My back hurt, I felt electric shocks in my head, but I still was able to participate in sports. My passion was, and still is, running and I was afraid I had overdone it a bit. I would get home from school, put my earphones on, and that was my happy place. It would help me forget what I thought were small problems but that seemed huge at the time.
The day I finally told my parents I wasn’t doing very well, we sought out advice from a chiropractor. He could not figure out the cause of my pain. It all started that evening. I was lying in my bed and I was in pain, but because I’m not a whiner by nature, I kept it to myself and turned the music up louder. In my mind, that was taking care of everything! But it wasn’t only my back hurting anymore... my legs were numb. That’s when I realized that this time, music would not solve everything.
Never could I imagined that I would return home a week later with a different life!
And the famous diagnosis…
No one could have seen it coming, not even doctors, and much less me, a girl who had no real problems in life. We were ushered into a room. I just stood there, along with my parents. The doctor showed us some sheets and photographs. I had lumps along my spine and in my head, and I had to go to Montreal to have surgery to find out if it was cancer. I was flabbergasted, I had cancer?
A week later, I was at the Montreal Children’s Hospital for an operation that lasted 6 hours. A few days later, they told us it was cancer, that it was malignant and progressing quickly. It started in my cerebellum and grew down my spine. We had to start fighting.
Oncologists at the Children operated on me again to install a tube that starts in my head and runs towards my abdomen to adjust the pressure in my head. A number of difficulties were encountered as a result of this intervention. Despite these small problems, I found the strength to laugh and make others laugh. When I woke up with this tube inside me, I looked at my father and said that I was hydraulic now and he would need to get Jig-A-Loo for me too!
A week later, the oncologist told me that I would have 31 treatments spread across my spine and my head, which is a lot for a young girl of 14, since radiotherapy causes growth to slow.
The words of Maude’s mom
I, Maude’s mom, sitting in my “second kitchen” in the oncology unit, find myself appreciating the environment life has thrown us into for an undetermined amount of time.
While I can’t tell you about the great hardships of the last 4 months, because I look ahead and take one day at a time, I can tell you how I became extraordinarily aware of the simple joys of everyday life.
In this kitchen, parents come in turn for a nice espresso, sharing the story of their night at their sick child’s bedside. All stories end on a positive note... Over here, no one complains about the temperature outside. Instead, everyone is thrilled for the children who have been discharged in the morning.
When Maude told me of her desire to share her story, I felt her idea of “helping people see the horrible word cancer differently” was very brave. She will succeed, without a doubt!
The blog
Maude is not only back in school. In between her chemotherapy treatments, she created a blog to share her experience and give hope to young people faced with cancer and to their families:
www.maudepoirier.com
“So many people, and especially young girls, found themselves in my texts and it has helped them face life! I hope you see now how the famous word cancer can be associated with something other than death.” - Maude