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Help Suzanne Aucoin
Feb. 4, 2006 - The St. Catharines Standard
'I know what needs to be done'
Peter Downs, Standard Staff
Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 01:00
Local News - The deaths came in a heart-wrenching procession.
One after another after another. Three of her friends in six years. Each of them
young, barely starting out.
Nicola McMaster. Just before Grade 12 graduation. She died of cancer in 1988.
Nicole Longe in 1992. The brain cancer she had lived with since childhood finally
claimed her.
Two years later, Ann Marie Potton. The most shocking of the three. The 24-year-old
from St. Catharines went missing in 1994 while hiking on a mountain in Whistler, B.C.
Her body was found a year later. She had died of exposure after breaking her leg.
“I started to feel like you were cursed, if you were my friend,” says Suzanne Aucoin.
“I started to think, Oh my God, who’s next?’ ”
And she began to wonder if it could be her.
It wasn’t so much a premonition as a seed of fear that planted itself in the pit of her
stomach.
Two of her childhood friends were dead from cancer. Between the deaths, a third
was diagnosed with the disease. But she managed to beat it.
By then, Suzanne understood cancer’s indiscriminate nature.
“I think that started the fear that I would get cancer,” she recalls.
“I worried about it because I thought, If they can get cancer, so can I.’ ”
That little kernel of dread stayed deep inside Suzanne for several years after her
friends died.
And as she harboured her fear, the cancerous cells in her colon began to grow.
They were discovered the first time in 1999 when she was 29 considered very young to
be diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Doctors operated and thought they got the
tumours.
But in the fall of 2003, Suzanne learned the cancer had returned.
And this time, her doctors told her there was no cure. The disease had spread from
her colon to her liver and lungs. She had stage four colon cancer the most advanced
form of the disease. She was told she could expect to live for two more year
The young girl in the Brownie uniform had no idea of the fight she’d have to wage
when she grew up.
In the photo, she strides across the school gym toward the camera with a big smile.
She’s clutching a certificate of achievement in her hand.
It’s the day she became a full-fledged Brownie. It’s one of the proudest moments of
her life to that point about seven or eight years old.
But the family snapshot does more than just record a childhood milestone in Suzanne
Aucoin’s life.
It captures her at a pivotal time.
A time when she began to shed her shyness and thrust herself forward to do things for
others.
“I loved Brownies. I loved selling the cookies. I loved going to the meetings," she says.
“I think because we moved a lot when I was growing up, it was one of those things
that helped me get involved and feel more comfortable in my community."
Suzanne was born in Toronto, but moved back and forth a couple of times between
Toronto and Burlington with her parents, Norm and Janet, and two younger brothers
during her elementary school years.
She thinks of the north Toronto suburb of Willowdale, where she went to school from
grades 1 to 5, as her childhood home.
And it was there that she was a Brownie and where she learned how much she could
accomplish through determination and persistence.
The young girl in the photo wearing the brown outfit and matching beret was
emerging as an advocate.
“If I knew someone was in need and they needed a wheelchair or something, I knew
how to go about helping them get it. I had no qualms about trying to make that
happen.”
Suzanne and her family moved again by the time she was ready to begin high school,
settling in the Port Dalhousie home where they remain today.
After graduating from Holy Cross Secondary School, she attended the University of
Western Ontario, where she completed a bachelor of arts and a master’s degree in
religious studies.
While she waited to be accepted to teacher’s college, Suzanne worked as a chaplain
at Holy Cross for half the school year in 1995 and the following school year at St.
Francis Secondary School.
She went back to school the next September at the University of Toronto to earn a
teaching certificate.
Suzanne was soon hired to teach at an elementary school in a small city outside Los
Angeles.
“I was kind of envious of my friends who had gone away to travel and work. I thought,
Well, stop being envious and go do it, ’ ” she says.
“I loved it. It was a working vacation. Every weekend, I’d go do something fun.”
But in May 1999, while on vacation in Spain near the end of her second year, the fun
came to an abrupt halt.
Suzanne collapsed in her hotel room bathroom, hemorrhaging badly from what would
later be diagnosed as a cancerous polyp on her colon.
“I thought I was going to die on that bathroom floor. I remember thinking, I am not
going out this way.’ ”
After surgery in California to remove the growth, Suzanne moved home with her
parents to recuperate.
Two months later in September 1999 she began working as chaplain at Denis Morris
High School.
Despite the health scare, her life was pretty much getting back on track.
She’d bought a condo of her own. She loved her job. And all the signs indicated she
was free of cancer.
But in the fall of 2003, medical tests confirmed why she had suddenly begun to feel so
wiped out. Cancer again. Incurable this time.
In hindsight, it seems almost as if all of the character traits she developed growing up
and her work experience were tailor-made to help her fight the disease that’s trying
to kill her, says Suzanne.
As a high school chaplain, Suzanne spent much of her time counselling students and
staff, as well as focusing on social justice issues and fundraising initiatives.
“I’m the person they would come to when a staff member or a student is in crisis with
cancer or with a death or illness or tragedy,” she says.
“Now that it’s happening to me, I know what needs to be done."
In Suzanne’s case, that has meant raising thousands of dollars roughly $130,000 to date
to pay for new cancer drugs that aren’t yet covered by Ontario’s government. It’s also
meant repeatedly leading lobbying efforts to push the provincial and federal
governments for more equitable access to medication for cancer patients.
Most recently, Suzanne managed to convince Health Canada to grant her special
access to a colorectal cancer drug not yet available in the country. Two months ago,
she became the first person to be treated with the drug called Erbitux at Hamilton’s
Juravinski Cancer Centre, opening the door for other patients to receive the
treatment.
Despite the grim circumstances, watching their daughter fight for herself and others
has been an inspiration, says Suzanne’s father, Norm.
“She processes things very well. She organizes her next assault very well," he says.
“But she does have moments when it’s overwhelming. Probably those are the most
difficult for her and they’re the most difficult for me. It hurts to see.”
As much as she inspires others with her grit and strength, Suzanne says she not
superhuman.
There are times she feels down and depressed. Sometimes she doesn’t want to fight
anymore and resents the situation she’s in.
“You can look at this and say I’ve done all the right things. I was a good kid, I was good
in school, I’ve always worked, I helped my community so why do I get this sh-t?” she
says.
But she knows there’s no suitable explanation.
“As you get wiser, you recognize that nobody goes through this life unscarred,” she
says.
“There are people in way worse situations than me, so I have the best circumstances
for the situation I’m in. But I never chose this situation. I feared it, but I didn’t choose
it.”
Suzanne says she tries to channel as much of her energy as possible on being healthy
and thinking positively.
There’s a quote she believes in. It’s by American author Norman Cousins.
“Don’t deny the diagnosis; try to defy the verdict.”
Suzanne has already defied the two-year prognosis doctors originally gave her.
“Your focus is your reality. If I choose to focus on being sick, then my reality is being
sick,” she says.
“I feel robbed as it is, so I’m not going to let it rob any more of me.”
pdowns@stcatharinesstandard.ca
'I know what needs to be done'
Peter Downs, Standard Staff
Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 01:00
Local News - The deaths came in a heart-wrenching procession.
One after another after another. Three of her friends in six years. Each of them
young, barely starting out.
Nicola McMaster. Just before Grade 12 graduation. She died of cancer in 1988.
Nicole Longe in 1992. The brain cancer she had lived with since childhood finally
claimed her.
Two years later, Ann Marie Potton. The most shocking of the three. The 24-year-old
from St. Catharines went missing in 1994 while hiking on a mountain in Whistler, B.C.
Her body was found a year later. She had died of exposure after breaking her leg.
“I started to feel like you were cursed, if you were my friend,” says Suzanne Aucoin.
“I started to think, Oh my God, who’s next?’ ”
And she began to wonder if it could be her.
It wasn’t so much a premonition as a seed of fear that planted itself in the pit of her
stomach.
Two of her childhood friends were dead from cancer. Between the deaths, a third
was diagnosed with the disease. But she managed to beat it.
By then, Suzanne understood cancer’s indiscriminate nature.
“I think that started the fear that I would get cancer,” she recalls.
“I worried about it because I thought, If they can get cancer, so can I.’ ”
That little kernel of dread stayed deep inside Suzanne for several years after her
friends died.
And as she harboured her fear, the cancerous cells in her colon began to grow.
They were discovered the first time in 1999 when she was 29 considered very young to
be diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Doctors operated and thought they got the
tumours.
But in the fall of 2003, Suzanne learned the cancer had returned.
And this time, her doctors told her there was no cure. The disease had spread from
her colon to her liver and lungs. She had stage four colon cancer the most advanced
form of the disease. She was told she could expect to live for two more year
The young girl in the Brownie uniform had no idea of the fight she’d have to wage
when she grew up.
In the photo, she strides across the school gym toward the camera with a big smile.
She’s clutching a certificate of achievement in her hand.
It’s the day she became a full-fledged Brownie. It’s one of the proudest moments of
her life to that point about seven or eight years old.
But the family snapshot does more than just record a childhood milestone in Suzanne
Aucoin’s life.
It captures her at a pivotal time.
A time when she began to shed her shyness and thrust herself forward to do things for
others.
“I loved Brownies. I loved selling the cookies. I loved going to the meetings," she says.
“I think because we moved a lot when I was growing up, it was one of those things
that helped me get involved and feel more comfortable in my community."
Suzanne was born in Toronto, but moved back and forth a couple of times between
Toronto and Burlington with her parents, Norm and Janet, and two younger brothers
during her elementary school years.
She thinks of the north Toronto suburb of Willowdale, where she went to school from
grades 1 to 5, as her childhood home.
And it was there that she was a Brownie and where she learned how much she could
accomplish through determination and persistence.
The young girl in the photo wearing the brown outfit and matching beret was
emerging as an advocate.
“If I knew someone was in need and they needed a wheelchair or something, I knew
how to go about helping them get it. I had no qualms about trying to make that
happen.”
Suzanne and her family moved again by the time she was ready to begin high school,
settling in the Port Dalhousie home where they remain today.
After graduating from Holy Cross Secondary School, she attended the University of
Western Ontario, where she completed a bachelor of arts and a master’s degree in
religious studies.
While she waited to be accepted to teacher’s college, Suzanne worked as a chaplain
at Holy Cross for half the school year in 1995 and the following school year at St.
Francis Secondary School.
She went back to school the next September at the University of Toronto to earn a
teaching certificate.
Suzanne was soon hired to teach at an elementary school in a small city outside Los
Angeles.
“I was kind of envious of my friends who had gone away to travel and work. I thought,
Well, stop being envious and go do it, ’ ” she says.
“I loved it. It was a working vacation. Every weekend, I’d go do something fun.”
But in May 1999, while on vacation in Spain near the end of her second year, the fun
came to an abrupt halt.
Suzanne collapsed in her hotel room bathroom, hemorrhaging badly from what would
later be diagnosed as a cancerous polyp on her colon.
“I thought I was going to die on that bathroom floor. I remember thinking, I am not
going out this way.’ ”
After surgery in California to remove the growth, Suzanne moved home with her
parents to recuperate.
Two months later in September 1999 she began working as chaplain at Denis Morris
High School.
Despite the health scare, her life was pretty much getting back on track.
She’d bought a condo of her own. She loved her job. And all the signs indicated she
was free of cancer.
But in the fall of 2003, medical tests confirmed why she had suddenly begun to feel so
wiped out. Cancer again. Incurable this time.
In hindsight, it seems almost as if all of the character traits she developed growing up
and her work experience were tailor-made to help her fight the disease that’s trying
to kill her, says Suzanne.
As a high school chaplain, Suzanne spent much of her time counselling students and
staff, as well as focusing on social justice issues and fundraising initiatives.
“I’m the person they would come to when a staff member or a student is in crisis with
cancer or with a death or illness or tragedy,” she says.
“Now that it’s happening to me, I know what needs to be done."
In Suzanne’s case, that has meant raising thousands of dollars roughly $130,000 to date
to pay for new cancer drugs that aren’t yet covered by Ontario’s government. It’s also
meant repeatedly leading lobbying efforts to push the provincial and federal
governments for more equitable access to medication for cancer patients.
Most recently, Suzanne managed to convince Health Canada to grant her special
access to a colorectal cancer drug not yet available in the country. Two months ago,
she became the first person to be treated with the drug called Erbitux at Hamilton’s
Juravinski Cancer Centre, opening the door for other patients to receive the
treatment.
Despite the grim circumstances, watching their daughter fight for herself and others
has been an inspiration, says Suzanne’s father, Norm.
“She processes things very well. She organizes her next assault very well," he says.
“But she does have moments when it’s overwhelming. Probably those are the most
difficult for her and they’re the most difficult for me. It hurts to see.”
As much as she inspires others with her grit and strength, Suzanne says she not
superhuman.
There are times she feels down and depressed. Sometimes she doesn’t want to fight
anymore and resents the situation she’s in.
“You can look at this and say I’ve done all the right things. I was a good kid, I was good
in school, I’ve always worked, I helped my community so why do I get this sh-t?” she
says.
But she knows there’s no suitable explanation.
“As you get wiser, you recognize that nobody goes through this life unscarred,” she
says.
“There are people in way worse situations than me, so I have the best circumstances
for the situation I’m in. But I never chose this situation. I feared it, but I didn’t choose
it.”
Suzanne says she tries to channel as much of her energy as possible on being healthy
and thinking positively.
There’s a quote she believes in. It’s by American author Norman Cousins.
“Don’t deny the diagnosis; try to defy the verdict.”
Suzanne has already defied the two-year prognosis doctors originally gave her.
“Your focus is your reality. If I choose to focus on being sick, then my reality is being
sick,” she says.
“I feel robbed as it is, so I’m not going to let it rob any more of me.”
pdowns@stcatharinesstandard.ca