HARMONY — Marcia Wearing spends a lot of time these days spreading the word about cancer awareness, a topic she's unfortunately all too familiar with.

That's because Wearing has beaten cancer not once, but twice in her 49 years of life. She also lost a sister Kandy to brain cancer in 1992.

Those experiences have given her a resolve to stand up to cancer and to spread the message that there's always hope in the darkest of situations.

“I'm not going to hide my scars from anybody,” Wearing said. “I beat what tried to kill me. Twice.”

It's a story that has its origins in 1984, a time when the young Wearing was preparing to graduate from Seneca Valley High School. It was a rite of passage that would be delayed, however, after doctors found she had bone cancer that was spreading.

Only months later, in August of that same year, those doctors told Wearing that her cancer wasn't responding to chemotherapy, and that she only had a 50 percent chance of survival.

The 18-year-old woman was floored by the news but never gave up. Doctors later tried a new, experimental drug that helped reduce the tumors, and shortly after amputated her right leg nearly at the hip.

It took many months of rehabilitation to return to a normalcy which, as Wearing said, wasn't all that normal.

She couldn't wear a prosthetic leg because of ongoing, painful nerve damage in her leg, and still gets around with the help of crutches or a wheelchair.

But eventually life returned to routine, and Wearing began a long career as an administrative assistant in the area. She was clean and healthy for a full 27 years before breast cancer struck in 2011.

Back again came the treatments and sickness, the weight loss and fatigue.

“It was radiation this time around,” Wearing said of her treatments. “But I can tell you, they'd come a long way since 1984 (in treating cancer).”

Even though medical advances had progressed rapidly over the past two decades, it didn't mean her most recent bout with breast cancer was any easier.

According to Wearing, the fight with breast cancer was worse both emotionally and physically, even though she went on to call it a blessing in disguise.

“I think it's one of the best things that's happened to me, having to deal with breast cancer,” she said. “It really helped emotionally to know I'm only one of many who face it.”

That's because this time around, Wearing found a powerful ally in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

“Both experiences were bad, don't get me wrong,” she said. “I beat both successfully, but without the help from Relay for Life I never would have made it.”

It was there, with help from the cancer society, that Wearing networked and became engaged with women who were fighting just like her, most of them with families and full-time jobs.

Wearing said she has “great respect” for so many of the women she met through the cancer society, and added that she found another way to fight cancer head-on.

“I'm only one of many, many survivors out there,” she said. “But if I can inspire one person to keep going, to keep fighting, then I've done my job.”

And after 33 treatments for breast cancer, Wearing is finally cancer-free. But that doesn't mean her fight against the deadly disease stops here.

“It's all about learning how to celebrate life and how to fight back,” she said.