Con looked at me and told me he loved me and that I was his best friend. He told me that he wouldn't know what to do if I were to leave him. He said he always had looked up to me because I had been through so much. "Please don't give up Mel," he pleaded. Friendship is a very powerful thing because that day I went to the hospital and received my first chemo session.

After 3 weeks of Chemo I knew it wasn't working. I could tell. Once you've had it enough times, you begin to know whether it's working or not. And this time, my body wasn't responding. That's when my doctor suggested a bone marrow transplant.

The bone marrow is a part inside the bone where blood cells are made. Transplant meant killing off the diseased marrow and replacing it with healthy bone marrow from a donor. The doctor warned me that the process wasn't a complete cure, but it often worked and it could cure cancer completely. All I wanted was my cancer to be gone.

Everyone in my family went through tests to see if they were a likely candidate and my brother Jason ended up being a perfect match. He was more than happy to help me. I recall his enthusiastic smile just before he went into surgery, because he knew he was helping me. I couldn't ask for a better brother.

Even though I was anxious to get surgery I still had a little twinge of doubt. I mean, I had recovered two times already from cancer, how many miracles does one person get?

I knew I had to try my best to beat this round. There were more people waiting for me then ever before. My mother was remarried and I had 3 stepbrothers, my father was also remarried, and he was holding my stepmother's hand. There were my friends, including Con who waited in the hospital chair all night next to Jeff who I was proud to call the love in my life at the moment.

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