When I was 15, my father died of leukemia. When I was 19, two days before I wrote the last exam of my first year of university, my maternal grandfather died of colon cancer. Four months after we buried my grandfather, I had cancer too.

But I was lucky. I had Hodgkin's Disease, a very treatable form of lymphoma. Upon diagnosis, I just had the healthiest summer of my life. I worked as a day camp counsellor and, for the first time in my life, was physically active for most of the day. I joined a gym with my girlfriends and lost twenty pounds.

In late August I started to experience constant itching at night, but I was also covered in mosquito bites from spending my days in the woods with a bunch of kids. The itching didn't go away.

In September, I returned to University and, out jogging one night, I reached up to take my pulse and found a lump on my neck just over the collar bone. Diagnosis was a blur. A CT scan revealed that my lymph nodes were swollen all the way down into my chest. A biopsy confirmed the oncologist's suspicions.

I then had three courses of chemotherapy (six infusion treatments) at two to two-and-a-half week intervals. While I was sick for a few days after each infusion, I insisted on staying in school, albeit with a 70% course load instead of a full one. I went to class when I could, made arrangements to hand in assignments as soon as I was able, and went out drinking with friends whenever my stomach gave me the chance;)

Five or six weeks after I finished chemotherapy, I had 20 radiation treatments to my throat and neck. When that was finished, I went on a hiking holiday through Yorkshire and Ireland, walking up to 15 miles a day. The more I hiked, the more I recovered and the cough caused by radiation receded. I became so strong that the muscle in my calves seemed to split into two separate muscles.

Feeling fantastic, I returned home to start "lower mantle" radiation treatments. This time my spleen was targeted by the beams. I was sick so violently and so quickly after treatments began that I wanted to chuck it in, go home and continue feeling fantastic.

Fortunately, my doctors talked me out of it and gave me a new anti-nausea drug that reduced my misery. Today, those anti-nausea drugs are even better, and early stage Hodgkin's can be treated with just radiation (although chemo is still given to people diagnosed in later stages of the disease).

I once met a woman with Hodgkin's who refused chemotherapy and radiation in favor of "natural" cures. That is, until her condition worsened and she had to undergo four years of intense and invasive surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and more and more chemo. She died leaving two children behind.

Today, I am 33 years-old and I just delivered my second child. My bout with cancer was one bad year in my life. If there is a moral to the story, I swallowed the medicine and got my life back. Cancer has caused many sad stories, many of them in my own family, but my cancer story is not sad. It is about recovery and going on to live a full life.

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