Sylvia
Flight #5342: I Will Remember You
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Piper's own video today: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cr9CEdvA4NX/
Toronto Globe and Mail article by Rachel Brady (May 7, 2023)
www.theglobeandmail.com
Excerpts:
The last 6 months have been a bit of a roller coaster! I’ll be sharing a bit more of my story tomorrow on World Ovarian Cancer day. I’m so incredibly thankful for all the people who supported me throughout all of this. I’ve always tried to be as authentic & real as possible on social media, but this was something I felt I needed to share when the timing was right. Life is full of ups and downs, all we can do is keep pushing forward![]()
Toronto Globe and Mail article by Rachel Brady (May 7, 2023)
‘This isn’t a poor-me story’: Olympian Piper Gilles opens up about her frightening experience with ovarian cancer
The 31-year-old world medalist and Olympian is ready to share her story, because she feels extremely lucky

In the middle of their 11th and most successful year skating together, Gilles and skating partner Paul Poirier missed January’s national championships and February’s Four Continents tournament, announcing that she was recovering from an appendectomy.
But that was just a small piece of the story Gilles felt comfortable sharing at the time, part of a more complex and concerning medical situation. Now the 31-year-old world medalist and Olympian is ready to share her story, because she feels extremely lucky.
Gilles did have her appendix removed on Dec. 19, but that was an additional procedure to her scheduled surgery, added as a precaution. She was in hospital to have her left ovary removed, because weeks earlier doctors discovered that it contained a tumour some three centimetres long. A few weeks after its removal, a biopsy showed the tumour was cancerous.
“This isn’t a poor-me story,” Gilles tells The Globe and Mail in her first interview about it. “I don’t have cancer anymore. I’m good right now, but I just don’t want women to wait too long and find out it’s stage 4. I want them to listen to their bodies.”
Gilles began feeling unwell in late October during the Skate Canada International in Mississauga. She felt fatigue, plus an unusual abdominal pain that came and went throughout the weekend. She pushed it aside and caught up in the competition, which included the debut of their passionate free dance to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita. They skated to gold that weekend and looked poised for a big season.
Yet Gilles’s stomach pain, coming in waves on the left side of her body, persisted in the week after Skate Canada. Her coach and her husband each insisted she visit a doctor. Begrudgingly, she went to a walk-in clinic near her home in Toronto.
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