My name is Donna Kemberling. I live in Danville, PA with my husband, Phil and our dog, Daphne. Between us, Phil and I have 5 adult children and 15 grandchildren. I met Phil through an online bereavement bulletin board after we both lost our spouses to cancer in September 2005.
I became aware of cancer and the devastating impact it can have on individuals and their families when my Daddy died of lung cancer shortly after my 5th birthday. This meant that I missed out on having my Daddy teach me everything, being there for me through life.
In 2005, cancer reared its ugly head in my personal life once again when my husband, Dave was afflicted by a very rare, extremely aggressive cancer known as sarcomatoid carcinoma; he passed away just 3 weeks after his diagnosis. All of our plans and dreams for the future were shattered by this horrific disease.
My brother, David died of lung cancer in February 2025 just one month shy of his 65th birthday.
Less than 1 month after losing my brother, I received a call that there were suspicious findings on my mammogram. An MRI confirmed that there were microcalcifications in my breast. The next step was to have biopsy. Two days after the biopsy I received that dreaded call informing me that I have ductal carcinoma in situ, and I am moving forward from here.
I joined Relay for Life and subsequently ACS CAN (American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network) in 2014 as a means of fulfilling a promise I had made to my husband, before he died that I would find a way to beat cancer. Now I fight back as both a caregiver and a survivor. As Tom Petty would say, “I won’t back down” until cancer has been eradicated once and for all.