Gwendlyn Crossman has beat cancer three times. And if she ever have to face the disease a fourth time?

“Well, that’s okay," she says. “I’m prepared for that.”

That matter-of-fact attitude served Gwendlyn, now 84, well during her bout with breast cancer in 1993, when she had a mastectomy. In 1995, she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. In an emergency operation, doctors removed two-thirds of her large intestine, and then put her on chemotherapy for six months.

"I was very sick during my chemo,” she says. “Just awful sick. I spent seven to nine days in the hospital each month. But I was prepared for that, too.”

In 2005, the bowel cancer came back, and surgeons removed more of her large intestine. After the last surgery, she lost the use of her legs. She took seven weeks to regain her ability to walk.

Through it all, Gwendlyn says, she never got upset. “My husband was upset. Maybe I let him get upset for me. But in my mind I guess I always had the feeling that sometime down the road this might happen. I don’t know why. I just accepted it. And I think that was a good thing.”

In addition to her own resolve, Gwendlyn had the support of her family, her church, her faith, her brothers and sisters, and — most of all — her husband, Hilyard, to see her through. 

“Everybody treated me so well, was just so good to me, brought food, visited. But it was my husband who was always there, who was just so kind, so concerned.”

Hilyard passed away in 2000, just three weeks shy of his and Gwendlyn’s 60th wedding anniversary. “We married very young, and everybody said it wouldn't last! It’s not been easy,” she says, of life without him. In his absence, her children and her sister-in-law were her major supports during her last surgery.

Today, Gwendlyn feels just fine. She's had a good life, she says, buffered by a strong faith: “The Lord has been good to me, and I do appreciate it.”