Cancer can strike anyone at any time.
This is something Minden Hills Councillor Lisa Schell knows too well.
The feisty Ward 1 councillor is fighting a battle greater than any political one.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer on July 16,” Schell says, seated outside the Minden Hills Cultural Centre.
Weeks later, she underwent a bilateral mastectomy, but the cancer isn’t gone.
“The cancer cells have gone to my lymph nodes,” Schell says, explaining she will be starting chemotherapy treatments in Oshawa.
“Oshawa’s a good place,” says Ron Nesbitt, seated across the picnic table from her. “They actually care there.”
Nesbitt and Schell will both be part of Terry’s Team during this year’s Minden Terry Fox Run.
Nesbitt was diagnosed with colon cancer a year ago and had four-and-half feet of his lower intestine surgically removed.
“So far, it hasn’t come back,” he says, knocking the picnic table.
With them is Dick Schell, another one of the 14 cancer patients who will take part in the local run this year.
“I didn’t take it too seriously,” Dick says of his diagnosis with melanoma seven years ago. “I’m told it can be fatal if you don’t look after it.”
He goes for treatments every six month to have the skin cancer burned from his body.
“I never thought it would happen to me,” Nesbitt says and Lisa and Dick nod in agreement.
This year’s Minden Terry Fox Run will take place Sept. 16 and participants can run, bike, walk, rollerblade and even bring the dog.
The event will feature the music of the Country String Dusters, a barbecue and a silent auction featuring autographed items from local NHL stars Cody Hodgson and Matt Duchene and an autographed picture of cottager and figure skating legend Kurt Browning.
There is also a Terry Fox quilt, fashioned by Nesbitt’s daughter, Laurie Cormier, who used sections of Terry Fox Run T-shirts in the design.
For more information on this year’s run, call organizer Diane Peacock at 707-286-4914.