She believed she could, so she did.

The phrase is inscribed on bracelets tied to the wrists of sisters Mary Ellen Hughson and Rebecca Hollingsworth.
To a casual passer-by, the words might come off as a generic catchphrase, but the story behind the jewellry is nothing short of extraordinary.
The sisters live in Ottawa, but their parents, Ruth Sheppard and Edgar Barber, are from Shawville and the families cottage at Green Lake.

Last November, Hollingsworth was at a hockey tournament with her son who had an important game the next day.
“We both went to bed and I just wasn’t tired. So I did a breast self-exam, which I [hadn’t been] diligent in doing,” she explained. “I thought to myself, ‘There’s nothing I can pinpoint but there’s something different here.’”
Though she didn’t think much would come of it, Hollingsworth went to her doctor and sure enough, her intuition had been correct. She was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common form of breast cancer.
When she went for a pre-surgery MRI, doctors found an additional five tumours that weren’t detected by a mammogram or ultrasound.
“That scrapped the whole plan,” she said. “I immediately went into chemo, just because of the sheer size of it.”
After her receiving this devastating news, Hollingsworth encouraged her sister to get examined, even though they have no family history of the disease.
“The first thing that came to my mind was, my sister has had this bump,” she explained. “I told her, ‘You have to go get that looked at.’ Thank goodness they did.”
Hughson’s mammogram wasn’t conclusive, but an ultrasound confirmed she had the same type of cancer, a diagnosis that came less than a week after her sister’s. Hollingsworth explained that both of them have dense breast tissue, which is what makes spotting the tumours difficult.
Doctors performed extensive genetic testing on Hollingsworth and Hughson, who are both active, healthy and only in their early 40s. Thankfully for the pair’s children, the tests came back negative.
“To be honest, that was the best news ever, because all you think about is your family and your kids when you get into a situation like this,” Hughson said.
“Our oncologist said that ‘You’ve got a better chance of being struck by lightning twice,’” Hollingsworth said.
The sisters underwent countless rounds of chemo and radiation, sometimes side-by-side. They are currently under close observation and will be on a regimen of hormone-supressing drugs for the next five to ten years.
Their ordeal has turned them into advocates for breast cancer screening.
“We feel extremely blessed with the care we received at the Ottawa Hospital,” Hughson said. “We learned a lot about the facilities they have and the tools they have.”
While they were going through chemo, the sisters sold over 500 tuques and donated the $6,000 they made to the “Dancing with the Docs” fundraiser, which featured their oncologist, Dr. Mark Clemons.
Currently, they are raising money for a Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner for the soon-to-open Ottawa Breast Centre. The new machine will offer far more accurate screenings than a typical MRI, something that is especially critical for women with dense breast tissue.
“With a tratitional mammogram, it’s tough to always find the cancer in a dense breast,” Hollingsworth explained. “The new technology they’re coming out with, it’s so amazing.”
“It will be able to detect cancers earlier, because it can spot it when they’re much, much
smaller,” she continued. “Obviously, everyone would rather find it sooner than later.”
The cost of the machine is $4 million, but the sisters are confident they can raise the last quarter million needed for the project.
“Thankfully the Ottawa Hospital has been working on this with the Hospital Foundation for years,” Hollingsworth said. “We’re helping with the last leg of it, which is $250,000.”
“We wanted to give something back,” Hughson added. “It’s a big goal but we definitely feel we can achieve it.”
Currently the Breast Health Centre sees 33,000 patients a year and is being consolidated into one unit at the Ottawa General Hospital.
As for the bracelets, Hollingsworth explained that she had originally bought one as a Christmas gift for herself prior to her diagnosis. The mantra seemed so appropriate, that she ordered more.
“I had so many girlfriends that were doing so many things helping out, driving our kids to hockey or cooking for us,” she said. “I had about 20 bracelets made and I gave them out to all my girls. My sister and I just love it.”
Both Hollingsworth and Hughson were extremely grateful for all the support they received from their friends, family and each other.
“We were tight before this and we are even tighter because we’ve lived in each other’s shoes for the past while,” Hollingsworth said. “It was the hardest time that we’ve had in our lives.”
The pair are accepting donations through their website: www.treeofhopecampaign.com. On Nov. 7, they will be hosting a live event at the Heart and Crown on Preston Street in Ottawa from 7-10 p.m.