BONNYVILLE – In seven days, Les Parsons went from climbing mountains in St-Ferreol-les-Neiges, Quebec with elite athletes to having his entire stomach and part of his liver surgically removed.
Without his awareness, a cancerous tumour the size of a cantaloupe was growing inside Parsons' abdomen. And it wasn’t until the tumour grew large enough to cause serious physiological damage that he began to realize something was seriously wrong.
“This tumour had caused my stomach to tear, which in turn caused the internal hemorrhaging and loss of blood when I collapsed four days earlier,” explained Parsons, reflecting back on the day he was told he had stomach cancer.
It was the week leading up to Thanksgiving in 2006. Everything was the same, until suddenly it wasn’t.
When Parsons got his diagnosis, he was filled with an overwhelming sense of “Why me?”
“Considering my health and active lifestyle, I felt my initial reaction was ‘why me?’ because I never smoked or drank or ate junk food,” he said. “I guess I just felt a bit cheated. The ‘why me’ was a big question mark. And then I guess shocked because I was so healthy... I thought cancer was for other people.”
It is estimated that in 2021, 4,000 Canadians had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, according to the Cancer Society of Canada.
Of those diagnosed with stomach cancer, 1,950 Canadians are estimated to have died from the disease.
“In Canada, the five-year net survival for stomach cancer is 25 per cent. This means that, on average, about 25 per cent of people diagnosed with stomach cancer will survive for at least five years,” states the Society, based on its collection of data.
When Parsons arrived at his family doctor after three days of feeling uncharacteristically tired and unwell, he could not have imagined that his family doctor would take his car keys and send him directly to the hospital by ambulance.
At 45 years old, Parsons had life offer him an unimaginable blow. He was at peak health, and then he wasn’t.
Cancer did not run in Parsons’ family, and it was something he definitely didn’t think about.
“I was healthy and strong, training seven days a week with my athletes and feeling great,” he said. “(Cancer) was never on my mind, I really never thought about.”
The first time that Parsons ever missed a practice with his athletes was the day that ended with nurses and doctors navigating him through multiple scans and x-rays.
He would have tubes and needles sliding in and out of his body and he would learn that he needed a blood transfusion to counteract the internal bleeding that had been happening over multiple days.
“I spent Thanksgiving weekend dreaming of eating turkey smothered in cranberries, potatoes and stuffing smothered in gravy and desserts smothered in chocolate. My real meal was a main course of blood transfusions, followed by a dessert of intravenous solution, with no other food or drink by mouth, to empty my insides in preparation for surgery,” he recalled.
Lessons learned
“Losing my stomach to cancer has been one of the more challenging things I have dealt with in my life,” he said.
During that time, he learned tough lessons of accepting reality and learning patience. But more importantly, he had learned how much his family and friends loved and cared for him.
Since his diagnosis and loss of his stomach, he now feels gratitude for his good health – something that is easy to take for granted until you or someone you know falls ill.
“Cancer doesn’t take consideration of someone's health,” he said.
While Parsons will never know what caused the cancer to form on his stomach or have the answer to ‘Why me?’, both he and his doctor attribute his speedy recovery to his overall health and lifestyle.
“My recovery had been a miracle, according to my doctors.”
After being bed bound for roughly two weeks, Parsons began coaching athletes about a month later. Half a year after cancer caused a portion of his liver and stomach were removed, he started to run and race once again.
“It knocked me off my feet, I went from being extremely, super active, to being bedridden and that caught me off guard totally,” he said. “And that's nothing compared to some people. Some people are in bed for months with different illnesses, some people for three years. We are all meant to move. We're born to move and then when you're stuck in a bed, it's no fun at all.”
Once you have had cancer, you feel way more empathetic to other people, he expressed.
His experiences while in the cancer ward made him not only grateful for the healthcare system in Canada but caused to him to want to trade places with the children, mothers and fathers who were facing their own cancer battles.
Following his own battle with cancer, Parsons wanted to solve the root issue, “Why are we getting the cancer? And how do we do a better job of cancer prevention?”
While Parsons helps organize Terry Fox runs every year to raise funds for cancer research, which will be held on Sept. 18 this year, he also wants to see more research related to cancer prevention and the elimination of toxins from foods and household products.
“That's one of the things that I think there is an imbalance in right now – the research for prevention versus the research for the cure,” he said.
“We are doing ourselves a huge disservice with all the ingredients in foods, preservatives, food flavouring, artificial colour, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides that we are consuming.”
As the general manager of the Bonnyville and District Centennial Centre, as well as a coach for many athletes, Parsons continues to push for preventative health care through health education, exercise and community activities.
“That's way more effective and way more cost efficient than dealing with surgeries and pharmacy on the other end of health care,” he added.
Having to go through the surgeries himself and the removal of his stomach, not too much has changed for Parsons except that he must chew his food much more thoroughly – and bring a sense of patience to the dinner table.
"Having grown up on a farm, Les knows that cattle graze all day long. So having seen our cows patiently chew their cud, Les will learn to follow their example," Parsons’s mother would tell friends and family, after his surgery.
