I Lost My Child To Cancer

In the spring of 2006, Shelly Dubois is as happy as she’s ever been. A recent move to beautiful Vancouver Island has proven to be a terrific decision. Her husband Jean is pleased with his new job, their younger daughter Aleida is adjusting well, and their eighteen-year-old, Chantal, is finishing up her twelfth grade year back in Alberta so she can graduate with her lifelong friends. Shelly has a new job too and time enough to devote herself to the music that has always filled her life with joy. But then comes the phone call that will change everything forever – Chantal has an inoperable brain tumor.

Regular life ends abruptly and over the next two years begins a new, much darker life of radiation, chemotherapy, and terror over the increasingly bad news about Chantal’s health. And in the end, despite her relentless, exhausting efforts to save her daughter, a disbelieving Shelly has to watch her slip away. In the days after Chantal’s passing, Shelly slips into a netherworld of incapacitating grief, which isolates her from her husband and surviving daughter and makes everyday life unmanageable. But as time moves on, she slowly begins to discover a pathway to healing. Deeply affecting, while imbued with hope, I Lost My Child to Cancer serves as an inspiring insight into how to cope with unimaginable sorrow.