Stéphanie Poirier
Collège Mont-Royal

“Because life is so fragile…” as the Luc De Larochelière song goes. But when you’re 16 years old and love the theatre, sing in the school choir, campaign on the environmental committee and are doing very well at school, it may be hard to grasp the full meaning of these words. This was the case for Collège Mont-Royal student Stéphanie Poirier before she found out in December 2008 that she had a very rare type of bone cancer. She is now in remission and back at school, and takes full advantage of the present moment, keeping up her extracurricular activities and persevering so that she can obtain her high school diploma at the same time as her friends.

To pull through an ordeal such as this when you’re so young, you have to have exceptional strength of character in order to contend with chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment – with all the negative side effects – and still manage to keep a smile on your face. When it comes to Stéphanie, it’s not surprising, her friends would no doubt say. She’s always smiling. In fact, just listening to her tell her story, it’s easy to perceive the joie de vivre in her voice.

“When I found out I had cancer, the hardest thing to accept was the fact that I’d be   missing school for several months,” she says with a laugh. “I get involved quite a bit, and I love to be surrounded by people and participate in projects. After only a month of treatment, I already really missed all that.”

Stéphanie’s patience was only just beginning to be put to the test. The treatment lasted eight months in total, and she missed half of Secondary 4. “I’d see time pass by and I just couldn’t resign myself to failing my year. I was told to take my time and rest up but all I wanted was to regain my health as quickly as possible so that I could graduate at the same time as all my friends.”

Thanks to a tutor who helped her with her studies throughout the treatment, Stéphanie managed to keep her head above water. She also phoned her friends on a regular basis to get their class notes and ask them questions. She did everything she could so as not to fall too far behind.

And the treatment worked. Stéphanie is now in complete remission with follow-ups every three months to ensure that the illness has not returned and she was able to return to school at the beginning of the current school year. However, because she had fallen behind, she has to take certain Secondary 4 subjects while following the regular Secondary 5 program. It’s almost as though she’s doing two years in one.

“Succeeding only partially is simply out of the question. I want to successfully complete high school and do so with good grades. I could have made do with passing marks but that’s just not how I am. I even enrolled in my advanced classes again. I want to be a nurse so I have to do well and leave all my options open,” she explains very convincingly.

Despite the many hours she has to devote to her studies, Stéphanie has taken up where she left off with her extracurricular activities. The school choir, student radio, hosting a school Christmas show and the famous environmental committee, for which she is always willing to perform an autopsy on a garbage can to show students how they can do better in terms of recycling. And then there’s the theatre troupe, that she was quick to rejoin this year.

“I have been involved with the theatre troupe for four years and it’s now a true passion. I feel good when I’m on stage. The funny thing is, just last year, before I found out about the cancer, I was given the leading role in Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid. I was the one playing the imaginary invalid. I’ve always found that strange,” she says with another chuckle.

Moreover, Stéphanie recently co-hosted the Leucan Foundation’s annual gala along with former Olympic athlete Nathalie Lambert. It was her way of giving back what she had received. “Today, I feel really in shape and I believe it could have been worse. I look at other young people who haven’t been as fortunate as me and it is in their honour that I make the effort to succeed at school and get involved,” Stéphanie asserts.

Stéphanie Poirier
Collège Mont-Royal