To emphasize that breast cancer can strike anyone, WNBA.com is featuring “Her Story,” a series of first-person tales from players telling the stories of loved ones who have been affected by the disease, throughout Breast Health Awareness Week. Fans who have also coped with breast cancer can post stories about themselves or those close to them on the site’s Fan Voice section. To share your experiences, please click here.

Her Story: Janel McCarville, New York Liberty

Editor's Note: Throughout Breast Health Awareness Week, WNBA players have offered their stories of how breast cancer has impacted their lives. And while this week emphasizes breast health, cancer can strike throughout the body. With that in mind, New York’s Janel McCarville offered to share her story about her mother, Bonnie, who passed away from colon cancer in 2007.

My mother and I have always been close. She was diagnosed with cancer my sophomore year in college. She ended up not telling me for about six months, she didn’t want me to know because she didn’t want it to affect me during my basketball season. It got to the point where they had only given her a couple months to live and she finally decided to tell me. She told me during the Big Ten Tournament and the way she did it was she took me to the bar and bought me a drink and said I have something to tell you. She bought me a drink and basically told me over a beer – that was the way I found out she had cancer. It hit me kind of hard. She didn’t tell me at the time that they had only given her a couple of months. She just laid the facts out for me and told me she was doing radiation and chemo for it.

As far as not telling me when she was first diagnosed, she felt like she was doing it to protect me by keeping me less distracted on the basketball court and figured she would tell me when the season was over so we wouldn’t have to worry about basketball and just concentrate on that. In the long run she thought she was helping, but at the point when she told me I was like what the hell are you thinking; I need to know these things.

She ended up fighting it hard for four years. I was actually overseas for the first time after my second year in the WNBA when she had called me and told me it had gotten very bad to the point where she didn’t think she was going to be able to make it much longer. The one thing that I had always asked her was if she knew she was not going to win the battle, to let me know and I would do everything I could to get home. She called and told me and I came home within three days and three days later she had passed. I still think about her every day.

I learned a lot by seeing my mother fight the disease so hard. It’s about willpower, it’s about desire, it’s about wanting to see things and accomplish things. She’s never been one to give up easily and I think that was one thing that helped her. I also think that me playing basketball helped as well because she got to go places and see things and do things that we normally never would have been able to afford to do – like going to New Orleans for the Final Four that we were in and going to Old Dominion when we played in the Elite Eight. She had opportunities and things to live for. Her mentality of not giving in and saying she’s not going to let cancer win, I think was one of the biggest things that help her last as long as she did. She had her good days and bad days but for the most part she was happy every extra day that she got. I was happy to be a part of that. I have a lot of her in me so I’m lucky in that aspect, to have the fight, the heart, the desire and the drive to give everything that I have every day.

Basketball definitely helped me get through it and I knew it helped her too. On the court I was able to get away from the fact that she was fighting this horrible disease. While I was on the court I knew I was also helping her therefore it was two fold for me. Off the court it was hard to deal with because I could never stop thinking about it. I knew there was something there lingering and at some point it was going to win, but not knowing when was hard as well.

One memory that really sticks out is when we beat Duke to advance to the Final Four, she was with us in Norfolk, Virginia when we won. When the game was over, I couldn’t even celebrate with my team, I went straight to her and just hugged her forever. It was two years after she was diagnosed, so it was great that she was there to experience it with me. I hugged her for five minutes, I just couldn’t let go of her, I was so happy that she was there. I played really well that day. All through college I started playing for her. I knew what she was going through and everything she had given for me and I was just trying to give everything possible on the court for her.