Presented by RBC Wealth Management, Wellspring’s Well Dressed for Spring is a fashion event like no other. Hosted by Canadian fashion icon Jeanne Beker on March 27, 2024, the evening features models who have been touched by cancer, either having been diagnosed themselves or as a caregiver to someone with cancer. For more info, visit: https://give.wellspring.ca/event/welldressed
If it wasn’t for Mary Huston’s endometriosis surgery in 2021, there is no telling when she would have been diagnosed with cancer.
Often, follicular lymphoma cancer is detected through routine upper GI scoping when patients reach their sixties. At 38 years old, this wasn’t a diagnosis Mary, or her doctors were expecting.
It is difficult for Mary to distinguish between her two chronic illnesses as they both present similar symptoms of abdominal pain, bloating, and weight loss. Luckily, regardless of which illness is causing her pain, Wellspring helps Mary manage both her cancer and endometriosis symptoms.
Mary has used many online resources through Wellspring, saying they, “All work together to create a momentum of change for my healing and wellness journey.” They include online coaching sessions, counselling sessions, the Healing Journey Program, Skills and Strategies Workshops, and Nourish Program sessions.
A parent to six-year-old twins, Mary struggled with finding the right words to tell them about her diagnosis. Mary met with a Wellspring counsellor online, who helped her form a step-by-step plan on how to have these important conversations with her family. “The counsellor helped me to explain why I have these medical appointments, and that it is important that we are all open and honest about our feelings. The sessions helped me figure out how to get this team approach to my cancer diagnosis and ensure that I was delivering news in a way that would be supportive for our family and the girls. Because of this, the girls managed my cancer news well, and they’re doing better every day,” she says.
Finding a community of people who understand what she is going through has been integral to managing Mary’s cancer diagnosis. As follicular lymphoma is a chronic cancer with no real treatment options available, Mary is focused on taking every day as it comes, despite the challenges and obstacles she will face along the way. “How do you live your life when you know that at any moment it can change? That’s why I started using Wellspring in the first place, and why I continue to use it to this day. Wellspring has taught me to weave in all these elements to keep going, to keep getting up every day, and to be the best parent to my girls,” she says.
Mary is walking for Well Dressed for Spring as an act of defiance, saying, “It is my way of both being able to give back as well as not letting this disease define me or what I can do.”
“This event inspires others and calls us all to action—I am so humbled to be a part of it!”
Mary is walking in this Wellspring’s 2024 Well Dressed for Spring event.
