ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Jacqueline Hawkins, a Rockford resident, has survived lung, kidney, and breast cancer over the past two decades.
Hawkins was first diagnosed with lung cancer on September 11, 2001, a day marked by tragedy across the nation. Since then, she has faced and overcome kidney cancer a year ago and breast cancer in 2020.
"One doctor called me, and this was after a biopsy, and he said, 'You definitely have lung cancer.' And so this is 9/11 and towers were falling, people were falling out of the sky. I hung up and I said, 'The world is ending,'" Hawkins recalled.
She beat lung cancer only to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020, and kidney cancer last year.
Despite the challenges, she remains resilient. "That's my life. I'm always in the middle of catastrophe. We have