This couple is helping others after documenting their journey through childhood cancer

• Two stories about their granddaughter’s cancer journey
• Valuable lessons learned along the way
• Strongly uniting the family

No parent wants to hear the words, “your child has cancer.”

But in 2019, Mike and Candace Chisholm, along with their son and daughter in-law, were told that very thing about 18-month-old, Elara.

“It was surreal, it was devastating,” Candace told Kelowna10. “You go through this arc of emotion where you think this can’t be, and what ifs. My head went down a whole bunch of places in seconds. It’s the worst thing you can honestly hear.”

The family spent the next few months at B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, where Elara underwent cancer treatments.

Doctors told the family the stress of childhood cancer can often fracture relationships.

But for Candace and Mike, the experience brought them together in ways they couldn’t imagine.

“If there’s a decision to be made you can either bond more, or you can fragment and thankfully our family bonded,” Mike said. “I’m not saying there wasn’t ups and downs in the journey, of course there were. We have a much more unique bond going through this experience together.”

Throughout it all, Candace described her granddaughter as pure magic.

“Elara has this ability to make you smile. She has this inside out glow that everything’s going to be okay,” she said. “Even though she was hooked up to all these machines, she’s getting all this medication and these toxins to kill the cancer, and she would still make you laugh.”

During their time in Vancouver, the couple documented their personal experience.

The stories culminated in a book titled 'She Changed Me: One Ordeal; Two Perspectives.'

“The things [Candace] picked up, versus the things that stuck with me were just eye opening,” he said. “The fact we put out a book while going through a really hard situation that had a very happy ending, learning a bunch of different lessons as a couple, and seeing the lessons that each other learned, gave us a very cool insight to each other.”

Mike wrote about the importance of self-care during times of trouble, as well as how grateful he was for people to come together to help his family.

Candace focused on the lessons learned and the blessings of an experience like this.

She said since the release, readers have reached out and taken pieces of the book and applied it to their own life.

“It made me feel like what we said mattered. It’s not just about a little girl going through cancer, that was our experience,” she said. “That has given me so much grace to be who I am and to know you can help somebody along the way.”

Elara’s tumor was eventually removed and she is now healthy.

The book can be bought online. A portion of the proceeds will go towards the Michael Cuccione Foundation, which raises funds to support childhood cancer research.