In their more than three decades together, one issue has posed the biggest threat to James and Elizabeth O’Donnell’s marriage: cancer.

Nearly 10 years ago, Mrs. O’Donnell found a lump in her breast. At first, she wasn’t worried. A routine mammogram a month earlier showed no signs of a tumor. But the lump grew so quickly during a two-week vacation in Hawaii that Mrs. O’Donnell went to see her doctor days after returning home to Indiana. The doctor ordered an immediate biopsy. The 42-year-old mother of three boys was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and told she had only a 5% chance of surviving the next year.

She proved the doctors wrong. Mrs. O’Donnell began chemotherapy treatments in February 1995, underwent two surgeries, including a mastectomy, and finished her chemotherapy in August 1995. She is now considered cancer-free. She and her husband call that a miracle and say they know how lucky they are. “We had the same goal,” Mrs. O’Donnell says, “to keep our family together.”


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