care she received at PRHC. She was impressed that the nurses always greeted her by name and asked about her family, and by the special considerations they gave her. For example, during long procedures, the nurses would wrap Leaf’s arms in such a way so that she didn’t have to hold them up herself.
By the end of her chemotherapy sessions at PRHC, her cancer was greatly reduced, but Leaf’s treatment was not finished. At the time, radiation therapy was not yet available at PRHC, so Leaf had to travel out of town for radiation treatments — five days a week. She would take her youngest child and stay with her parents from Monday to Friday, then come home on weekends.
PRHC has since opened the Norm & Jessie Dysart Radiation Centre. In its first year, 368 patients from across our region received life-saving radiation treatment closer to home, with a focus on breast cancer, prostate cancer and those in palliative care.
As Leaf was pushing through the radiation phase of her treatment far from home, she received staggering news from Bancroft.
Mars, her oldest son, had been suffering from what appeared to be a lingering cold. Then six years old, Mars looked pale and lacked his usual boundless energy. After his gym teacher called to express concern that Mars wasn’t participating in class, the family took Mars to the emergency room in Bancroft. When doctors discovered that his hemoglobin level was dangerously low, Mars was sent by ambulance to PRHC and then by helicopter to Toronto.
After checking his bone marrow, doctors learned Mars had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common — and treatable — kind of childhood cancer.
Leaf gets emotional when she speaks about the journey she shared with her son during that time. The family was based in Toronto for the next nine months, while Leaf finished her radiation treatments in Oshawa in between bedside visits and doctor consultations about her son’s cancer. Mother and son kept in touch sometimes over an iPad, hospital to hospital.
“The pediatric outpatient clinic in Peterborough has nurses that are just as good as at Sick Kids,” Leaf says, citing the informal way the nurses responded to every need, and every passing conversation. “They seemed to pick up on everything.”
“They knew us. They knew our children. They even knew my mother’s dogs,” Leaf says, adding that the personalized care was so important to her.
That thought makes Leaf weep slightly. For a mother, having the best care for herself is one thing; having the best care for her child is quite another.
“It made all the difference in the world to us that we could get this kind of care at our regional hospital, so close to home,” she says. “I’m so glad from the start that I didn’t let anyone convince me that I should go to Toronto to look for a specialist’s care. Keeping the family together is a core value of mine. Having cancer care for my own treatment and for my son’s as close as Peterborough made all the difference.”
Thanks to the incredible generosity of the many individuals, organizations, and events that support the PRHC Foundation each year, outstanding cancer care screening, diagnosis, and treatment is the standard at Peterborough Regional Health Centre. On behalf of patients and their loved ones from across the region, the PRHC Foundation wishes to thank donors for investing in the life-saving technology that’s used to help patients like Leaf and Mars battle this terrifying disease.
For more information on how you can help, visit www.prhcfoundation.ca or call 705-876-5000.
