Colleen Burris is defying the odds and allowing herself to dream beyond the few months she was once told she had left.
The Saskatoon mom made headlines back in April when she revealed that at the age of 29, she had terminal cancer and likely had six months left to live. But she was determined to pack as many experiences into those final months as she could.
Nine months later, Burris still feels well.
“I’m actually been feeling really good,” she told CTVNews.ca earlier this month. “Nothing much has changed except I get a little more tired during the day, but that’s about it.”
Five years ago -- just two days after her wedding day -- Burris learned she had uterine sarcoma. She and her husband, Laurie, decided to continue with their plans and were able to adopt a little girl, Aubrie, who’s now three.
However the family’s dream came to a halt when Burris was told in March that her cancer had spread to her lungs and was not curable. They said she likely had six months of good health ahead of her before her cancer would become advanced.
But with her lung tumours growing much more slowly than doctors expected, Burris believes it’s her positive attitude that’s helping keep her strong.
“I think your outlook on life is everything,” she says. “If I was feeling depressed about it, I don’t think I would have gotten this far. I think that would have led to a decline in my health, for sure.”
When Burris was diagnosed in March, her sister, Caitlin -- ever aware of how much Burris dreamed of travelling -- started a GoFundMe page. She wanted to help her sister spend her last months building memories with her daughter.
Within a day and a half, the fundraiser surpassed its goal of $30,000, and has since raised close to $50,000. Not wanting to let her supporters down, Burris immediately began making plans to check things off her bucket list.
She went dog sledding in Alberta, skydiving near her home town, and brought her whole extended family on a trip to Mexico. She kept it up through the summer too, visiting her husband’s family in Nova Scotia before heading off to Los Angeles and Las Vegas with her two best friends.
“I even did the SkyJump off the Stratosphere in Vegas. That was pretty cool,” Burris says.
Later in the summer, Burris, her husband, daughter, and dog scrambled into a camper and headed out for a three-week trip to Walt Disney World, Nashville, New Orleans, and Colorado.
“It was actually so much fun. My husband did all the driving and I could sleep in the camper so it was awesome,” she said.
And in the fall, she toured Europe, visiting Ireland, Spain, Italy and more.
“The GoFundMe has paid for all our trips and it has paid our bills for the last eight months, so it’s incredible,” she adds. “We’re just so grateful for what has been given to us.”
With 2018 around the corner, Burris is due to undergo surgery in February to reduce the size of the largest of the tumours in her lungs. After that, she’s planning a family trip to Jamaica for a wedding. She’s even allowing herself to dream of going somewhere much further afield, like Myanmar or Thailand.
“Those are the biggest items on my bucket list,” she said. “But I also have simple ones, like seeing my daughter start kindergarten, things like that.”
Burris has tried to prepare her three-year-old daughter for what’s ahead.
“We’ve told her, ‘Mummy’s sick right now.’ She understands that I go to a lot of appointments. I don’t think she fully understands everything; she’s too little yet. But we talk about the possibility of Mummy going to heaven,” she said.
To try to hold onto memories, Burris and her husband have created an email account for their daughter, and every once in a while, they send the account messages or random video clips of themselves.
“When she’s old enough, she’ll get the password to that account and she can look back at all the memories and messages I wrote for her,” she said.
On her Facebook page, Burris has written that her diagnosis has helped her grow closer to her family and strengthened her faith in God. She’s also acutely aware that every day she is lucky to be alive and feeling as well as she does.
“We cannot predict what will come,” she writes, “but we can make the most out of the here and now, and I will continue to try to do that until my day has come.”
