‘The silence was deafening’: B.C. mother pleads with province following cancer diagnosis

A B.C. mother with Stage 4 cancer is speaking out, wondering if delays in seeing an oncologist led to the disease spreading.

A Port Moody, B.C., mother is pleading with the province to address wait times for cancer screening after receiving her own Stage 4 diagnosis.

In May 2025, Sara Gillooly underwent a hysterectomy.

Shortly after the surgery, she noticed excessive bleeding, and her breast had swelled to the size of a baseball.

From there, she had her first mammogram at 40 years old.

“They discovered nothing, because a lot of women have something called firm breast tissue,” she said.

‘I have cancer’

Her doctors ordered her an ultrasound. At the appointment, she noticed something was wrong.

“I looked at the technician and she was like, ‘Don’t ever come to these things alone,’” she said.

“And I was like, ‘Oh, I have cancer.’ I knew it from that moment because I looked at it, it just looked scary. It just looked like something that shouldn’t be in your body.”

On July 1, Gillooly, a mother of two, received a phone call from a nurse telling her she had breast cancer.

“I always felt like whenever I was in front of a medical professional, it was amazing, and I was taken care of,” she said. “It’s when I left that the silence was deafening.”

A lumpectomy was then scheduled on July 28. Gillooly wanted to be proactive and asked her health-care providers if they could run a series of tests such as a CT scan, and a PET scan.

She said she was told she didn’t need them.

‘Devastating’

Gillooly said she also asked for a Ki-67 test, and considered going to Turkey for it, but decided to stay home with her family.

Eventually, in September, she saw an oncologist who ordered her all the tests she had initially requested months prior.

“It was two months of waiting,” she said.

In November, she learned that the cancer had spread.

“I was so, so saddened by it,” she said.

Gillooly believes if she had had the tests done earlier, when she asked for them, the outcome would have been different.

“How could it not?” she said. “It’s a really long time, and I know I’m not the only one, which is so devastating.”

On Wednesday, Gillooly travelled to Victoria to share her story outside of the B.C. legislature, to advocate for change. She brought her 10-year-old daughter.

“It was pretty special to not only try to provoke advocacy, but also to show my daughter that it’s still possible,” she said.

In a statement to CTV News, Health Minister Josie Osborne said improving cancer care is a priority, adding that “a cancer diagnosis is devastating, and any wait for care feels far too long.”

The Ministry of Health said since April 2023, the number of full-time equivalent (FTEs) medical staff has increased by 85.9 FTEs, regional cancer centre staff have increased by 386.1 FTEs and provincial program staff by 72.4 FTEs.

Four new cancer centres are also underway in Surrey, Burnaby, Nanaimo and Kamloops.

According to data from BC Cancer, for the period from Nov. 7 to Dec. 4, 2025, 63.9 per cent of medical oncology new patient referrals were seen within four weeks, and 90 per cent were seen within 7.4 weeks.

In a statement, BC Cancer added, “patients waiting for new patient consults, their first appointment with a medical or radiation oncologist are carefully triaged so those in urgent need are seen as soon as possible.”

Need for more health care practitioners

Sarah Kooner, the president of the Health Sciences Association of B.C., said, there are fewer than 30 PET technologies in B.C.

“Of course, that creates a very terrible bottleneck, and only results in challenges for patients and clients, leaving our already stretched out, already burnt-out workers trying to mitigate that challenge as best they can, but with very limited resources,” Kooner said.

Gillooly said since speaking out, many people have reached out to her with similar stories.

“One of the first things that I told my husband when I got diagnosed is, I want to be the change,” she said.

“I want to change the medical system. He’s like, ‘Absolutely. If you can do anything, do it, Sara. We will all support you.’”