Lindsay’s Story
Forty-year-old Lindsay Gustafson, a grade 1 and 2 teacher from Winnipeg, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 38. During a camping trip to Kenora, she noticed a lump near her breast. Once she returned home, Lindsay was unable to get an appointment with her family doctor. She had nowhere else to turn and eventually had to go in to see a doctor at a walk-in clinic who recognized the potential seriousness of her condition and ordered a biopsy.
On October 26, 2022, Lindsay received a diagnosis: stage 2 triple-negative breast cancer.
After fourteen months of treatment including 16 rounds of chemotherapy and a lumpectomy and lymph node removal, 99% of the cancer was successfully eliminated. Just as life seemed to be returning to normal, a routine follow-up scan in January 2024 revealed a small lung nodule, too small for a biopsy. A “wait and see” approach was suggested by her doctors.
By April 2024, the nodule had doubled in size, confirming Lindsay’s breast cancer had metastasized to her lungs, progressing to stage 4.
The next two months, Lindsay underwent a number of scans, tests, and consultations with surgeons and radiologists. A lung biopsy revealed a single tumor, making her eligible for surgery. However, due to long wait times, the surgery date wasn’t scheduled until September, then pushed back to late September, and finally to October. By then, five months had passed since her last CT scan, necessitating a new one.
Two days before her 40th birthday, she found out that her lung tumor had doubled in size, and 25 new nodules had appeared. In just five months, the cancer had gone from one lung nodule to 26. Surgery was cancelled, as was radiation, leaving chemotherapy as the only option.
The wait times Lindsay experienced were unacceptable. A stretched health care system fraught with delays and wait times has left so many Canadians living with cancer waiting months to get the care and treatment they need.
Frustrated by the delays, Lindsay spent considerable dollars out-of-pocket between July and September, consulting a naturopathic doctor and undergoing alternative therapies in a desperate attempt to control her diagnosis. Even simple tasks like parking at the hospital became a financial burden, with limited and expensive options forcing her to rely on services like Wheels of Hope.
Our cancer system is failing people in Canada. They are waiting far too long to get the care they need. Policy makers need to address these gaps, make investments in the system to ensure Canadians can rely on faster, better access to cancer care.
Going through this journey, Lindsay continues to raise awareness, actively seeking information and support through online groups, advocating for access to financial grants and resources, and participating in research studies.
She serves on a review panel for cancer research grants and is a patient advocate for various organizations, including the Terry Fox Foundation and the Pan-Canadian Palliative Care Research Network.
Lindsay’s message to elected officials is clear: address the wait times in our cancer system. Canadians living with cancer should not be waiting months to get the life-saving care and treatments they need. Elected officials need to prioritize this. Canadians living with cancer should not dying to be a priority.
There are far too many similar stories as people in Canada are waiting to be a priority. Cancer Action Now is working to bring forward challenges experiences by people in Canada living with cancer in accessing timely, high-quality cancer care, and calling on policy makers to make cancer care a priority.
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