True Stories: Miracle Mom

Janis Ollson likes to keep busy. A mother of two, she lives in the tiny rural community of Balmoral, north of Winnipeg. She drives her children — Leiland, 4, and his sister Braxtyn, 7 — to and from activities, sometimes by van, sometimes by all-terrain vehicle, sometimes by snowmobile. She cooks, cleans and shops. By the standards of most Canadian moms and wives, it's ordinary stuff.
But the fact that the 32-year-old can do any of these tasks is extraordinary. In 2007 Janis was seven months pregnant with Leiland and suffering from unbearable back pain. An MRI revealed the problem: a tumorous mass, the size of a Pizza Pop, on her lower spine. After further testing, Janis was diagnosed with a rare type of chondrosarcoma — cancer of the cartilage — that doesn't respond to chemotherapy or radiation. And because her tumour was so difficult to get at, doctors at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, where she'd been referred, were unsure how to remove it and still give Janis the ability to care for her children. Worse, the cancer had spread to her pelvis and muscle tissue.

The diagnosis came as a shock. "I thought: I'm young, I'm a nonsmoker, I'm healthy, I'm not overweight," says Janis. "Surely they've found it soon enough, so they'll be able to do something. I'll be fine." Janis's immediate concern was for her unborn child. She was vastly relieved to learn the baby could be delivered early by C-section and not be affected by the cancer — even as she absorbed the news that she might not be around for her kids or husband, Daryl.