At 22, Molly McMaster was a competitive athlete who loved ice hockey. She aimed for an Olympic tryout, but her world was turned upside-down when she was diagnosed with colon cancer.

After six months of feeling horrible, she headed back home only to end up in the hospital the day she arrived.

“They said, ‘we don’t know what is in there, but you have total blockage in your large intestines, and it has to come out,’” McMaster said. “I had surgery the following day. He removed 25 inches of my large intestines and a tumor the size of my doctor’s two fists. And I had stage-two colon cancer.”

On her 23rd birthday, doctors told McMaster that she faced a life-threatening illness.

“I’m going to die. I have cancer and now I have to get chemotherapy and I don’t want to get chemo – go through that literally sitting there,” she said. “He was sitting there talking to me and I am thinking of a way how I can kill myself because I don’t want to go through chemo.”

But McMaster went through nine months of chemotherapy and responded well.

Next, she wondered about side effects like infertility. She and her husband Sergy wanted kids and wondered if chemo killed her chances of getting pregnant.

“It was frustrating and scary and I remember talking to my oncologist about it, and he said, ‘I don’t know,’” McMaster said.

But she got pregnant, and healthy Kyril was born that Christmas Eve. Another baby boy is on the way.

It’s important to stay connected to other cancer survivors, and she’s done that through an organization she found called the Colon Club.

“It really, truly can happen to anyone, even though the statistics, they all say when you turn 50 you get your colonoscopy, that can be too late in many cases,” McMaster said.

During the past 10 years, McMaster has raised money, awareness and support for others diagnosed with cancer. She created a calendar in which each month highlights a person under 50 diagnosed with colorectal cancer.