Healing in her own hands: a decade ago, Meg Gaines received news that she had ovarian cancer. She beat the odds and is helping others face their fears.

In January 1994, at the age of 38, I was diagnosed with what the doctor called a "small focus of clear cell carcinoma" within a "borderline tumor" in my ovary. That night, I remember sitting on the top of my basement steps in Madison, Wis., and trying to absorb the fact that I had ovarian cancer. I was scheduled for surgery to remove the tumor.

There's never been any cancer in either side of my family. I remember driving by conferences for cancer patients and being grateful that at least I didn't have to worry about that. My partner was just as stunned. Margaret and I met at a bridge game and had been together since 1989. She had given birth to our daughter five months earlier. I birthed our son, who was 3 years old at the time I was diagnosed. I was afraid for me, for her, and for our kids. At that moment, my head reeled with questions about what was going to happen and how we were going to get through it.

The initial surgery didn't go well. As the gynecologist was removing the tumor it ruptured, spilling cells into my belly. Five months later, I began developing blood clots, some of which traveled to my lungs. By Labor Day weekend, the cancer was in my liver. Doctors tried chemotherapy--to no avail. They also said I had 12 tumors, not three as originally thought.

As I cried, wondering what I was going to tell my children, the surgeon told me to go home and think about the quality, not the quantity, of my remaining days.

I didn't take his advice. After all, I had babies, and I really wanted to live. I'm a lawyer, and I think on some level I was born a lawyer--my father is a lawyer, as were his father and grandfather. I was a public defender, and it's in me to fight for my survival. Margaret took over caring for our kids. My dad and I went on a medical pilgrimage across the country in search of hope.

We saw doctors at five hospitals in four cities, and five weeks later I was undergoing cryosurgery, a procedure in which doctors freeze the tumors using liquid nitrogen, in Santa Monica, Calif. After opening me up, the surgeon discovered that there was and had only ever been one tumor in my liver. The other spots were cysts and blood-density irregularities that are common in about 10% of the population. The cryosurgery worked. By August of 1995, I had finished my treatments and returned to my teaching job at University of Wisconsin Law School at Madison, where in 1998 I was named assistant dean for student and academic affairs.

But my fight with cancer had changed my life: I wanted to help other cancer patients get the care they need. In September 2000 my colleagues and I founded the Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin. The center brings together students and faculty from the schools of medicine, nursing, law, social work, counseling psychology, pharmacy, business, and industrial engineering to serve as advocates for cancer patients.

People often ask me how I survived the incredible ordeal of a cancer diagnosis. "I don't think I could make it through," they say. I tell them, "You can't know what you can make it through until you have to--you just do what you have to do."

Gaines is alive and well and lives with her partner and two children in Madison, Wis. In April she was awarded the Heidmann A ward for Public Service.