After surviving cancer, Alberta mom bares 'life-saving' ostomy bag in boudoir shoot
Lindsay Percy smiles through tears as she arches her spine away from the camera — exposing an abdomen marked with deep scars and a small grey ostomy bag.
The scars and bag are remnants of an aggressive cancer which nearly killed the young mother last winter.
"I am very grateful to my body. I have an extreme level of appreciation for my body now that I never had before," Percy said.
"It got me through a lot. Every single day I'm grateful that I'm still alive."
A year after her diagnosis and in remission following four major surgeries and five rounds of chemotherapy, Percy, 29, decided to bare almost everything in a boudoir shoot.
A short film of the shoot by Wild North Photo and Film has gone viral with more than 12,000 views since it was posted to Facebook last Friday.
Percy said she wants to reduce the stigma around ostomy bags, a pouch that collects bodily waste.
Percy hopes the photographs by Erika Fetterly at EFP Studios in Innisfail will help empower others like her who rely on the medical device to survive.
"A lot of people think they're smelly and that they're just straight up gross and they're not. For someone like me, they're life-saving," Percy said.
"I was bleeding internally and was almost at the point of bleeding out if I didn't do this surgery."
Percy was in the final weeks of pregnancy with her second daughter when she started feeling sick. She knew "something wasn't right."
In December 2017, she went into the emergency room in Red Deer. The doctor thought Percy's Crohn's disease was acting up and sent her home.
By the time she was 35 weeks pregnant, Percy was showing signs of preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure, and doctors decided to induce labor immediately.
Percy's daughter Hadley was born on Dec. 23. The baby spent a week in the NICU. Percy's condition continued to deteriorate. She grew lethargic, confused and struggled to stand without assistance from her husband Wade.
"From that point on, I just got weaker and weaker and we didn't know why. I couldn't feel the tumours, despite their size," Percy said.
"I couldn't feel anything except I was weakening."
On Jan. 12, Percy went to her doctor's office to learn the results of some X-rays. They were clear.
Then Percy collapsed in the examining room.
"The doctor was sitting there talking to me about what we should do next, and then he said I didn't look good and then I passed out."
On the ambulance ride to the hospital, Percy slipped into a coma.
Her abdomen was riddled with cancer. She had cantaloupe-sized tumours on each of her ovaries.
A series of small tumours riddled her small intestine. Another growth was found on her liver.
She was diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma characterized by extremely fast-growing tumours.
Soon after she regained consciousness on Jan. 16, she started bleeding internally.
Her reconstructed intestines were falling apart. She went under the knife again and had an ostomy bag inserted on the lowest part of the small intestine.
Throughout the ordeal, Percy's young daughters — three-week-old Hadley and 15-month-old Hailey — were cared for by relatives. She would not be well enough see her children until Feb. 19, Family Day.
"The girls weren't the top things in my mind, which pains me to say," Percy recalled, her voice breaking.
"At that point, surviving was what needed to happen and so that's where my mind was, getting through it all so I could be here."
Percy — a stay-at-home mom and former wedding planner — is now back home in Sylvan Lake in remission, and working to regain her strength.
It's been difficult, but Percy said she has embraced her new body. She hopes she can inspire other survivors who bear similar scars to do the same.
"It hasn't been easy but the way I've been helping myself through is by helping other people," Percy said.
"We only get one body; we only get one skin so regardless of what flaws we see that we have — like stretch marks, scars and cellulite — that is our body ... so why not do whatever you possibly can to embrace it and love it.
"Love what you've been given."
