Cancer! That treacherous disease which medicine has so far been powerless to conquer, which attacks women more than men, and whose spread in this age has taken a form that has bewildered the doctors... Here a mighty lady, of mighty will, tells its story with her—the will by which she was able to overcome this malignant disease...

Six years ago I was stricken with cancer, and the doctors decreed that I would not live more than six months. Six months in which to finish my affairs on earth and take leave of those I love. I accepted the unjust sentence as best I could, so as to bear the hard days through to the end.

My sister, however, did not believe the doctors' word that I would die of cancer. And at last, by a mercy from God and by the care of my sister Dorothy, I rose again and began to live. And in six years I have lived more than in all the years that went before.

Personal theories about cancer are like that unscientific system of navigation known among the traders of the Atlantic. The captain would stand on the bridge and order the ship to stand off or draw near, his beacon in this being the barking of a dog on the shore! More than forty-five percent did not know where the ship was. Yet for all that it gave good results.

Perhaps the observations in my illness were likewise of unknown position, and so I came through safe across black waters and without a chart. I look back at that anxious voyage and ask myself: how fine it is to help the fearful with our trials and our experiences.

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I go back to a day in July of the year 1946. The air was mild, as it usually is in Colorado. I had no leisure to shut myself up in my own thoughts as I sat with my sister in the car; we were talking about the other passengers and about the towns we passed through; and, at the last, it was an ordinary thing to call at the doctor's office.