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Rochelle Gartner was driving on Crowchild Trail last April on her way to meet her sisters for Good Friday services. She didn’t make it.

Feeling dizzy and confused, her vision blurred. The last thing she remembered was swerving up the ramp on Flanders Road as two people on bicycles rode down toward her. Her next memory was waking up in hospital. She was examined, released and advised to follow up with her doctor.

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“I always wonder who those people were, it was a miracle,” says Gartner, 44. Those cyclists, she figures, likely saved her life by calling for help.

On followup appointments, Gartner was told she had glioblastoma, an aggressive, incurable brain cancer; the episode in the car was caused by a seizure from the tumour. She was scheduled for emergency surgery and rounds of chemotherapy.

In the seven months since that dreadful diagnosis, Gartner has good and bad days coping with her illness and treatments. What’s getting her through, she says, is being honest about the disease and finding support from her family, husband and the dance community, which has been a part of her life since she was three years old.