Monthly Patient Fireside Chats

Kathy prioritizes patient care and support. She was a key player in federal tanning bed legislation for Canada’s Youth and she continues this area of focus on education and awareness, providing emotional and financial support to those dealing with melanoma and carcinoma skin cancers, prevention, access, and support of the ongoing research and treatment of skin cancer – from melanoma to actinic keratosis. As both a melanoma and immunotherapy survivor, Kathleen and her Foundation hope to share the experience and knowledge gained, by leading other patient groups in knowledge and advocacy training to ensure equal timely access to new treatments for all cancer patients.

In 2003, Kathleen was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, and by 2005 she was informed that her cancer prognosis was terminal. With limited help but unrelenting effort, Kathleen’s sons were able to locate a doctor who was researching a trial immunotherapy drug. In 2006, Kathleen was given six months to live and it was at this time that she and her family founded Save Your Skin, to ensure that anyone diagnosed with melanoma would not have to travel this journey alone. Her battle with melanoma is ongoing – as long as the disease exists Kathy will ostensibly strive to fight it.

After completing her Bachelor of Education(ECCE) at Capilano University, Kathleen embarked on a career in business as a Corporate Accounting Manager, at Royal Bank of Canada. From there she moved into marketing and communications, as Stakeholder & Government Relations Manager at Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. She was the first woman to ever coach baseball in the Little League World Series. Kathy is also the recipient of the British Columbia Community Achievement Award for her leadership in addressing and raising awareness around skin cancer issues.

Lyanne Westie, SYSF wellness support consultant

For the past 20 years Lyanne has been working in small business management. The first decade in the financial industry and the last in the restoration industry. Lyanne has a passion for numbers, systems and the dynamic process of growing a business.

During the past year Lyanne has moved away from small business management to follow her greatest passion which is fostering mind-body wellness. Having her own medical challenges and two young boys with medical challenges has ignited her commitment to understanding how we best support ourselves while navigating the medical system.

Lyanne completed her undergrad in Psychology and worked on her Masters in Family Studies. In addition to working with the Save Your Skin Foundation Lyanne works in energy healing as a trained practitioner in Reiki, Heart Resonance and Complete Cellular Mind Body Alignment (CCMB).

Dr. Martin Dawes, Professor, Department of Family Practice, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia

Martin’s Story :

Signs of a brain tumour are easy to ignore. I hate to admit it, but I said that all I needed was a neck massage and new glasses to deal with three weeks of left sided foot drop and numbness and a week or so of stumbling. It was the stumbling that made my wife insist I call my family doctor. My doctor listened to my symptoms on a phone appointment and I had a brain CT three days later. She is so smart; of course, when I described the symptoms to my doctor, it clicked that the ”having to lift one’s foot” is actually “foot drop,” and the odd sensation in the foot is “numbness.” There is a definite progression from an “odd feeling” to a “symptom.”

At the CT, I had an inkling something was wrong by the way the radiologist did not come to say hello after the procedure. Usually, we do a doctor-to-doctor debrief to let colleagues know it is all OK, unless it isn’t. My family doctor came to my home the next day to break the bad news in person. Sitting there in the sunshine with the grandkids playing in the yard listening to her tell me I had a brain tumour was quite the moment.  She left me with some Dexamethasone and Ativan as the mass in the brain was big. It took just four days to get an organic diagnosis. Four days later, I had a CT of my chest and abdomen which found eight other masses. That told us that I was riddled with cancer. Not a good day. Later, we would find another metastasis in my eye when the immunotherapy caused a rare papillitis.

I had a chest biopsy 14 days after the Brain CT and stage 4 melanoma diagnosed within days. There was another instance of that doctor-to-doctor thing: the one who stabbed me (very skillfully) said, as I was recovering from the day surgery, that the tumour looked black and he thought it was melanoma, which was confirmed a day or so later. So, within three weeks of calling my family doctor, I had a pathological diagnosis. I saw my oncologist two weeks later; this was the first glimmer of hope in a bleak month.

There was some back and forth about the brain tumour and I had a distressing visit with a neurosurgeon who showed me the MRI. It looked like a lot of the right side of my brain was swollen and the tumour looked big and deep. Surgery would leave me in a wheelchair. The alternative was provided by the neuro-radio-oncologist: she said I could be treated with the “gamma-knife” which is accurate down to one millimetre, though it would not necessarily cure the brain tumour as it might not get all of it. I realised that talking about cure was overly optimistic and I should go for being able to walk for as long as I can.

Next, the tumour board met, and I got my therapeutic diagnosis seven weeks after presenting to the family doctor. I was going to be treated with gamma knife for the brain tumour and then receive dual immunotherapy. I did also get a liquid biopsy, as my research is in genetics, and I have a friend who does this (though it was done by a different group to keep things straight). Interestingly, a BRAF mutation was seen that was not in the lung biopsy. I had my gamma knife stereotactic radiotherapy 9 weeks after diagnosis, then began to receive the dual immunotherapy just 12 weeks after my first appointment, with a further 25 medical appointments/scans/biopsy/bloods etc. during that time. Three months after starting immunotherapy, the tumours were shrinking and the glimmers of hope became a lot brighter.

Of all of these procedures, the chest biopsy was the most dangerous – the largest of the chest lesions was really deep, so seven inches of steel was put into my chest. This would have been fine, as I was totally numb with local anesthetic, but because I am a doc they kindly let me watch it on the screen. Oh look, there is a huge sword deep in my chest right next to some major blood vessels! I better not move. Definitely a birthday to forget!

Rob’s Story

Hello.  My name is Rob Stauffer.

Yvonne Gerard, Caregiver to Bob

Bob’s Story:

Nigel is a retired educator and administrator living in Victoria BC. He was diagnosed with primary ocular melanoma in 2010 and with metastasis in 2012. In 2019 he founded Ocumel Canada under the auspices of Save Your Skin Foundation in order to advocate for and support Canadian ocular melanoma patients.