Gillian’s Story
Our story begins on October 13th, when our beautiful baby girl Gillian May Berthelot was born. She was our first child and she had a lot to teach us about being parents, being a family and learning to love. Gillian first introduced us to the hospital scene and SickKids when she was only 10 months old. Gillian had a small problem with her left kidney that would eventually correct itself. When she was 17 months old she began to have Febrile seizures. Luckily for us, she outgrew those by the time she was 2 ½ years old, but she did manage to give us a few scares along the way!
In May of 2009, when Gillian was 7 ½, she was diagnosed with Rhabdomyosarcoma. It was the day after we had returned home from a family trip to Disney World. Before we left for our trip, we had discovered Gillian’s mass due to pain in her abdomen. We had a referral to the General Surgery Department at SickKids, but they could not see us for three weeks. With much stress and a few different doctors recommendations we decided to go ahead with our Disney trip with the understanding that we would be extremely cautious of Gillian. We had an amazing time, but as our week progressed in Disney, Gillian began to experience more pain. On the evening that we flew home from our trip I took Gillian into SickKids Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. Her mass had grown substantially in that 2-week period. They took a chest x-ray that night and admitted us to the surgical floor – 5B. The next morning our surgeon told me that Gillian had lesions in both of her lungs and that is was most likely cancer. Our lives changed forever at that moment.
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