The pain started before her first child was born, and never really went away. For five years, scans missed what was growing inside her. When Michelle Hughes finally collapsed, the diagnosis explained everything and changed everything.
Michelle Hughes believed she was just dealing with the lingering discomforts of pregnancy when she collapsed shortly after childbirth. What doctors discovered next would upend her life: an incurable cancer that had gone undetected for half a decade.
Her story traces the quiet symptoms that were repeatedly dismissed, the moment everything changed, and the extraordinary way she chose to live after being told she might not survive. With three young children and a prognosis measured in months, Michelle refused to sit still.
An Ache Beneath the Ribs That Seemed Like Nothing
In 2016, while 35 weeks pregnant with her first child, Michelle noticed a sharp, persistent pain beneath her right rib. Like many expectant mothers, she assumed it was a normal side effect of pregnancy. She mentioned it casually during a routine checkup, prompting her doctor to order an ultrasound to rule out gallbladder issues, a common concern in pregnancy.
The scan showed no problems with her gallbladder, but it revealed something unexpected: a hemangioma on her liver. Doctors described it as a benign, blood-filled cyst that was unlikely to be the cause of her discomfort. They encouraged her to focus on her upcoming delivery and said that if the pain continued afterward, they could revisit it.
A follow-up scan was scheduled for the following year as a precaution. They scheduled a follow-up for the following year as a precaution. Michelle delivered her daughter, Juliet, a week later at 36 weeks. After experiencing years of infertility and the stillbirth of a son, Michelle and her husband, Ty, were overwhelmed with joy.
She became fully immersed in new motherhood, grateful for her daughter, and eager to move forward. Meanwhile, the discomfort under her ribs lingered. It wasn’t debilitating — just a nagging ache that flared up now and then. With the follow-up scans consistently showing the hemangioma as stable, she had little reason to worry.
Years of Ignoring a Subtle Signal
As Juliet grew, Michelle returned to work as a social worker and began pursuing fertility treatments again. She and Ty hoped to expand their family, and soon she became pregnant with their second daughter, Adeline.
The years that followed were busy and demanding. Alongside motherhood and career responsibilities, Michelle continued to experience occasional pain in her side. Sometimes it was strong enough to send her to the emergency room.
Each time, tests indicated that the liver cyst had not changed in size or appearance, and the medical consensus remained unchanged — it was still believed to be harmless. Despite the pain and unanswered questions, Michelle chose to trust what the scans showed. With two young children and a full plate, she kept going.
A Sudden Collapse After Her Son’s Birth
By 2021, Michelle was pregnant with her third child when new complications began to appear. At 35 weeks, her placenta ruptured, an emergency that could have ended in tragedy. Both she and her son, Hatton, survived. While he spent time in the NICU, Michelle began recovering from the difficult delivery.
But just a few days after returning home, everything changed. Michelle collapsed on the floor in front of her children, her sister, and several nieces and nephews. Ty rushed her to the hospital, where medical staff immediately noticed her elevated heart rate, clocking in at 180 beats per minute.
She was moved into a trauma room for urgent imaging. The results were shocking. Her lungs were filled with numerous tumors, and her liver showed 15 cysts. Michelle recalled the disbelief from the medical team, who couldn’t explain how her condition had deteriorated so drastically in such a short time.
Weeks earlier, she had undergone yet another ultrasound that showed no change to the hemangioma. At first, doctors suspected the issues might be related to the complications from her delivery, perhaps linked to infection or trauma.
But for the first time in five years, it was evident that something serious was going on, and it was no longer something they could dismiss.
A Life-Altering Diagnosis: Stage 4 EHE
Following the alarming scan results, Michelle was transferred from Prince Edward Island to Moncton, New Brunswick, for a liver biopsy. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, she had to go alone. She packed a breast pump and focused on getting back to her newborn, thinking the procedure would be quick and straightforward.
Instead, the biopsy led to internal bleeding, and she was rushed to the ICU. Her family was called to the hospital. Michelle remained admitted for several days while doctors carried out more tests, trying to piece together what had gone wrong.
On August 20, 2021, while Michelle held her three-week-old son in her arms, a doctor walked into the room and delivered the news: she had cancer. He struggled to pronounce the name of it, an unfamiliar diagnosis that left Michelle stunned.
It was epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, or EHE, a rare and incurable form of sarcoma that doesn’t show up on standard ultrasounds. The cancer was already at Stage 4 and had likely been growing silently for years.
Michelle’s mother asked the question on everyone’s mind: how long did she have? Lying in bed with her newborn, Michelle tried to process the impossible, how something believed to be harmless for so long could turn out to be terminal.
There was nothing to do but wait. The family, who had planned to fly back home to the Northwest Territories, canceled their trip. Instead, they remained in Prince Edward Island, unsure of what would come next.
Hope for a Liver Transplant and Then Another Blow
As the initial shock began to settle, doctors told Michelle there might be a path forward. If the cancer was limited to her liver and lungs, she could be eligible for a liver transplant. For Michelle, it felt like a lifeline. Despite everything, there was still a plan, and she clung to it.
She believed that if she could get the transplant, she could survive for her children. The idea brought her hope, and she was ready to do whatever it took. But the optimism didn’t last. A PET scan soon revealed that the cancer had already spread beyond her liver and lungs.
Tumors were also found in her thigh and knee, disqualifying her from transplant eligibility. At a follow-up appointment, the doctor explained that her cancer had metastasized too extensively. He shared that another patient with the same diagnosis — one with fewer tumors — had only lived a few months.
Michelle was holding Hatton during that meeting. Hearing those words, she thought only of him. “He’s never going to remember me, and that’s not okay with me,” she thought. After that appointment, she and Ty walked out of the hospital and never returned to that doctor’s office.
A Doctor Who Offers a Different Perspective
Determined to find another option, Michelle and Ty began searching for someone with more experience treating EHE. They eventually connected with a sarcoma specialist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, someone who had treated not just one, but dozens of patients with her exact diagnosis.
During their first virtual meeting, Michelle was told something that stopped her in her tracks. The doctor acknowledged how rare and unpredictable the cancer was but pointed out something no one else had mentioned: Michelle had likely already been living with EHE for at least five years.
She remembers the doctor’s words clearly. “Yeah, you could die in five years — likely three — but I want you to just live,” she was told. At first, Michelle didn’t understand what that meant. But the doctor explained that she had already defied the odds.
Despite the tumors, she had carried three pregnancies, survived multiple complications, and was still standing. “Look at all this life you’ve lived,” the doctor said. “Look at these beautiful children you brought into this world with cancer growing in your body — and look at you now.”
That conversation changed everything. It shifted Michelle’s mindset from fear and finality to action and presence. She and Ty packed up their home in the Northwest Territories and moved in with her mother in Prince Edward Island to begin a new chapter.
Falling Ill Again and Reclaiming Control
After relocating to Prince Edward Island, Michelle began settling into a new routine with her family. But stability was short-lived. Soon after the move, she caught what seemed like a mild cold, likely something brought home by one of the kids.
For most people, it would have passed quickly. But for Michelle, it signaled something more serious. Within two weeks, her condition worsened. Scans showed new tumors, and the ones already present had grown.
She had to make another difficult call to Ty, explaining that the cancer was progressing again. Her doctor prescribed an experimental oral medication: four small white pills that she could take from home. It was a quiet shift—there were no immediate side effects, but the emotional toll was heavy.
One night, unable to sleep, Michelle lay in bed next to her infant son. The house was dark and quiet. Through the crib rails, she stared at him, wondering how much time she had left. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, my kids really aren’t going to know me as a mom,'” she said.
That night, while scrolling through her phone, she stumbled on a video that would become a turning point: a woman with no hair laughing and doing a headstand. The caption showed that she had stage four cancer and was thriving.
Michelle was struck by the woman’s joy. It didn’t feel forced or performative. It was genuine. “If she can do that, why can’t I?” she thought.
The Beginning of a Fitness Journey
The morning after seeing the video, Michelle got out of bed, stepped onto a treadmill, and took her first step toward something new. She had never considered herself athletic. Before that moment, she couldn’t even run a mile. But something inside her shifted.
She wasn’t chasing fitness goals; she was chasing joy. Using a fitness app, she started small, just walking, then running for 10 seconds at a time. Gradually, those short intervals grew longer. Eventually, Michelle became a runner.
When the weather improved, she began running outside with her son in a stroller. It quickly became something she looked forward to. “Oh my goodness, this stroller mom thing is actually fun,” she recalled thinking.
As her confidence grew, a company sent her a specialized stroller that wrapped around her waist, freeing her hands. Wanting to include her daughters too, she began pushing a double stroller with Juliet and Adeline while pulling Hatton behind her.
The entire setup weighed 170 pounds, but Michelle embraced the challenge. She began running 5Ks, completing them in 30 minutes, stroller and all.
Her Boldest Goal Yet: A Triathlon on Diagnosis Day
Michelle didn’t stop at 5Ks. In 2022, she ran her first 10K with Hatton in the stroller, finishing in 60 minutes. The following year, a childhood friend invited her to run a half-marathon, which she completed alongside her closest friends in Niagara Falls.
By 2024, three years into living with Stage 4 cancer, Michelle began thinking even bigger. She told Ty she wanted to become a triathlete. He pointed out the obvious: she didn’t know how to swim or bike, and she didn’t even own a bike.
Still, he supported her. Michelle hired coaches for both swimming and cycling. Then, on August 20, 2024 — the exact date she had been diagnosed three years earlier — she completed a full triathlon.
It included a half-marathon, 104 kilometers of biking, and two kilometers of ocean swimming. She finished in the arms of her children, outside their summer house.
From Private Journal to Global Community
In addition to living for herself, Michelle wanted to make sure her children would always remember who she was — what she sounded like, how she laughed, what their lives together looked like. She started recording videos and journaling daily moments, creating a digital archive they could revisit one day.
At first, her posts were meant only for her kids. But as she shared more, unedited clips, thoughts on motherhood, cancer updates, her story began to resonate far beyond her immediate circle. Strangers began following her posts, drawn to her unfiltered approach to living with terminal illness.
Her Instagram account grew rapidly, soon reaching more than 400,000 followers. Michelle didn’t curate a picture-perfect image. She showed up in her housecoat, with a messy bun, no makeup, and no filters. Ty became a regular presence in her posts as well, sharing the highs and lows of their day-to-day reality.
“It is a choice to sit back and wallow in our pain of knowing that we are dying,” she said. “I always recommend we chase joy.” Her message was simple but powerful: find even 30 seconds in your day to laugh, to dance, to live. That mindset became the core of her online community, a place not of toxic positivity, but of real, imperfect hope.
Michelle’s story has sparked admiration from thousands of supporters, many of whom regularly comment on her posts. One person wrote, “Wow! God bless her and her family. How fierce and brave. Determination and love.” Another added, “You rock girl! God bless you ❤️”
Others echoed the sentiment. “Wow, what an inspiring story! Glad that she is still here with her family,” and “What an amazing lady. So impressive” were among the comments.
Preparing Her Children and Living with Purpose
From the beginning, Michelle chose to be open with her children about her illness. Juliet, Adeline, and Hatton know that their mom is sick and that the cancer she lives with may never go away. She talks to them about it in a way they can understand — clear and calm. This honest approach has shaped how her family copes.
Even as her cancer progresses slowly, the children know not to be afraid unless Michelle tells them it’s time to worry. To help visualize the time she’s lived since her diagnosis, Michelle created a “Weeks to Live” chart. Each week, she marks off another square, not as a countdown, but as a celebration of time still unfolding.
It’s a reminder that she’s outlived her original prognosis and that each week is one more moment with the people she loves. Rather than focusing on traditional bucket-list goals, Michelle embraces what she calls a “living list.” It’s filled with meaningful, sometimes unexpected experiences, many of which cost little or nothing.
She’s eaten an oyster for the first time, traveled with her family, and even attended a HYROX competition in New York City. Small moments and simple joys are what matter most. Her biggest dream now is to watch Hatton get on the school bus for his first day of kindergarten. That milestone is just over a year away, and it’s the one she’s holding onto the most.
Michelle’s journey has shed light on a disease most people have never heard of. For those unfamiliar with the condition Michelle has been living with, here’s what to know.
What Is Epithelioid Hemangioendothelioma?
Epithelioid hemangioendothelioma (EHE) is a rare form of cancer that develops from the endothelial cells lining the blood vessels. Because blood vessels are found throughout the body, EHE can occur in a wide range of locations, most commonly in the liver, lungs, and bones, but also in areas like the spine, brain, and thyroid.
One of the challenges of EHE is its silent progression. In many cases, there are no symptoms until the cancer has already spread. When symptoms do appear, they depend on the tumor’s location and may include:
- Pain or a noticeable mass
- Unexplained weight loss
- Fatigue or fever
- Abdominal pain (when located in the liver)
- Difficulty breathing, coughing, or coughing up blood (when in the lungs)
- Bone pain or fractures (when in the bones)
- Trouble walking or moving (when affecting the spine)
Because EHE is so rare, it often goes undiagnosed for years. In Michelle’s case, the tumors did not appear on standard ultrasounds and were initially mistaken for a benign liver cyst. Her experience highlights the importance of listening to persistent symptoms, even when early scans appear normal.
