The following Monday, Bixler went to her OB-GYN and had a mammogram and biopsy. The surgeon then performed a lumpectomy. "After the surgery, the surgeon said I would be just fine but I couldn't think of one single survivor. I was sure I was dying and no one was telling me the truth." After going over her options with her doctor, Bixler was worried about recurrence, so she chose to have a modified radical mastectomy.

According to Herman Kattlove, MD, a medical editor with the American Cancer Society (ACS), "lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy is just as good as modified radical mastectomy in treating breast cancer. Cure rates are the same."

"But," he adds, "some women decide to have the more extensive surgery because they do not want to put up with the uncertainty that the cancer might come back in the breast."

"This was a big deal to me." Bixler says. "It was like having a heart attack and hospice all rolled into one. I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz—lost, alone, and confused. I had to travel this road and I had no idea where I was going or where I'd end up. And I didn't want to do this with spineless, brainless, and heartless people. I just wanted to go back to Kansas."

While at work one day during lunch, Mona got on the Internet and typed in "breast cancer." "It opened up a whole world of information," she says. "I didn't have a computer at home. So, from then on, I would get on the Internet during lunch. I bought a computer to be able to search the world for answers to my questions. I found my answers only a click of the mouse away."

Mona found an online breast cancer support group—a group of women living with breast cancer. "On America Online, I found the 'Just Us' breast cancer posting board," she said. "It was from these women's strength, courage, knowledge, and support that I was able to realize I too can live with breast cancer. They provided me with hope. No matter what questions you wrote, someone had been there. When you talk to these people you really don't know them and aren't looking them in the eyes, so you can truly say what is in your heart. You don't feel inhibited."

In November 1999, Mona founded Place for Hope. "If this (the Internet) has helped me, it certainly could help someone else," Bixler says. "I called one of the insurance companies I write for and asked them for their old PCs. I wanted to renovate them and give them to other cancer patients. They decided to adopt me as their corporate project. Place for Hope was born." Bixler arranged to have computers donated and then upgraded to make them Internet-accessible. CD-ROM drives are also installed. "It is amazing to me. A door always opens somewhere," she says. "I always have enough parts and computers to take care of the people that request them."

To date, Place for Hope has given 68 computers to people battling cancer and cancer survivors.

Bixler has touched lives all around the world. She recently received a request from a 20-year-old male cancer patient for a laptop computer. The patient had to be hospitalized for one week at a time for chemotherapy treatments and also knew he would have three surgical procedures in the future."I told him I didn't have one, but stranger things had happened," Bixler says. "I mentioned it at church and they collected the money. We purchased a laptop on eBay for this patient. He was thrilled. I felt like a fairy godmother."

"It is my desire to provide other people living with and coping with cancer this same opportunity," Bixler says. "With a keyboard and mouse, hard drive, modem and monitor, a whole new world of emotional support and information is available to make any cancer patient realize they too can do this one day at a time." Bixler has since become very active in the local support groups and the Reach To Recovery Program sponsored by the ACS.

To find out more about Place for Hope, visit Mona's Web site at http://www.placeforhope.org/placeforhope/index.shtml.