Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope Speaker Jennifer Miller on Hope, Hot Air Balloons & Embracing the Unknown
Published Monday, September 23, 2024
Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope speaker Jennifer Miller holds the art piece she created, which will be one of four pieces available for bidding in the online auction starting this Monday. For more details, please visit the website.
by Graham Strong
Jennifer Miller has been thinking about hot air balloons lately. Actually, she's been thinking about them for nine years now. That's when she first heard about the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Five hundred balloons take off together into the skies over New Mexico.
"It sounded so exciting!" Jennifer said. "I imagined slowly rising up with all these other balloons, seeing more and more of the world below."
As she will tell attendees at this year's Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope at the Superior Inn on October 4, she had to put her balloon trip on hold. It was just after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer a third time – Stage 4, spreading to her bones.
From that moment until today, Jennifer has felt like she's living in the unknown. At first, she waited for someone to tell her she could now relax. An undiagnosed heart issue revealed itself during chemotherapy, so doctors switched her to radiation and hormone therapy, and then started treatment for her heart. Despite all the treatments, her prognosis kept getting worse.
Once Jennifer finished her treatments, her healthcare team told her to call when she started experiencing pain. Until then, they said, go home and be with your family.
"I had two young children at the time. Sara was 4 and Shaun was 2," Jennifer said. "I would wonder, what will happen to them? My husband was my rock through it all. I had to prepare to leave them, and it was heartbreaking."
Sara was there helping Mom every step of the way including talking over the intercom during Jennifer's radiation treatments.
Facing the unknown and the extreme side effects of cancer treatments weren't the only challenges.
"The waiting is one of the worst parts of cancer," she said. "Waiting for mammography results. Waiting for biopsy results. Waiting for two breast surgeries. Waiting on results after those surgeries. Your mind goes to dark places with all that waiting."
That was eight years ago. Although nobody knows why, Jennifer is still here.
"We celebrated Christmas that year like it was our last one. And then the next one like it was our last one. At some point we said, 'What's going on here?'
"Over time, the question changed from, 'When am I going to die?' to 'What can I do today?'"
She also stopped waiting. Jennifer opened herself up to new things such as Tai Chi, sewing, pottery, and a type of visual art called fluid art. She loved the randomness of the patterns, how you could see what you wanted to see in those patterns – and how it represented her cancer journey.
"Maybe what drew me to this artform was the fact that it embodies all my changing beliefs. Life is fluid. Life is abstract, allowing you to find your own meanings. And although you can set up the paints on the canvas just so, a lot of the beauty is left to chance."
This past August, Jennifer and her family drove her daughter down to southern Ontario for college. They took a beautiful family picture – and hope against hope, Jennifer was in it. And that balloon ride? She'll reveal a little secret about that at the Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope on Friday, October 4.
Find out more about the Tbaytel Luncheon of Hope, how to get tickets and details on the art auction at: healthsciencesfoundation.ca/luncheon