Currently in treatment for two small tumours in her lungs, Shawville resident Marjorie Horner admits that the pain from her treatment does tend to drain her energy and strength, but no matter what happens, she won’t give up the fight.

In the midst of her third bout with cancer in nearly a decade, Horner is no stranger to health scares.

Last year, doctors located a couple of small spots on both her lungs. While one has grown somewhat, they’re still quite miniscule and Horner has undergone a number of radiation sessions in Montreal to deal with them. Right now, she’s just waiting to see if they paid off – always an anxious position to be in.

“It’s kind of stressful, you know when you’re waiting for news,” she said. “That’s kind of where I’m at now.”

Thankfully, doctors said the tumours are less than two millimeters in size, are located in a relatively safe spot in her lungs and are treatable.

All she can do now is keep pushing forward, resting and inspiring others with her courageousness.

For Horner, everything started in 2006, when she noticed discolouration of her urine because of blood. Immediately, she sought out her doctor in Shawville where she set up an appointment for a cystoscopy.

To initiate the procedure, a specialist from Gatineau was supposed to travel to the Pontiac Hospital. But when she arrived in the waiting room, a nurse told her that the doctor couldn’t make it because he had an emergency in Gatineau. They sent her home.

“I guess he had a change of heart or plan or whatever,” she said.

Terrified by the situation, she neglected the issue for the next four years. While she wasn’t one to run away from the doctor’s office, she wasn’t feeling any further symptoms and didn’t feel the need to follow up with her doctor.

In 2010, the situation got significantly more worrisome for Horner when she felt sharp pains while urinating as sizeable blood clots passed through.

“Then, I knew it was really wrong,” she said.

She was transferred to Gatineau to see a specialist who discovered a huge tumour in her bladder. The best solution, according to doctors was surgery. For what was a relatively simple procedure, Horner’s internal bleeding made things more complicated as she hemorrhaged for an entire day before being cleared for chemotherapy.

After a single, larger than normal, chemotherapy treatment session, her cancer eventually went into remission.

Since dealing with the issue, Horner has made a point of consistently having yearly check-ups with her doctor and feels blessed that the situation hasn’t reverted back to how things were before.

“I learned a big lesson with the bladder cancer,” she said. “You don’t ignore. But when you have no symptoms it’s easy to ignore. If nothing’s happening why would I go to the doctor?”

For the next five years everything was crystal clear. Except for a dreadful case of shingles in 2014, which kept her out of work for three months, cancer cells seemed to stay away at least for the time being.

But soon enough, she was faced with another big battle.

Doing a self-examination in the shower, Horner found a lump on one of her breasts in 2015. Having learned from past experience not to ignore it, she saw her doctor right away who then referred her to a surgeon. Diagnosed with breast cancer, she followed up by undergoing a biopsy where it was decided that she would undergo a lumpectomy.

After a successful operation, her doctor sent her tumour to California to get it tested. They determined that she wasn’t fit to undergo chemotherapy. Instead, she underwent 25 rounds of radiation over the course of five weeks at the cancer clinic in Gatineau.

While the treatment lasted just over a year, it was a very painful and exhausting period for Horner.

“Five days per week for five weeks,” she said. “The most exhausting part of that radiation was just the travelling.”

For Horner, one of the hardest parts of her nagging health issues is the impact it has had on her mentally, as it sometimes causes her to have a negative perspective on things.

“It’s kind of disappointing,” she said. “With every little stitch on your side you think ‘oh yeah, what kind of cancer is this now?’”

While her health remains in question to this day, Horner feels like the most daunting task is out of the way. With her breast cancer in remission, she recently had her yearly checkup with her breast oncologist and everything seems to be going according to plan. She’s just waiting for test results from her latest mammogram, which also went pretty well from her perspective.

Looking back on what caused her health scares and lack of urgency to get to the bottom of them, Horner points to her busy lifestyle as a single entrepreneur running a successful business. But the bottom line for her is that she’s learned about the importance of looking into one’s health.

“I was very busy, trying to learn how to run a business, and just the actual running of it, and you get distracted,” she said. “And being single might have been a part of it. If I was in a family situation, I could see somebody bugging me like ‘Something’s not right. You better go back to the doctor.’ When you’re just on your own. You just keep going. At least, that’s my explanation of it.”

As a loyal churchgoer who’s been in her fair share of battles with health issues, the most powerful weapons at her disposal are her faith, her family and friendships.

“Whenever any of us gets kind of sick, there’s always something we call a prayer chain if you want it,” she said. “You just have to say ‘I need prayer.’ Those things will give you a really big added strength.”

Horner believes that, as hard as the fight can get, and as daunting a task it can be, the most important things to take into account when fighting cancer is proper nourishment, healthy living and sufficient rest.

“The more you get out and do, the more you feel like getting out to do,” she said. “You do what you can do. Sometimes we need the encouragement. You also have to remember to, if all of a sudden, you feel really, really tired your body is telling you it needs to lie down for a while.

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