On Friday, June 20, when Jacquelyn Willis walks the Survivors’ Lap to help kick off the annual Rogers County Relay For Life, she will be celebrating her cure from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

“Last year when I did the survivors’ walk, I was still on chemo,” she said.

Willis was just 24 when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2007.

After months of chemotherapy, Willis’ PET scan in March showed the cancer was gone.

Now 26, Willis has been a participant in Relay For Life for several years as a member of the team “Wilma’s Angels.”

“I really wanted to be a part of it more this year,” she said, “so when they asked if I would be in charge of accounting, I said yes.”

Through her personal experience, Willis said she has become more aware of the importance of the community coming together to raise money for cancer research.

“For me, 10 years ago my disease was 10 percent curable. Through research funded by the American Cancer Society, it has went up to 90 percent curable,” she said. “I’m living proof of that. I encourage other people to get involved and give their money and time — whatever they can.”

It was 2006 when Willis, then pregnant with her daughter Brynlea, started having severe back pain.

“It was hard to just sit in a chair,” she recalled.

After a MRI, the neurologist told Willis the baby was on her sciatic nerve, causing the pain.

“Then I started getting itchy skin and losing weight toward the end of my pregnancy,” she said.

When Brynlea was born on Oct. 5, 2006, Willis was hopeful everything would return to normal, but instead her health began deteriorating even faster.

“I started having nightsweats and lost 32 pounds the first month after the baby was born,” she said. “I thought I might be anemic. At (Brynlea’s) first month check-up I asked her physician about it and he felt like it was postpartum issues. I also had lumps in neck and he said it was probably just a cyst.”