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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Initially, although long past the one-cell-gone bad, I didn't approach it as war.

Twenty years ago Michele LeTourneau and her daughter Chloe fought cancer and won. Chloe endured three years of chemotherapy to overcome the leukemia she was diagnosed with at age three. - photo courtesy of Marc Gallant

Amid the information overload related to a daily schedule of pills, clinic visits, injection through intravenous tubes, the two-and-a-half year program, the very sick child, the other first-born child Sebastien to care for, and my own first disjointed forays into fear, I kept repeating to myself that this was just some kind of slightly more serious illness, one that could be treated.

My three-year-old daughter Chloe, diagnosed with leukemia, on a drug called prednisone among many others, soon started pitching cans of olives across the room. She aimed them at me because I'd bought olives with pits and it was vital, life and death, that she first decorate each of her little finger tips with an olive before popping them in her mouth one by one. Or maybe, that day, olives were not on her secret menu.

Sometimes, at peak prednisone/ravenous hunger periods, I had mashed potatoes by my bed. An adult on the same drug confided that sometimes she wanted to attack peoples' arms as though they were drumsticks. She made the biting gesture, with sound effect, and I jumped away. I wasn't taking any chances. I wasn't making mashed potatoes in the middle of the night. Food by the bed.

Fast forward six months. I remember cradling my daughter into my body, after a failed attempt to force-feed her another dose of chemotherapy pills. I squirted the vicious mix of crushed drugs and apple juice, aiming at her pursed lips, trying to loosen her angry, set jaw. I mostly managed to squirt a mess onto her pajamas.

"I am never taking this medicine again!" the three-year old screamed.

So I squished her close and declared war.

"If you don't take this medicine every day until we are done and we've won, you will die. Period."

I understand this may sound harsh. But we had another two years of treatment to go and I was desperate. I'd already used up every other approach: sweet talk, cajoling, gentle stroking. Rewards: food treats following the successful ingestion of bitter potion, another small toy, a favourite cartoon. The threats: You don't get to play with so-and-so unless you take your medicine. Or: You don't get to come into my bed with me tonight.

The bed threat didn't work. I couldn't bring myself to use it again. Although I insisted on a proper bedtime in the proper beds to retain a boundary of normalcy for the three of us, including Sebastien, as a family, I could not refuse her entry into my bed past midnight. She shuffled, in the dark, to my bed. I raised the covers. She crawled in. We were usually on our sides, staring into each other's eyes, rarely talking. We fell asleep holding hands. Sometimes her hand fitted over mine and she pulled it into her. And sometimes it was enough that she was touching me, my hand flat on the bed and her hand flat over mine. Those were our most peaceful moments, when we rested together. We maintained the same ritual whether at home or in our room at the Children's Hospital in Winnipeg.

I enlisted her in the war the night she refused the medicine. I explained in great detail about the rogue cell. How the rogue cell was now a big bad army all dressed in black. There were more of them than the good cells all dressed in white. The bad stuff I was feeding her, the endless needles at the cancer clinic, the spinal taps, the bone marrow sucks, all of that, was to help kill the bad guys so the good guys could finish the fight and win.

This was a story we would tell each other, over and over again. When she felt good she'd say the good guys were winning. When she felt bad, very, very bad, the bad guys were winning.

In reality, chemo kills cells indiscriminately. As one doctor explained to me, chemo would bring her near death, with a 75 per cent chance that once all the cancer cells were terminated there just might be enough life in her to rebuild her body.

We attended several funerals.

The war brings in fighters beyond the cellular level. Enter the army of volunteers. The women who knitted the

tiny finger puppets that children in cancer treatment received after their weekly, sometimes daily, finger poke, the finger poke that yielded the current death count. Good cells versus bad cells.

The bad included all those pesky infections that wait on the sidelines to storm the weak and diminished white blood cells and kill the patient. The women that pushed around the juice cart in the cancer clinic. The women who sent us Christmas gift baskets and birthday presents. An endless stream of volunteers that upped the odds on the good side.

The army I was never really aware of was the fundraising army, those raisers of dollars that help in the fight to find cures for an unimaginable number of cancers affecting almost everyone we know these days.

To put this in a present context, Saturday's all-night walk/run will be the 10th year for Relay for Life in Yellowknife. This event depends an army of volunteer fundraisers. These include cancer survivors, like Judith Shipman and my daughter, friends and family of people who have or once had cancer. In some cases, the volunteers come in the memory of a friend or family member who have lost their individual battle.

Since her teens, Chloe the 22-year-old survivor, the little girl I remember saying was "a great big will of a spirit in a small body," has participated. I, on the other hand, entered the track the first time and walked around in a daze and generally felt useless. I wanted to escape. I just wanted to curl up in a tent and cry and not remember. I tried again last year and managed half an hour before running home.

Last Sunday, I confessed this shameful fact that I am not capable of being present to Judith Shipman, who helps organize the relay. She gently asked me if I'd be around. She's been doing that for quite a few years.

I usually ignore her.

Judith, herself a survivor, wrote of her own experience: "It feels necessary to 'give back' after I have lost so many friends and a few family members."

I replied: "I know Chloe is wholeheartedly devoted, for similar reasons. Believe it or not, even after all these years, I'm pissed off. I keep thinking I'm over it ... I mean seriously, she was three to six and she's 22 now. Get over it, right? But whenever I've been to the rally I am just completely washed over by the pain of it. Past pain, everybody's pain. It's like walking into a painfest. Maybe it's time I turned that around with a bit more determination."

Judith soothed me: "I know lots of people who are survivors and aren't able to attend because of the pain, etc. But, you know, you have to be so thankful to be here and that your daughter survived.

I know without the cancer research money I would not be here today, so I believe God still has a purpose for my life. We are still short a few, so if you would like to get involved we could sure use you."

In my failed efforts to forget those three years, I had nonetheless forgotten that I'd added "giving back" on my to-do list of life. This year, for the first year, I will volunteer and do something useful. I'll focus on the fight, not the pain. And I'll focus on the victories amid the losses.

Cancer is not a war for cowards.

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