Survivor Series

The most harrowing challenges can lead to the most unexpectedly rewarding pursuits. Heather Banks can attest to that. In September of 2007, Banks discovered she was pregnant with her second child. During a routine appointment with her obstetrician,...

“I have everything that anyone could ever need.” The above statement is not one you would expect from a two-time cancer survivor. Nevertheless, this is the positive outlook Sandra Schaffer maintains after having overcome both breast and thyroid...

Everyone knows someone who is struggling or has struggled with cancer. Whether a friend, family member, or co-worker, cancer always hits close to home. Margaret Vanna, 69, is not only a survivor of kidney cancer, but also the grandma of one of our...

It was in April of 2006 when Crown Point resident Barbara Phelps started her day feeling under the weather and soon got a headache like one she had never felt before. After calling twin daughters Kathleen and Elizabeth Brown and asking that they...

When people throw out the word cancer, you can often hear a pin drop in the room. When Highland resident Deanna Schmidt heard the word cancer in her doctor’s office a few years back, she thought, “Worst case scenario – it’s skin cancer.”...

Every cancer survivor tells a different story. Some wage long, patient wars of attrition against the disease, some fight a short and dramatic battle. No one story is the same. For people like Matt McCall, sharing their unique experience is one of the...

After moving from East St. Louis in 1990, Stacey Smith has come to love the melting pot that is Northwest Indiana in the nearly three decades that she’s called Gary her home. So when Stacey was diagnosed with breast cancer - ductal carcinoma in...

Fighting for her survival and staying strong in the face of adversity is, unfortunately, something in which Shawniece Robinson has become accustom. Now in her late-30’s, Shawniece has battled cancer three times in just twelve years and, while some...

Kerri Midkiff received a stage II breast cancer diagnosis in March of 2009, and for Kerri, her husband, and their two daughters (six and four years old), the news came as quite a shock. At 31, Kerri went through a double mastectomy, reconstruction, a...

This year, Altovise Ferguson will be marking 14 years since her diagnosis of lymphoma, a spinal tumor that she was on the receiving end of when she was just 27 years old. Her journey towards becoming cancer-free wasn’t easy, but, for the...