'Cut-in-Half' Mom Janis Ollson Says She's Doing Just Fine

(Sept. 24) -- So complete was her faith that she'd be just fine, Janis Ollson didn't wake her children or say goodbye on the morning surgeons were scheduled to cut her in half.

"We went in and both of us were at peace. There weren't a lot of tears shed," she said of the day she and her husband walked into the Mayo Clinic for a never-done-before surgery that would separate her body so doctors could remove half of her pelvis, one leg, her coccyx and part of her lower spine.

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Ollson, surrounded by her two children and husband, Daryl, appeared this morning on NBC's "Today" show to talk about the ground-breaking surgery to remove a fast-growing, rare cancer that had invaded her lower body while she was pregnant with her son Leiland, 3, who was delivered by cesarean section before the operation.

The 31-year-old mother from Manitoba, Canada, wasn't afraid. "I knew my options were either do the surgery or certain death," she said. Her husband wasn't always so certain.

"I was a mess. I couldn't tell you today how I made it through," he said, holding a squirming and sleepy-eyed Leiland.

The Ollsons have become somewhat famous after Janis agreed to appear in ads for the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Leiland clearly wasn't impressed with all the attention. "I want to go home, daddy," he said, sliding to the floor during the "Today" interview. His big sister, Braxtyn, 7, rubbed her eyes and yawned.

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More than three years after her surgery, Janis said she is cancer-free and feels good. At home, she zips around in a wheelchair. An artificial leg and a prosthesis that fits around her waist allow her to walk with cane. She drives her daughter to school on an ATV.

The couple renewed their wedding vows in May, on their 10th anniversary, and Janis, leaning on Daryl in a long white gown and bolstered by a cane, was able to walk down the aisle.

"We've been through a lot," she said this morning. "Like the vows say, I'll be there for better or worse, for richer, for poorer. And we were just joking, saying, we've been through everything except the richer part.''