Two Communities Mourn Their Lizzie
On Saturday, March 4. 2017, Robert and I drove north to attend Elizabeth Dessureault’s funeral. Elizabeth was a leading light of the lung cancer advocacy community, and her death a week earlier had shaken a wide circle of people to their core, including me. When I found out that her funeral would be held in Cornwall, Ontario, less than two hours from my home by car, I realized that I had to attend to represent all those who had met her or followed her blog and Facebook posts. To encounter Elizabeth was to love her. Diagnosed with lung cancer only two years ago, she had a sunny disposition and a compelling story. In her first year of marriage to Dax and 5 months pregnant, she found out that she had lung cancer. She was able to go on chemotherapy and keep her baby alive, giving birth two months early to a little boy they named Jack. She had genetic testing of her cancer and discovered she had the ROS1 mutation. She went on to take targeted therapy, enrolled in a clinical trial, ...
