Calumet Island woman breathes with new lungs: Sylvain Lapraette, of Calumet Island, was a 15-minute drive from the Ottawa General Hospital when his wife, Nancy Derouin-Lapraette, called him on his cell phone to announce that she was getting a new set of lungs.

Sylvain, who was returning from a visit with his wife, turned around and headed back for the hospital to ride with her in the ambulance to Montreal where the lungs of an 18-year-old boy were to be transplanted into Nancy.

“I was excited and happy at the same time,” he said.

Nancy immediately phoned her parents, Melvin and Huguette Derouin, and her older sisters, Joanne Allaire and Pauline Derouin-Bastien. They all arrived at the hospital in Montreal at 1:30 a.m. Oct. 18, about half an hour before the nine-hour surgery began.

“Nancy was as calm as I’ve ever seen her,” Pauline said, as the family recalled that night, firmly cemented in her memory.

“I still remember seeing her go down the hall in the stretcher and she didn’t look back once,” she said.

“It was like she knew this was her only chance.”

A victim of cystic fibrosis from the time she was two months old, the disease wore on Nancy all through her childhood and teen years. 

Now 24, she made the waiting list for a transplant in April. Now during her recovery, Nancy is demonstrating her strength and bravery once more.

“She is strong,” Pauline said. “She’s holding her own.”

Sylvain and Nancy intend to take up a whole new lifestyle of camping, golfing, biking and walking their dog when Nancy is released from the hospital.

“She could do all these things before, but it was a big effort; it took a lot out of her,” he said.

“I’m anxious to try these things with her.”

Of course her life will still be more restricted than the free life that so many healthy people take for granted. She will need to purchase two machines: one to check oxygen levels in her blood and pulse and another to check her sugar level. 

However, it will be a far stretch of fresh air for a woman who has spent most of her life with a damaged set of lungs.

Halloween scary for three adults five children in head-on collision: Five children and three adults escaped serious injuries when Halloween became a nightmare after a two-car, head-on collision on the 8th Line in Clarendon.

Shortly after sunset, a Mercury Sable carrying two adults and four children and a Chrysler carrying one adult and one child collided on a narrow stretch of gravel road about three miles west of Hwy. 303. The Sable was heading towards Campbell’s Bay where the children planned to go trick-or-treating.

Two of the adults and all five children were taken to the Pontiac Community Hospital, where the two adults and three of the children were treated and released. The other two children were transferred to CHEO in Ottawa. One of the children who suffered facial injuries was released from CHEO on Thursday; the other, who suffered a fractured cheekbone and nose and bruises to the upper body caused by the seat-belt, was released from CHEO on Friday.