There's this guy. His name is Matthew Zachary. He's a cancer survivor, a motivational speaker, a concert pianist, and the founder of a resource portal for young adults surviving cancer.

Steps for Living, Inc. -- also known as I'm too young for this -- was created by Zachary because he wants us all to know there are awesome cancer support services out there for adolescents and young adults. He means really awesome opportunities -- like spa retreats, online forums and blogs, social networking, camping excursions, fertility education, peer counseling, financial scholarships, and more.

You may be too young for cancer, but you are not alone, says Zachary whose mantra is Get Busy Living. And this is exactly what he is doing, despite challenges and setbacks in his own cancer recovery.

Think about this, an e-mail written by Zachary for those near and dear to his heart:

I am writing to share that I have suddenly gone deaf in my left ear. The condition is called Sudden Sensory Neural Hearing Loss.

After consulting with the country's best hearing experts as well as my oncologist, it has been determined that this is unequivocally a latent, long-term side effect of my post-operative cancer treatments from eleven years ago. Evidently, the excessive radiation dosages to the left hemisphere of my brain have caused irreparable neurological damage to my cochlea, which has ceased functioning.

There may be options (cochlear implants) but I will not know more for several weeks. As you can imagine, this is a devastating blow to my personal life and music career, especially since I remember fighting so hard to regain dexterity and muscle control in my left hand when it ceased functioning prior to my initial diagnosis in 1995.

That said, it has only reinvigorated me to stay the course and continue to advocate on behalf of the more than 500,000 young adults living with, through and beyond cancer each and every year. Now more than ever, I stress the importance of recognizing that remission is not a cure and that public awareness and adequate funding for adolescent and young adult cancer survivorship programming is tantamount to that of cancer research.

This is what it means to be a cancer survivor.

To read more about Zachary's powerful journey, click here for an unbelievably moving essay -- titled The Cost Of Living: No Cure For Cancer -- written by this unbelievably grounded guy.

Steps For Living just released an inspirational CD fittingly called Both Sides of the Coin by friend and concert pianist Mathew Zachery and Dr. Adam Dachman, an osteopathic surgical oncologist and composer. Zachery a cancer survivor and Dachman a cancer surgeon have produced an 18 song collection of songs that are both relaxing and uplifting. The CD sales for $15 and the total net proceeds of this CD will go to the Steps For Living non profit. What does Steps For Living do?

What does it mean to be a cancer survivor? Steps for Living reaches inside this question and gives answers from a survivor's eyes. Steps For Living non profit and their Art of Survivorship program is working hard to reach the fall 2007 deadline they have chosen to release their Toolkit For Living that includes a comprehensive survivorship 'yellow pages', along with the 22 track Sounds Of Hope compilation audio CD featuring music by cancer survivors and for cancer survivors. There is a lot of information out there on the Internet to sift through when you're trying to find survivorship resources. Steps For Living is taking some of the work out of that for you by compiling a directory to assist you in your survivor resource needs. Their Art of Survivorship program is an educational cancer advocacy project that harnesses the power of music and the arts to foster health literacy and raise awareness for the cause of cancer survivorship.

I have to proudly and selflessly give shouts to the artists on the Sounds of Hope compilation CD that will be included in the Toolkit For Living directory, since I am one of the 22 and also know some of the artists participating in this program. I have enjoyed listening to a preproduction advance copy of the compilation CD of these artists on a daily basis to keep me inspired. So forgive me but kudos to the following in order of appearance on the compilation CD; David M. Bailey, Christine Baze, Vicki Blankenship, Cindy Bullens, Kevin Carlberg, Suzanne Ciani, Adam Dachman, Kyler England, Kevin Hearn, Laura Higgins, Clint Holmes, Eliot Popkin, Mara, The Readings, Denise Rich, Teri Scheinzeit, John Schrader, Michael Tiernan, Michael Troy, and Mathew Zachery who just happens to be the Founder of Steps For Living.