Mary Meekins is a woman of absolute faith. Faced with one of life's toughest challenges, she has prayed about it and turned it over to God. "I sleep good at night…I sleep like a baby. I don't worry about anything."

Mary has kidney cancer, and she's been fighting it relentlessly since being diagnosed in 2000. At her annual mammogram that year, she mentioned some pain around her shoulder to the radiologist. A CAT scan showed that cancer had ravaged her left kidney. "It was a shocker. I had no pain…no symptoms." As a chef often on her feet for 12 to 14 hours a day, Mary had been tired, but with good reason, she thought.

Her left kidney was removed, and doctors believed the cancer was gone, too. Until gall bladder surgery in 2003 revealed the cancer again. "They said there wasn't any cure, but I didn't believe that," says Mary. "I keep on fighting."

Mary is now in her third clinical trial, taking an unnamed protocol now being offered to kidney cancer patients that seems to be working and is keeping the cancer at bay. "I went online. I did my research. I talk to the doctors. It's your life. You need to take charge and find out what's going on with it."

"On January 20, when our president was getting sworn in, I was getting an infusion. Watching the inauguration and getting shot up. It was a joy!" she explains. "I'm doing what I need to do to help myself and others who aren't aware. You can't be afraid to try something that could save your life…I don't worry about if it will hurt me, I focus on what it will do to help me."

On May 8, Mary plans to be back at Gwinnett's Relay, to walk in the Survivor's Walk again. Last year, her husband, "my right hand," took the seats out of the van and fixed a bed for her so she and her 13-year-old granddaughter, Briana, could camp out and stay warm.

"I've never given up and never given in to it. I prayed about it and gave it to God. He's in control."