On August 9, Patty was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is 36 years old, a wife, a mother of four children -- and already a fighter in her battle that has just begun. So far, she has endured surgery, and she will soon proceed through months of intensive chemotherapy, one year of Herceptin treatment, and weeks and weeks of radiation. It's a familiar path for so many women -- a path marked by devastation, fear, worry, and panic. Yet if there is a gift that flows from cancer, it must be the support and concern and love that can cushion the blow delivered by this disease.

Patty has an abundance of support -- and it all starts with her husband, ironically an administrator of two cancer centers, who is blogging her journey with great strength and an overwhelming love for his wife whose own mother died of breast cancer in 1992 at the age of 46. Patty and her husband have been vigilant about monitoring her health over the years -- in light of her family history -- and Patty had been tested, screened, biopsied, and examined many times before her diagnosis. When her recent tests and biopsies revealed breast cancer, it was both shocking and expected.

Now Patty and her husband -- who authors the blog Patty's Journey -- are expecting the best of outcomes on this journey of a lifetime.