Survivor Series

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...

In late 2014, Amber Alexander got news that no parent ever wants to hear - a CT scan of her son, Elijah, revealed a 3.6 x 4.4 cm mass in the fourth ventricle of his brain, near his cerebellum and brain stem. This was the day after Thanksgiving and by...

For cancer survivors, going through a combination of surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation or other treatment can take an incredible toll on their physical and mental well-being. The journey to remission can be a daunting, uphill climb that leaves a...

In September of 2013, Betsy Chinn went in for her routine, yearly mammogram which is something that she never missed. This time was different, however. The next day she got a call from the doctor asking her to come back into the office. “I was...

Amidst the turmoil and distress surrounding a cancer diagnosis, Shelly Recktenwall was also dealing with the passing of a close friend and the loss of her parents from the very sickness that she herself was battling. While it has been a tumultuous...