She had found the love of her life, optometrist Jared Long, and moved to the city with him from Ontario in 2003. They led healthy, active lives and, as eager skiers, the pair relished the chance to live close to the Rockies.

But in the fall of 2008, then-32-year-old Woloshyn started watching TV – lots of TV. “I fell into a funk,” she says. “I was bored all the time – apathetic and depressed.” In February, Woloshyn stirred herself to go skiing with friends and suffered a bout of vertigo at the top of a hill. It was a particularly steep hill so she brushed the vertigo off.

In March, the headaches started. She saw her doctor and her blood work was fine. The weather had recently been changing and Calgary is famous for its migraine-inducing Chinooks. “My doctor wanted to wait until the weather stabilized and then look into it.”

A few days later, a colleague came into her office, took one look at her and sent her home to get some rest. When she started throwing up, Jared took her to the emergency room at Foothills Hospital.”

A CT scan revealed a seven-centimetre growth in her brain. Odds were good it wasn’t cancer. Woloshyn sailed through brain surgery and was discharged a few days later.

“When they called me for my follow-up appointment three days later, I figured they would tell me it wasn’t cancer – that I’d be out in 20 minutes.”

That appointment lasted three hours. Woloshyn was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a rare brain cancer. “There are four grades and mine is a Grade 4, the most severe,” she explains, her voice unwavering. “It has fingered into my brain and it’s difficult for surgeons to tell what’s brain and what’s tumour.”

She received radiation five times a week for six weeks concurrently with low-dose chemotherapy. For the next year, she used a new drug, Temodol, in a treatment regimen that was pioneered in part at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, funded in part by the Alberta Cancer Foundation.

Her experience was much different than her mother’s (and grandfather’s) who was also diagnosed with a brain tumour 17 years ago. Alyson’s mother had radiation for six weeks as well, twice a day, lasting an hour each. The intensity of treatment was so high she stayed in a care centre to help manage her fatigue and side effects. She lost all her hair and it still hasn’t grown back. She has scaring from the radiation burns and lost hearing in her left ear. “Based on this experience you can imagine how terrified she was, when we learned, I, too, would receive six weeks of radiation for my brain tumour,” says Alyson. “Thanks to advancement in cancer research, my experience was completely different. My radiation treatments were five to 15 minutes and during my six weeks I was able to hike, bike, maintain and independent and active lifestyle—I even did the zipline and Canadian Olympic Park.”

Clearly, her diagnosis was life-altering. She has received the maximum radiation a person can receive in a lifetime. So who would blame her if she opted to focus exclusively on her own health? For Woloshyn, the change was a watershed that spurred her on to do better and be more.

“I’ve always believed that you need to put more in than you take out,” she says. “When I looked for ways I could help, it didn’t take long to find the Alberta Cancer Foundation.” Through a series of events, she helps raise money for research and treatment for the Brain Specific Research Trials and Grants, and plans to donate to the organization part of the income from a self-published book about her journey. So far, she has raised almost $18,000. “I hope that through my example, others will also look to donate their time and money and put a little back.”

Despite all the research progress made, Alyson knew that even with treatment, recurrence was not only possible, but probably. In July, her doctors found a growth during one of her regular MRIs and she had her second brain surgery soon after. She starts chemotherapy in the fall. “I was given two options to consider—both probably would not have been offered to me had I experienced this even five years ago, which only reinforces the progress we are making.”

Read her blog at alysonwoloshyn.com