"Fighting cancer has been one of the best things that ever happened to me."

The way Alex Harris talks about malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH), he sounds more like a health care professional than the financial analyst he is — by day, any way.

Harris, 33, works at Teledyne-Brown Engineering in Huntsville, Ala. After work, you're likely to find him rolling through one of the town's neighborhoods — or even a neighboring town's neighborhoods — on his road bike, often with a group of cyclists.

Since his cancer diagnosis, cycling has become even more important to Harris, and he's training to ride in Lance Armstrong's Ride for the Roses next October in Austin, Texas.

His fitness and cycling goals have sustained him through the last year. It was a year that included the most searing pain he could imagine enduring, the frustration of a slow-healing wound, and reactions to chemotherapy.

"I had a goal, and the goal was to go out to Texas and ride in the Ride for the Roses and complete it. I just want to ride that ride and complete it," he said. "That’s kind of what got me through it I guess, just being stubborn and having a goal."

Harris was diagnosed with MFH, a type of cancer called a sarcoma which is seen mostly in older adults, on Oct. 10, 2001.

An uncommon cancer, MFH is usually found in the arms or legs. Harris' began as a bump on his shin that started to hurt one day, and was finally diagnosed several months later.

"Fighting cancer has been one of the best things that ever happened to me," said Harris. "I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out.

"I have had to learn to find hope and strength in the worst times."

The night Harris got the call from his doctor, he said, "I went into shock – I didn’t feel anything at that point. I went out on the Web and I started looking around, and I found bits and pieces. But at that time, I didn't really even know how to look for information on cancer."

The next day he called his brother, a health care professional, "at 7:00 in the morning, and said, 'hey, this is what happened last night.'

"So I asked him what to do, and he immediately gave me the [American Cancer Society] ACS web site, and couple of others, and said, 'now go look.' So I did. And found a bunch of stuff I didn't really want to find," he said and laughed. "But at least it gave me a starting point."

Since then, he said he's used the ACS Web site "quite a bit." He said he was one of the patients who asked a lot of questions, who wanted to learn everything he could about his disease. Harris talked about his cancer type and treatment using medical terms as easily as he might talk about yesterday's ride.

He said his doctors in Huntsville and in Birmingham were "fantastic about answering questions, telling me what the options were." In his case, they told him the standard treatment was radical surgery, removing bone from his leg and replacing it with bone from his hip, followed by radiation and chemotherapy.

"And the doctors down there [in Birmingham] looked at me flat out and said, 'we're not going to do the bone graft unless we absolutely have to, and we're not going to do chemotherapy because the statistics don't bear out yet that chemo works for this type of cancer.'

"He said, 'but I am going to put you through a course of radiation that's just going to blow your mind.' They wanted to save the bone in any way possible, and save the leg," he said.

Harris had five surgeries, including one to remove the tumor: one to create a flap of muscle to cover the site; two applications of Apligraf (a skin substitute that includes living human skin cells); and one to insert a Hickman catheter (an intravenous catheter for long term use in giving drugs or nutrition, and in withdrawing blood samples).

He also had six weeks of radiation treatments, and had several post-surgery infections.

"This turned out to be a bone infection," he said. Then, "the muscle flap partially failed and literally fell off." This re-opened the wound, exposing his left shin bone.

He also had a five-week course of antibiotics. "This led to three drug reactions, including hives and fever." He said he's had 60 hyperbaric treatments "so far." In a hyperbaric treatment, a patient goes into a special chamber where he or she breathes pure oxygen. This is thought to promote healing.

"I even get to [care for] my own wound, which is pretty cool now that I don't get lightheaded about it any more," he said. "With any luck, I'll be healed up in another month or two."

"Now that you know that bad part, let me fill you in on the good part," he said. Harris said cancer has given him a new appreciation for life. "'The moment' is much more important to me than it was before," he said.

Harris talked about a recent ride, and one of those "moments."

"We were rolling through a neighborhood and passed a house with two little girls playing in the backyard," he said. "One was bouncing on a trampoline and the other was spraying her with a hose.

"I can still hear the squeals of laughter," he said. "A year ago, I would never have noticed how beautiful that sound is, much less remembered it."

"So I guess having cancer changed me for the better," he said. "I wish I could have changed a different way, but I'll take this way if necessary."