JOHNSTON – Linda Clancy looks back at her life over the last six months and smiles.

Not at what she and her family were forced to deal with by fate, but by so much more than that. She smiles at hope, determination and the love of so many she holds dear.

She has been through so much and come so far – facing breast cancer, a double mastectomy and radiation treatments – and emerged with her beautiful smile still intact.

That, the survival of her smile and spirit, may even be the greatest miracle of all. In truth, it could perhaps be the greatest legacy of all women who battle the horrible disease.

Each survivor’s story is unique, and hers is no different.

As recently as January of 2009, she had been seen by a specialist and had a mammogram performed – all with no alarms being raised. Then she was told that she needed to be seen at Baptist Hospital’s Breast Center in Columbia.

“I had been seen and everything was fine,” she said. “Then I got a call from the doctor who had taken the x-ray at something like nine-o-clock at night and I knew that wasn’t good.”

That visit sent her on a roller coaster ride of emotions that only really subsided in August with the last of 34 radiation treatments she and so many others must endure.

She was informed just days later from that initial call that she would have to have her right breast removed, and that the left would likely have to be taken as well eventually.

Naturally, it was devastating news. But she and her husband, Chris Clancy, kept up a positive outlook – albeit after plenty of tears had fallen.

“We had a good cry when I got home after finding out because it didn’t look good,” she said. “There was no A,B or C because they went straight to X, Y and Z (breast removal).”

Her response to the doctor’s inquiry as to her decision on treatment set the tone for how she would battle the disease, when she replied that she would “take the double (mastectomy) on Tuesday.”

She would meet breast cancer head on, and less than a week later she had both breasts removed.

And following the post-operation exams, her prognosis was extremely encouraging. She was told that no more procedures needed to be done (other than her decision on reconstruction). She thought she was in the clear.

“I had made it,’ she said. “I just felt as though I had made it. I had had problems with both breasts for a long time and really after the surgery it was more of a relief. In the space of a year I had been back and forth to Columbia so many times (for painful needle biopsies) that I had had enough of that. I was done with it. I didn’t want any more of that. Flat was comfortable, you know? Compared to the pain I was going through the surgery was a relief.”

But there would be one final hurdle to clear – the one she didn’t see coming.

* Please see this week's edition of The Citizen News for the remainder of this story.