Cancer makes me thankful for every moment

"I was 31 years old when my doctor told me I had untreatable stage 4 colon cancer. He said to go home and enjoy the time I had left with my family--six months at most. I was raised to believe everything a doctor says, so I can't even express what an emotional tailspin I went into when I heard those words.

I had two beautiful daughters, Katie and Karlie, who were 8 and 11 years old, and a fairy-tale marriage with my husband, Ronnie, and suddenly I was planning my funeral. I couldn't stop thinking about how, when and where I would die. I started crying whenever I looked at my girls.

I lived each day with my breath held tightly, imagining that if I let it out there might not be another. I decided to fulfill a lifelong wish to live in the country--I didn't want to waste any more time worrying if our car was "just so" in our exclusive Fort Worth subdivision. So we leased a house in Canton, a town of about 5,000, for six months, where we could ride horses to town and leave our doors unlocked.

Ronnie also gave me my first computer, and a couple of months after my diagnosis, I discovered the Internet. I posted on a cancer Listserv asking for advice on how to prepare my daughters for my death. A man named Shelly Weiler replied that he also had stage 4 colon cancer but was getting chemotherapy. He said he had a daughter my age and that he wouldn't die without a fight. I shouldn't be planning my death, he told me, I should be firing my doctor and finding some hope. It hadn't occurred to me that my diagnosis was debatable. If it hadn't been for Shelly, I wouldn't be alive today.

We found an oncologist who agreed to treat me with one of the only chemo treatments available at the time, 5-FU. Little did I know I was beginning a long medical journey--one of several combinations of treatments, sometimes for a few months, sometimes for a year. Each one was a stepping-stone toward feeling better and helped to control the cancer, until it spread to a different area.