Jan Sheehy wasn't one to neglect her breast health. The 67-year-old Munster woman always went for her yearly mammograms and frequently did self-exams as she had witnessed her sister battle breast cancer 12 years ago.

So when she discovered quite a large lump which seemed to appear out of nowhere while showering in April 2004, she dismissed it at first, thinking it just had to be a fluke.

After four or five days, Sheehy decided to see a doctor, having to go the emergency room as she was at her winter home in Florida. The discovery set off a series of diagnostic tests, a biopsy and a healthy dose of negative vibes from medical professionals, whose faces kept saying, "it doesn't look good."

When she was finally handed the grim diagnosis that she indeed had breast cancer -- an aggressive form known as HER2/neu -- Sheehy halted any further discussions in Florida and promptly went home to the University of Chicago Medical Center.

The morning before she was to see the Chicago doctor, Sheehy discovered another lump, this time under her arm -- a swollen lymph node which prompted more tests and the determination that the cancer had metastasized to her liver.

The prognosis seemed dire. The medical professionals said that while everyone is different, she might have about two years to live.

"I think for three months," Sheehy said, "my husband and I would look at each other and just cry."

She says her diagnosis and what may lie ahead is all she thought about every minute of every day until, gradually, she stopped dwelling about it and just lived her life, pressing onward with her treatments, because after all, she felt fine.

Prayers, support from family and friends and daily yoga helped her cope with all the crushing news she had been dealt.

"I said to God that I put my life in your hands and I will accept what you have in store for me," she says. "From that time on, I felt that I was going to make it, or if I didn't, I was accepting of that ... it made a difference in how I felt."

In the end, she was blessed with a shocking success, specifically due to her body's overwhelming response to Herceptin -- an antibody shown in clinical trials to greatly increase the response rate and cut the rate of recurrence for this type of cancer when used in combination with chemotherapy.

Now that the tumor had shrunk so dramatically, Sheehy then became a candidate for mastectomy, which is highly unusual in someone with stage 4 metastatic cancer, she says, as it simply isn't expected to do much good.

"I was told that I was the poster child for this to happen and I was the first one that was going to have surgery and have a mastectomy," she says.

Thirty radiation treatments followed as well as regular tests to determine whether the Herceptin was threatening her heart function. It was, doctors determined three months after the mastectomy, and promptly took her off the antibody treatment.

Apparently, the treatment had sufficient time to do its job, as the next CT scan Sheehy was declared cancer-free.

Cured is not typically a word that is ever used in association with metastatic HER2-positive disease, as most are not, says Sheehy's oncologist, Dr. Gini Fleming, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center, though many patients certainly do well for a long time.

It's been four years since the diagnosis, and she says the whole experience is now just a blur n- "just a memory of something that I did and it's over with."

Nonetheless, Sheehy says the experience has changed her for the better.

"I think I have a tendency to look for the best in everything instead of the worst now," she says. "I think I'm a better person ... kinder and gentler and more giving and forgiving. I don't judge anything anymore. I try to look for the best in every situation."