To me every day is Christmas, because God has given me the gift of life.

A Santa hangs inside the door of Lori Stumpf's LaPlace, La., ceramics shop and it plays Christmas music whenever the door is opened. A few people have commented on the fact that it's not Christmas, Stumpf says.

"Well, to me every day is Christmas, because God has given me the gift of life," she notes.

In early 1999 she started having earaches and fluid in her right ear.

"I don't remember how many trips I made to see Dr. Creely that year," she says. Joseph Creely, MD, is an ear, nose, and throat specialist. During a July office visit for her ear pain, Creely discovered a mass between her sinus cavity and eustachian tube. It was blocking her nasal passage and allowing fluid to go back into her ear instead of draining into her throat.

On August 15, 1999, Stumpf had surgery to remove the mass, and the doctor warned her husband and daughter that it looked suspicious.

When she and her husband returned to the doctor, he told them, "I'm sorry, it's malignant."

Stumpf was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer. "I guess I went into shock," she says. "All I heard myself say was, 'where do we go from here?'"

Stumpf had a port for chemotherapy inserted into her chest, and a feeding tube inserted into her stomach. The first treatment "was terrible," she says. "I was allergic to the medication; I passed out."

Because of this, Stumpf says, she took her first week of chemotherapy treatments in the hospital in case she had any more reactions. She had 42 treatments of radiation, all followed by chemotherapy.

"After my fourth treatment I started getting ill," she says. "I wasn't able to eat and had to have (a nutritional supplement beverage) poured into the feeding tube." Her weight dropped from 135 to 104 pounds. Stumpf's doctors eventually had her on a feeding pump during the night so that she could get enough nutrition.

"I never dreamed how sick cancer patients could get until I went through what they went through," she says.

While she was undergoing treatment, her family and friends started bringing angels. "They brought angel cards, Teddy bear angels, and other angels," she says. "These angels made me feel good. It brought me closer to God and I wasn't afraid. I knew deep down these angels were keeping an eye on me."

Then one day while she was watching TV, Stumpf saw someone give a cloth angel to a little girl who had cancer. "I saw the thrill she got when she saw that angel, and I said, 'why not?' I turned to my husband and told him that I was going to make angels for children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses."

Like her five sisters, Stumpf enjoys working with her hands and sewing. She also teaches ceramics to children in her shop, so it seemed a natural outlet.

Stumpf called a local children's hospital and told a nurse there about her idea. "I took 30 of them (to the hospital) the next week," she says. "I gave them out. It broke my heart to see these children so ill. They had the sheets pulled up over their noses and when I pulled an angel out of the box, the sheet dropped down and their little eyes got real big. They smiled, and every one of them said thank you. This made my day. I knew right then and there that I had to keep making these angels for them."

Stumpf's angels are ceramic ones made in her shop. The angels are fired three different times, alternating with glazing and painting. The finished angels are decorated with pearls and ribbon before they are delivered.

"So far I have given out more than 200 angels," she says.

Cancer has changed Stumpf's life. Because she is worried that secondhand cigarette smoke might have played a role in her cancer, she's made changes too. "I have stopped people from smoking in my shop, my car, and I am very particular where I sit in a restaurant."

Two customers who are also personal friends are trying to quit because of her influence, and so is a granddaughter.

"If my story will help young people to give up smoking, or keep them from smoking, then I know I had an impact on their life," she says. "And maybe it will save them from going through what I went through."

Her feeding tube was removed just five months ago, and the chemotherapy port, three months ago. Although her cancer is in remission, she will remain under her doctor's care for the next few years.

"I cherish life now; I look at my family very differently," says Stumpf, who is a mother of four, grandmother of six and great grandmother of one. "I live from one day to the next as I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but I thank God every morning for giving me another day."