'I just feel joy': Woman with terminal cancer returns to her passion on stage

CTV National News: Cancer patient still dancing Catherine Wreford is an accomplished performer who continues to act and dance, despite a terminal cancer diagnosis. Jill Macyshon has more.

After Catherine Wreford was told five years ago that she had two to six years to live, she decided to spend them doing what she loves most: performing on stage.

The 37-year-old Winnipeg dance instructor and actor who once performed on Broadway now lives with terminal cancer. She danced again over the weekend in a Winnipeg production of “A Chorus Line.”

Wreford began suffering from severe headaches shortly after her daughter was born. In 2013, doctors found a brain tumour and she was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma.

Wreford moved back to Canada from California, where she had spent the previous decade working for a mortgage company and as a nurse.

Before that, she had followed her passion, performing on Broadway and in Los Angeles.

Wreford went through surgeries and radiation therapy in an attempt to shrink the tumour. Now, she’s back on the stage.

The role of “Cassie” – a former dancer who moves from L.A. to Broadway to give performing another shot -- seemed perfect for her.

“I feel as though I am Cassie,” she says. “As Cassie says, ‘I just want to do what I love for as long as I can,’ and that totally rings true for me.”

Performing in the three-day Rainbow Stage production hasn’t been without challenges.

“I have basically no short-term memory, so I have to do my lines over and over and over again, so I get them in my long-term memory,” she said.

Radiation treatments have “fried” her vocal chords, and she needed to keep in physical shape after treatment ravaged her body, she adds.

But the work has allowed her to continue to find joy in life.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m on Broadway, if I’m here, if I’m dancing at my church,” she says. “Wherever I’m dancing, I just feel joy.”

With reports from CTV Winnipeg and Jill Macyshon