I had osteosarcoma when I was a teen. I have a friend who also had osteosarcoma, and he does all sorts of things he’s not supposed to do like running and playing basketball. He says, “Live for today, tomorrow you might get hit by a bus.” But me, I think ahead. If I take care of my knee now, I won’t have to replace it too soon. I baby that plastic thing so it won’t wear out.

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I go out with my friends and party. I smoke cigarettes and drink some. I beat cancer, and I really don’t think anything else bad is going to happen to me. I’m going to be fine.

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Some risks are worth taking (not drugs or alcohol, of course) because they make for a more complete life. My daughter is an osteosarcoma survivor who had her knee replaced. I never want her to sit back and be an observer. Having her knee replaced (which will eventually happen anyway) is worth the adventures she has in the meantime. Besides, her surgeon agreed that her activities (horseback riding, diving, cheerleading) have given her a far better range of motion in her knee and leg than any of his other patients. Because of this, he has revised the precautions he gives patients.

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I live for adventures. Life is too short and there is so much to soak up out there. This summer I was invited to travel to Costa Rica in October to compete in a tough mountain bike race. It was a 3-day race covering 300 miles and climbing over 26,000 feet. Even though I had never taken one single pedal stroke on a mountain bike, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity. I trained on the road by riding 300 miles a week.

We had relentless hills to climb and in some places we had to paperboy (zigzag) back and forth. There were rugged stretches through the steaming jungle where the terrain was so rugged with ruts and washouts and so steep that we had to hike and push the bike for 45 minutes. The rewards came with the downhills—40 miles an hour at times on root-infested dirt trails.

I rode 8 hours straight and climbed 11,000 feet. I overdid it and ended up in the hospital. Next year, I’ll prepare more and hopefully go back to conquer the route of the conquistadors. Mountain biking is the ultimate!

Cancer has changed my daughter Elizabeth’s personality drastically. Before cancer she was so terribly shy and introverted that she was afraid of her own grandfather. Boy, is she over that! Outspoken, opinionated, aggressive, and bossy—yep, those are all words that fit my little one now.

However, I have to say that she is so very far away from being a risk taker. She can spot danger a mile away and will move heaven and earth to avoid it. A week ago she had heard on some trivia show that 300 people die every year from accidentally swallowing pen caps. She saw her grandfather with a pen cap in his mouth and was very upset until he removed it. She is that way about every little thing. It is odd because I have tried to stress to her the importance of “enjoying the day” and not worrying about things that might never happen. We have repeatedly had a conversation that includes me saying, “I have lived 40 years without ever seeing a tornado. I’m not going to worry every single day about what I will do if it comes.” For Elizabeth, tornadoes are a daily worry. She tends to remain very focused on the idea that you never know what bad thing might happen next.

I think teens who have walked the cancer road have a greater appreciation of life for having faced cancer. My son is less a risk taker than his older brother. He’s a very careful driver. He also has no time for a lot of dumb immature stunts that teens usually enjoy. He will come home early on a weekend night and tell us that his friends are doing stuff that he doesn’t want to do (this is code for drinking), so he comes home. I can tell that he’s different in some ways due to his experience, but he would tell you it hasn’t affected him much.

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Luc doesn’t relate well to kids his own age because he thinks they take too many risks. He is a very cautious driver—much different than my older son. We would have never allowed our oldest son to take the family van to travel any significant distance when he was 17, but we let Luc go to Rochester, about 120 miles west, for a weekend with kids he had been at camp with. I just knew that he would drive like a responsible adult and he wouldn’t drive the car after 9 p.m. He also acts as though not much is different, but I know his attitude is significantly different than teens who have never experienced the severity of what kids go through with cancer.