Canadiens’ great Guy Lafleur facing lung cancer again, strives to raise awareness

The Canadian Cancer Society estimates 21,000 people will die of lung cancer in this country in 2021 — some 25 per cent of all cancer deaths.

Guy Lafleur is never sure what’s around the next corner.

When his cancer treatments aren’t quite as draining, the Montreal Canadiens great has energy.

And then there are other times when all he wants to do is rest.

“I get the immunotherapy the first three weeks, and then the fourth week I have the big chemo,” Lafleur said of his regimen in a recent interview with The Canadian Press. “It’s the chemotherapy that really hurts you badly. There’s not a week that’s the same. The last two weeks, I was feeling very, very bad and sleeping a lot.

“But the last three days I feel a lot better — a lot of ups and downs.”

A cancerous white spot was discovered on Lafleur’s right lung by chance in September 2019 when he was undergoing quadruple bypass heart surgery. Two months later, the Hockey Hall of Fame winger went under the knife again to remove both the upper lobe of his lung and lymph nodes.

“I had no idea,” Lafleur said of his cancer, thankful it was caught early. “I maybe would have ended up with Stage 4 and maybe it would have been too late.”

But he received bad news in October 2020 that the cancer was back, which is when Lafleur began his current treatment.