Casey Ouellette had a lot to jump and dance around about.
The 17-year-old Widdifield Senior Secondary student led her classmates through an inspirational dance which was part of the Terry Fox Walk Ceremony at the North Bay high school on Tuesday morning.
See that story here: https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/an-expensive-hair-cut-for-a-good-cause-photos-video-418998
For Ouellette, it was emotional as well, as she celebrated five years of being cancer free. The song, “Fight Song,” had lyrics that paralleled her challenging journey. You see, Casey Ouellette was diagnosed with leukemia when she was only 10 years old.
“For two and a half years I went through ongoing treatment in the form of daily chemo pills, chemo given through intravenous, chemo injected into my spine, and on top of everything else I had many complications including three hair losses, 39 blood transfusions, eight bouts of pancreatitis which they say is worse than child birth, and coming close to death on treatment,” she explained.
“I had no immune system so I had shingles and salmonella poisoning which almost killed me.”
Jocelyn Summersby-Bell is one of the Terry Fox Walk organizers and knows Casey very well.
She says watching Casey go through her journey through recovery has been overwhelming.
“Watching her grow in her courage and watching her grow in her love of people and knowing that she is the epitome of hope, and we are so thankful to her for that, but this dance today for her really was a time for healing of some understanding of relationships and knowing that she has the peers there supporting because even cancer patients get bullied and she had a really hard time with friends going through when she was actually diagnosed and dealing with losing her hair,” said Summersby-Bell.
“So this is a chance to see a group of people supporting her dancing together and with supporting her and I think that was overwhelming for every student in the class and brings me such pride.”
During the dance Ouellette fought back tears of appreciation, hope and inspiration.
“I think it is so empowering and so inspiring that my class and my teachers would put this dance together just for my journey,” she said.
“I think that it’s so special and I think it’s such a huge accomplishment for me.”
