She s a real sweetheart, he said. She s done extremely well, and that certainly makes us feel good. And what a story it is. Cancer entered her life when she was 25, less than a year after she became a mother. There was a mass in her chest as big as a softball, and it had spread to her heart and lungs.
Doctors couldn t remove it.
Double doses of chemotherapy and radiation couldn t stop the growth, known as non-Hodgkins lymphoma. A bone marrow transplant was her only option. No one in the family was a match for Hill, a supervisor in Mary Washington Hospital s radiology department. She was so close to death, there wasn t time for an extensive donor search. So, doctors decided to take out her bone marrow and put it back in again, hoping her body would generate new, cancer-free cells.