Cheri Wickstrom saw her doctor after she became suspicious of a pea-sized lump near the lymph nodes in her neck. After a surgical biopsy in February 2008, the lump was removed and sent to the University of Washington for further analysis.

“I was at home by myself on Camano Island when I got that phone call that said it was cancer after all,” Wickstrom remembered. She sat down in one of her recliners and wrote down everything the doctor said, asked a lot of questions, hung up the phone and cried.

The biopsy determined she had Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a disease that lives in the blood and bone marrow. “It should have killed me right away; so Dr. (Mehrdad) Jafari tells me,” she recounted of her oncologist at the Skagit Regional Health Cancer Care Center. Her longevity, some eight years later, is a testament to her positive attitude and the acute body awareness she’s demonstrated along the way.

Read more of Cheri's story.