Twelve years after arriving in the United States from her native Peru, Laura Clymer was living the American Dream: She and her husband had recently bought a house in Germantown, Maryland. She had finally paid off her car. And she was financially secure enough to leave her full-time job to return to nursing school to revalidate the degree she had obtained in Peru.

 

But in 1998, the dream turned into a nightmare. Before her job-sponsored insurance ran out, Clymer, now 60, decided to get a thorough physical exam. "I didn't know when I was going to have insurance again," she remembers. And although her doctor told her it wasn't necessary for her to get a mammogram (she had gotten one the previous year), she insisted. That gut instinct saved her life: She was diagnosed with breast cancer after the mammogram came back abnormal.

Within days Clymer received more bad news: Her father died in Peru, and the U.S. government sent her an order of deportation, claiming that her almost-decade-long marriage was fake. "It was such a hard, horrible time. Everything happened at once. The letters, the bills, the diagnosis," Clymer remembers, tearing up. "It was so bad I tried to kill myself twice."

Fortunately, she wasn't successful in her attempts. And somehow she mustered the strength to contact Nueva Vida, a nonprofit organization that assists Latinas living with cancer. Clymer took advantage of their counseling, support groups, lectures and medical recommendations. "They were like angels," she says. "They didn't know me and I didn't know them, but they stayed with me at my home for hours and hours."

It wasn't just Nueva Vida who supported her during her hour of darkness: Her doctor sent a letter to the immigration authorities on her behalf, explaining that she couldn't leave the country because she'd soon be starting chemotherapy. When she did finally start treatment, her husband, William, never left her bedside. "He would feed me, bathe me, help me do everything," she says. "He told me that he had married me not just for the good times, but for the bad too."

A few months later, Clymer was cancer-free. And she had a new mission: to join Nueva Vida as a volunteer and help other Latinas with cancer. Today she counsels women (Clymer gets training from Nueva Vida three times a year to do that kind of work); this may involve calling them and even going to their houses if needed. "I didn't have money to give, but I could give my time," Clymer says. "I know how hard it is to have cancer, and so I help women the way I was helped. This type of service has no price."

What's the one thing Clymer wants you and other women to know? "Learn about preventative care, timely exams and self-tests," she says. "I don't even want to think about what would have happened to me if I didn't insist on these tests."