Marcia, the creator of MyLifeLine, has a dream: To make a difference in the lives of cancer patients and their families. A cancer survivor herself, she understands what it means to be diagnosed, undergo treatments -- and still be present and available to the questions of concerned family members and friends.

At age 27, Marcia was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer. To say it was unexpected is an understatement of vast proportions! At the time of the diagnosis, she was living in Chicago and working as a flight attendant for American Airlines. She went from flying the friendly skies to a complete hysterectomy, followed by 6 months of chemotherapy. One clear memory is the spiritual support she received from family and friends. "For that I am eternally grateful," she says.

MyLifeLine.org is a nonprofit organization that encourages cancer patients and survivors to create free, customized websites. Their mission is to empower patients to build an online support community of family and friends to foster connection, inspiration, and healing.

There's been much press lately about the cervical cancer vaccine, its merits, its implications, and the debate surrounding the issue of vaccinating young girls against the sexually transmitted virus HPV.

Enter a new vaccine -- the ovarian cancer vaccine.

Early clinical trial results are promising for this vaccine, intended to fight off ovarian cancer tumors with patients' own cells -- but without the toxicity of traditional chemotherapy.

Says Dr. Ed Staren of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, "We're able to identify the specific components of the tumor and target it for individual therapy for the patient."

Doctors would surgically remove a patient's tumor and then send it to a lab where tumor cells would be used to create a vaccine specifically for the patient.

A second round of clinical trials to study the effectiveness of this vaccine will begin this summer.

Almost five years later, the memory is still as vivid as if it were happening now as I tell you that while showering, I discovered a lump in my breast. My hand stopped, my breath caught, and my stomach clenched in terror. Instinctively, I knew I was in trouble. After mammogram, ultrasound, biopsy and the first of three surgeries, the diagnosis of breast cancer was not the most optimistic one. My lobular breast cancer had spread beyond the breast into lymph nodes -- and perhaps elsewhere not yet clearly detected.

I would spend the next four years peering over my shoulder, wondering if the shadow of death would visit me with another cancer diagnosis, and if so, where would it settle in this time. If I ate pizza topped with jalapenos for that extra kick of flavor and got a stomach ache, I wondered -- had cancer spread to my liver? If I spent a day met with seemingly endless frustrations and annoyances and got a headache -- had the cancer spread to my brain?

While there is nothing rational about these leaps to a cancer conclusion based on evidence suggesting I suffered from logically explainable modern life maladies that antacid or aspirin might easily cure, for the newly-diagnosed surviving breast cancer, it is not uncommon for the mind to immediately race to an impending cancer-based doom for every day aches and pains. I am here to tell you that for the first few years it will be quite normal to have totally unreasonable fears.

Not willing to subject myself to this screeching fingernails on the blackboard fear without finding something to muffle the sound, I began creating personal rituals that suggested hope and affirmed life. With each one I was stating the value of my life and staking my claim to my future. For each woman, the personal rituals will be different. Here are a few I created that might give you some ideas for your own:

Survivor Crop, hosted by Ever After Scrapbooks, is an annual 24 hour scrapbooking marathon to raise money for breast cancer.

Now in its fifth year, participants come together to scrapbook, attend classes, play games, hold a raffle, enjoy catered breakfast and dinner, receive a Survivor T-shirt and scrapbooking freebies.

Breast cancer survivors attending will be telling their stories and the organizers promise a few scrapbooking surprises during the event.

In the last four years this event has raised over $116,000 dollars for the San Diego Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National MS Foundation, and each year the event gets bigger. The first one was held in a tent in the parking lot of the Ever After Scrapbooks store. This year's event will be held indoors in a much larger area on October 21st and 22nd. Each year, an Ultimate Survivor is chosen. For more information, visit the Ever After Scrapbooks website and the Survivor Crop blog.