Cancer-free and ready to share
Teen to screen film about surviving cancer in recognition of World Cancer Day
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, February 4, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Shiri MacPherson's bad dreams used to star a doctor wearing a surgical mask and scrubs.
Today, the bubbly 14-year-old says she thinks doctors are cool - she may even want to be one someday. By the time she was three years old, MacPherson had already endured chemotherapy and 13 surgeries and had called the University of Alberta's Stollery Children's Hospital home for nine months. This was where she received treatment for Wilms' Tumour, the form of kidney cancer she was diagnosed with when she two years old.
Today, she will share her story at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in recognition of World Cancer Day.
"I don't remember that much, but I remember some things," said MacPherson, speaking at her home Monday. "I was scared one night before a surgery. It was two in the morning, and so I went down to the atrium with my dad, and all the lights were off, except the fountain lights and it made a rainbow. And so I wasn't really scared after that."
Marino Casebeer said when he learned his daughter's cancer was in the fourth stage - an advanced stage when the statistics for survival aren't good - he tried to make sense of it by talking with McPherson's older sister, Jessi Casebeer, who was 11 years old at the time.
"I was quite emotional and I was describing to her I was a smoker, I don't live healthily, why isn't it me," he said. "It had spread to her lungs and it had infected both of her kidneys. I had never heard of such a young child getting cancer before and I was shocked ... (I felt) dismay and confusion. So in the beginning I just cried a lot."
Casebeer said he and McPherson's mother, Sheila, didn't see symptoms until one day when she began vomiting. Her parents rushed the child to Stanton Territorial Hospital, and she was medevaced from there to Edmonton. On their way out the door, her parents asked doctors at Stanton how long they might expect to be in Alberta.
"The pediatrician, Dr. Young at the time, said it was going to be at least two weeks, so we left sort of thinking that," he said. "Most illnesses we were aware of have a fairly short term, so we took two weeks fairly literally."
After her treatment, Casebeer remembers waiting 129 days to see if it had been effective.
"There's no indication as to what the outcome might be," he said.
"It was very much day-by-day for that long. In the hospital routine, especially in the early days, shock is very numbing."
McPherson is now a student at Sir John Franklin High School. She's a competitive gymnast, enjoys playing guitar and said she wants to work in the film industry or perhaps study to become a paediatric oncologist.
Casebeer described being the parent of a young child with cancer as all-consuming, and McPherson acknowledges the toll it took on her parents.
"Knowing how bad it must have been, I'm glad they stuck through it and they helped as much as they did," she said.
Casebeer said even after it became clear his daughter had recovered, he continued to worry about every cough, fever or ache.
"The history of it shows that if you've had this kind of cancer there's a greater risk for other cancers later in life."
He added a piece of advice for parents with children as young as McPherson was when she was diagnosed.
"We as adults, when we have an ailment of some sort, we see a physician and they rely on us as a patient to provide the details," he said. "With a child, a parent is required to help do that."
MacPherson also took a moment to offer some advice of her own.
"Don't hide - be open and let people help you," she said. "You can (hide) sometimes, but have at least one person you can talk to."
MacPherson and other cancer survivors will screen films about their stories at Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre
tonight at 7 p.m.
