When a woman is 33 years old and physically fit, when she focuses on serving healthy food to her family, when she's busy just living life, she doesn't expect a random pain to be cancer. And yet, for Megan Onofrey, that's what happened.

"You gotta do what you gotta do," says George-Ann Sweger, and if she's gotta have surgery on her birthday, then that's what she will do.

Anna Lowman's body was telling her something was wrong. Doctors removed her gall bladder in October, thinking that might be the source of her problem. When the pain persisted, additional tests revealed she had Stage 3 pancreatic cancer. It was a terrifying diagnosis for the 50-year-old mother of a high school student.

Hello! My name is Keevah Brown, and I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Rectal cancer on January 25, 2023. At the time I was a full time Kitchen Manager at a group home in Harrisburg, Pa. I had been enjoying my “workaholic” lifestyle/career for over 30 years at the time.

After finding out the big lump in my tongue was squamous cell carcinoma instead of an ulcer you immediately start asking ok how do we fight this?

For Dorris Winters, it was the electric bill. There she was, weeks in Hershey undergoing cutting edge stem cell treatment for B-cell lymphoma, and that meter at her home in East Prospect, York County, just kept on turning.

By the time Tina Stine heard about Vickie's Angel Foundation, she had done some dumpster diving at Sheetz. Tina was hungry. She had paid her utility bills and put gas in her truck. That left nothing for food. When Mickey Minnich called, she hadn't eaten for three days.

Cancer loves those words. Cancer loves to sneak up on people when they least expect it and throw their world into financial and emotional chaos. And that’s exactly what happened to the Phillips family.

In August 2022, Stephanie Phillips felt a lump, but she didn’t think too much about it. By October, the lump became painful, and she decided she should make an appointment to have it checked. Unfortunately, the first available appointment wasn’t until December, so she had two months to worry about its origin. Her doctor was not at all concerned. Stephanie had no family history and no indicators for breast cancer. Even still, her family doctor scheduled her for a mammogram to “rule out the scary stuff.”

Someone should hire Keevah Brown as a spokeswoman for the importance of colonoscopy. She gave into a friend's nagging, underwent the test in January and learned she had Stage 3 rectal cancer. There had been no signs, no signals, just a friend who insisted the test was important for a woman in her 50s.

Asking for help can be tough. When you're someone like Michael Alvarado who has no experience asking, it's painful.

Mike, of Enola, left his childhood home in Oberlin at 17 and spent years working for steel companies.

"I try to do everything myself. I've been that way my whole life," he said.

But in March, severe pain sent the 54-year-old to the hospital where he was diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer. Suddenly he found himself battling to withstand chemotherapy and radiation.