My name is Dave Koppenhaver, and I am a seven year breast cancer survivor.

Imagine how surprised I was when, as a healthy 33 year old man, I was told I had a large, very aggressive tumor in my right breast.  After overcoming the shock of the moment ("men don't get breast cancer"), my wonderful wife, Sharon, went into what I call "Fix It" mode and made sure I had the very best medical care possible.  We hit it with everything possible -- mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, and five years of Tamoxifen.  While my prognosis is good, our family was not finished battling this disease.

In December 2006, our 10 year old son, Davis, complained about being out of breath during sports.  The rest of our family was complaining about his snoring and Olympic-caliber burping skills, and his voice sounded like Kermit The Frog.  A golf ball sized tumor was discovered in his throat, and the pathologist determined that he had Fibroblastic Sarcoma.  While the margins were not clean, further treatments had worse negative side effects than the potential benefits of undergoing treatment (chemo, radiation, further surgery).  He is being "aggressively monitored" by the outstanding Pediatric Oncology team at UCLA, and each four month appointment is another reminder that our family still battles cancer to this day.

I look forward to sharing more of our story with you at the start of the 2008 SCV Relay For Life!

Dave