Mother’s Day is an emotional time for Meg Dumais.

The day after Mother’s Day 14 years ago, she found out that her daughter, Addie Lacaire, a little more than 10 months old at the time, had brain cancer.

Addie spent most of the next year and a half in the hospital while undergoing brain surgery, multiple other surgeries and chemotherapy, and recovering. Fortunately she’s been cancer-free for quite awhile.

Addie, who will turn 15 next month, faces other challenges, however. At 4-foot-7, she’s much shorter than her friends, has severe curvature of the spine and balance issues.

“I still have after-effects of the cancer and the treatment I had, so it can be a little bit of a challenge,” Addie said, “but knowing that I dealt with such a life-changing thing, it makes me feel more confident about myself, and it makes me feel more grateful about my life.” 

She is determined to not let anything stop her.

“She’s so resilient and strong,” Dumais said, “and I’m so proud to see her succeed in this life that we weren’t sure she was going to be in. So it’s really quite amazing.”

Addie stretches daily and does her best to keep a positive attitude so she can dance jazz, ballet and tap. Last summer, she took up golf at a summer camp at Tantasqua Regional in Sturbridge. Later that year, Dumais convinced her to begin playing with her in the Thursday night women’s golf league at Bedrock Golf Club in Rutland.

“It’s so special,” Dumais said. “It makes me feel like I can pass something down to her that she truly enjoys. I feel like she could become a superstar someday. This girl was good from the get-go.”

“Ever since I started playing golf with her, I feel like I’ve been closer with her,” Addie said. “We became more connected, and we can talk about things more. I feel like it made our bond more special.”

Addie has learned to appreciate the game of golf.

“It helps me relax and gets all the energy out of me, and it makes me happy,” Addie said, “and I like to see progress. When I hit the ball, and I see it go farther than I usually hit it, I have a little bit more confidence.”

Dumais bought her daughter a used set of clubs at Bedrock for $ 100. Club owners Joe Carr and Mary Gale helped her pick them out. Dumais’ team used several of Addie’s shots during the season-ending event last year.

“She’s still working on her drive and her distance,” Dumais said, “but this girl can hit it so straight, no matter what.”

During the first week of the league this month, Addie shot a 61 for nine holes, five shots higher than her mother.

“My mom always tells me to just suck in my stomach,” Addie said, “and just do your best.”

Addie is by far the youngest golfer in the league, but the women in the league embrace and encourage her and give her playing tips on the course.

“We are thrilled to have Addie join our lady’s league on Thursdays,” Gale said. “With her excitement to play and her constant smile, she is welcomed by all the players.”

“They all love her,” Dumais said. “The attention these women give her when we go really makes her feel part of a group, and that’s what Addie needs right now.”

Dumais said Addie was bullied in regular public school because of her short stature. So she switched to TEC Connections Academy, an online public school based in Massachusetts. She’s in the eighth grade.

Dumais, 42, and her fiancé, Jayme Mills, 51, live with Addie, her son Colton, 19, and their pit bull Clyde in Leicester, but they travel a great deal throughout the country in their recreational vehicle. The three of them played golf together a handful of times last year at Hillcrest CC, and twice a week they hit balls at the Spencer Driving Range.

Dumais is a hospice nurse at the Overlook in Charlton.

Dumais and Mills were interviewed for this column last week while they were on a Caribbean cruise near St. Thomas. They were scheduled to return home late May 10, just in time to celebrate Mother’s Day. Dumais said she hopes her children make her homemade Mother’s Day cards.

“It’s the only thing I ever ask for,” she said.

Mother’s Day means a lot to Addie because her father, Lucas Lacaire, who also cared for her during her cancer journey, passed away suddenly in October 2012, just about when she came home from the hospital for good.

“For me, it means a bunch of emotions,” Addie said about Mother’s Day. “For me and my mom, it’s much more special because my father passed away. I can show my appreciation, and I can really express how grateful I am for her and all the things she’s done for me, and I can give her that love in so many ways.”

During the cruise, Addie stayed with Dumais’s stepmother, Barbara Dumais.

Dumais said if she could get a last-minute tee time, she, Mills and Addie might golf together on Mother’s Day.

“I would love that,” Addie said.

Whether they golf or not, Mother’s Day means more to Dumais now that Addie has beaten cancer.

“I feel relieved and grateful and blessed to have what I have and to know that it could have been much different,” she said. “So Mother’s Day means something to me because that was her diagnosis time, and I lost my mom in 2003. Mother’s Day really hasn’t been the same since, but I’m just blessed to have two healthy kids and two healthy stepkids.”

Mills has a daughter Hailey, 27, and son, Jared, 24, who live in Spencer.

During COVID, Meg joined the Thursday night women’s league at Bedrock Golf Club after a friend, Missy Morin Bernard, asked her to do so.

“Golf is my getaway,” she explained. “Golf is my release, golf is my everything. I get really angry when I don’t do well at it.”

On the day before Mother’s Day 14 years ago, Mills, a friend of the family at the time, noticed that something was wrong about the way Addie looked at people. The day after Mother’s Day, a pediatrician determined that Addie’s head circumference had increased. So Addie underwent an emergency CT scan at UMass Memorial Medical Center University Campus that day and was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor called medulloblastoma.

“My world shattered,” Dumais said, “and I had a little boy that I had to take care of on top of it all. I just remember the white coats and the doctors, and I was in the middle of nursing school at the time. So I remember learning a lot about the terminology, and it all feeling like a flood of information that I was not ready to process.”

Dr. Oguz Cataltepe performed eight hours of surgery on Addie the next day at UMass. After spending a week at UMass, she went to Boston Children’s Hospital for her oncology care. She underwent multiple surgeries, including implanting ports in her head, chest and arms to deliver the chemotherapy. She also had a feeding tube. She was hospitalized for most of the next year and a half, but she has come a long way since.

“So relieving,” Dumais said. “A weight lifted knowing she can participate in normal everyday activities.”

The connection with Mother’s Day and Addie’s brain cancer diagnosis remains for Dumais, however.

“In a certain way,” Addie said, “it makes me feel sad that she has to overcome that, but now that she knows I’m here, and that I’m OK, and I’ll be OK, I feel like we made it more of an appreciation for each other. There’s a lot more love than a normal mother and daughter would have.”

“Watching them play golf together is amazing,” Mills said. “Nobody is good at golf. It’s all about being out there and having fun and having a hobby together. Seeing these guys interact and laugh and hug even when we do bad, it’s just an amazing experience.”

“Lots of high fives and fist bumps,” Dumais said.

Ideas welcome

You can suggest story ideas for my golf column by reaching me at the email listed below. Comments are also welcome.

—Contact Bill Doyle at bcdoyle15@charter.net.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Mother, daughter continue inspirational drive in Bedrock women's golf league

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