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I first found out I had cancer on my eye and lost an eye to this disease when I was 16, and I've since had cancer in my kidneys and pancreas and a host of other areas.

When I was very young, my father had an accident. He fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his skull, and lost sight in one eye.

In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart.

I had a lump on my face and had a big cancer thing removed.

When I was 14, my dad came home one day and told us he had cancer. It was looking pretty bad. And I remember him saying how afraid he was that he hadn't gotten to do the things he wanted to do during his life. He had surgery and survived. And he's still alive today, thank God. But it made a big impact on me.

My two grandmothers both died of cancer, so I understand how painful and difficult this disease is on the entire family. My first grandmother passed away from bone cancer when I was about 10. It was really horrible. I remember the whole process like it was yesterday.

I had a tumor in my left eye which killed the optic nerve, but it's my real eye. I just cannot see out of it.

I had a lumpectomy. It wasn't that bad. Six and a half weeks of radiation.

When I was 41, I found a lump the size of a grape in my right breast. I ended up bald, sick and exhausted from surgeries, chemo and radiation treatments. Ah, but I got to live.

I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, an illness of the thyroid gland. Instead of surgery, I was given radiation treatment.