RMH

Niagara Falls Review
By Cheryl Clock QMI Agency
December 12, 2011

It was late at night, she was alone, and her daughter lay in a hospital bed with a brain tumour.

She needed to do something. Something to occupy her time. Help her relax. Release stress. She needed a creative outlet.

She needed to paint.

Forty-year-old Laura Lane hadn't put paintbrush to canvas since before the first of her four kids were born, some 15 years ago.

But in this moment, as her 13-year-old daughter, Celeste Templeman, was receiving chemotherapy for a rare type of brain cancer, she turned to an old friend.

It was late. About 10 p.m. Celeste's step-mom was spending the night with the girl. They took turns. Twenty-four hour shifts through the week, and on weekends, Celeste's dad would come from London and stay with her.

Laura stayed at Ronald McDonald House, a home-away-from-home for seriously ill children and their families.

And one night this past summer, Laura opened the doors and discovered the craft room. Could she use it at night to paint? she asked.

She'd already been to a discount store and bought a variety of colours and canvases. Cheap therapy at 20 bucks.

And on that night, alone, she spread newspapers across the table top and carefully laid out all the blank canvases.

She dipped her brush into blue. The colour of hope.

"I did whatever inspired me," she says.

By midnight, she had finished four. Blues. Slowly. Enya Blue. Koi.

One by one, she carried her paintings, still damp with her inspired strokes, out of the craft room, through four sets of doors, to her own room to dry.

Filled with a sense of accomplishment, she felt ready to share her positive energy with Celeste.

In all, Laura created 24 paintings.

Most of those will be on display at the Quebec Bank gallery in Thorold until the end of December. It's part of Laura's Two Girls, One Prayer exhibit that she hopes will travel to several galleries until the summer, when they'll end up back in Toronto, hopefully to be auctioned off for Ronald McDonald House.

One of the girls in her Two Girls exhibit is, of course, Celeste. The other is Hayley Filippini, from New Jersey.

Celeste and Hayley have the same tumour. They were diagnosed within a month of each other. They received the same treatments. They're the same age. And this summer, they e-mailed, talked on the phone and Skyped back and forth from their hospitals.

It all began last February. Celeste was taken to her family doctor with a headache and double vision.

By the afternoon, she was at a hospital in London, where she lives with her father, having a CT scan. By dinner time, she had an MRI. And at 9:30 p.m., she was in surgery to drill holes into her skull to release pressure caused by fluid building up in her brain.

She had a golf ball-sized tumour next to the difficult-to-reach pineal gland, near the centre of her brain.

The tumour was preventing fluid from draining and the backup was causing pressure, which caused the headaches and double vision.

A week later, the tumour was diagnosed at Sick Kids. Pineoblastoma. It had already spread to her brain stem.

Treatment began. Her stem cells were harvested. Then, she endured 30 high-dose radiation treatments to her brain and spine.

Laura, a LifeSuccess consultant, tapped into her circle of contacts and soon, people were praying for Celeste all over the world. Norway. Australia. Singapore.

She asked for a specific prayer — that Celeste's tumour would shrink and disappear.

Whenever someone would send Celeste a word of encouragement, Laura wrote it on a Sticky Note and posted it in her hospital room.

She was helped by Emotional Freedom Technique, a method that allowed her to get rid of any emotional baggage.

And believing that positive thoughts cause positive results, she worked on deflecting anything negative in her life.

"In my mind, I completely believe in miracles," she says.

"I'd rather focus on what was going right."

And there was lots going right. Celeste healed from her surgeries faster than expected. And her stem cells were harvested in less time than doctors predicted.

Laura had Celeste imagine her tumour melting away like an ice cube in the sun.

By the time she started chemotherapy, the tumour had shrunk by over 80%.

In the midst of treatments, Laura's family reserved an entire downtown Toronto theatre for Celeste to watch Winnie the Pooh.

She couldn't go to a filled movie theatre because her immune system had been virtually destroyed by the chemotherapy. So they bought all the tickets for the matinee show and Laura disinfected anything she might touch. Railings. Her seat and the seats beside her.

"She needed it," says Laura. "She needed a sense of normalcy.

"She'd gone through a horrendous month of throwing up, morphine.

"I wanted her to have that hope.

"That to me is the most important thing, that she realizes how important she is."

After that first night in the craft room, there came others. Her husband, Matt, asked her to paint a series using four colours — black, red, silver and gold.

In many ways, being limited to four colours was liberating.

Then she asked Celeste to name her four favourite colours. She filled five canvases, including one she calls Flowers for Celeste, with strokes of blue, green, purple and silver.

She painted some for Hayley. And has plans to paint more for her three other children, Desiree, Connlan and Grayson.

On Sept. 30, two months and three weeks after she entered Sick Kids, Celeste was able to leave.

Treatments are over. And she'll be monitored to make sure the tumour doesn't grow.

"I knew she was a strong girl. Determined," says Laura.

"These little girls are going to become incredible women because of what they've gone through," she says.

"They're going through this challenge, to make them stronger to touch people's lives in the future."

To view the paintings visit http://lauralane.artistwebsites.com/

To view videos Laura created of Celeste visit http://animoto.com/play/zdvTLIF904lLcs0bq47ipQ and for Hayley, visit http://animoto.com/play/zdvTLIF904lLcs0bq47ipQ