Champion for Charity Faune Lang is a fierce mom-of-four fighting for MacKids and all kids
By Jeff Hicks
BADEN —
Five years ago, life unleashed a dizzying combination on Faune Lang.
Cervical cancer. Surprise pregnancy. A rare lung condition for her unborn child.
Low blow. Jab of joy. Lower blow.
But the mother of three who carried a fourth child— today a headstrong little girl named Violet — managed to slip out of the uncertain shadow of her own troubling diagnosis.
Long before becoming one of Mandy Bujold’s 20 Champions for Charity, who will make her boxing debut for MacKids on April 24 at sold-out Tapestry Hall in Cambridge, Lang endured a furious flurry of emotional swings.
“It was rocky,” recalled Lang, 40, the executive director for Food4Kids Waterloo Region, which serves meals to 1,440 hungry children in the region every week.
“You just had no idea what was going to happen or when. But I didn’t focus on that. I was focusing day-by-day to not let anything ruin how special it was to have a child.”
Lang, who loves children, viewed the stunning news she was 9 weeks along as a beautiful blessing revealed by blood tests from her illness.
Not have the baby? Never an option.
“I didn’t think of my cancer once,” Lang said.
“The whole focus was just about her at that point. The mom kind of takes over.”
Doctors warned of what might go wrong.
Lang, no meek deer in the headlights of outrageous fortune, punched back with no hesitation. She became the Clubber Lang of maternal menace.
“No, I’m having my baby,” said the KW girl named after the fawn her parents spied in the woods on a long-ago fishing trip. “There’s no other way this goes.”
So here we are, five years later.
Lang is a Champion for Charity now, punching with other community leaders for MacKids.
The Champs have raised more than a million dollars for McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation over three previous Brawls at Tapestry Hall — the same hospital where Faune and unborn Violet went for checks every few weeks.
Doctors made sure mom’s cancer wasn’t growing and Violet, who never needed possible surgery, was going to be fine.
She is so grateful to the staff at McMaster for their care five years ago.
“I was very fortunate to have the support I did,” Lang said. “They walked me through every step.”
Now, between Champs training sessions, her attention is on a busy household with four kids.
Karsten, 18, is witty and stubborn. A born lawyer, who can argue anything.
Kennedy, 16, is articulate and outspoken. She’s mom’s cheerleader.
Nash, 7, is fun and sensitive. He got his name when Faune was in Nashville.
Violet is growing beautifully.
“Honestly, it’s like the biggest miracle,” Lang said of her youngest child.
“I know 100 per cent that that was God. I’m so very grateful. She’s my funkiest, fiercest child of them all. She was born a fighter.”
To support Faune, click here.
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