CHAMPAIGN — Reesa Burgstrom was seven months pregnant with her second daughter when she found the lump in her breast.

Three years later — her cancer at stage four, but her determination to live every single minute going strong — she's invited 600 people to join her team for this year's Relay for Life.

"I'm not going to stop," she says. "Life's too short."

This year's Relay for Life Champaign County, honoring cancer survivors and those who have died of the disease, is set for June 18 at Centennial High School.

Burgstrom, a 34-year-old Champaign mom, underwent a lumpectomy during her pregnancy and then had a bilateral mastectomy after her youngest daughter was born four weeks early.

One week after staring chemotherapy, Burgstrom's military husband, Anthony, left for Afghanistan.

She was rediagnosed this past March with stage 4 cancer, after a P.E.T. scan turned up a spot on her spine and a bone biopsy showed the cancer had metastasized. Since then, she has undergone radiation and surgery, and her treatments are continuing.

Burgstrom's message for other women is keep checking for those lumps and don't be afraid. What happened to her isn't typical, she says.

"It's very rare for this to happen," she said. "I don't want them to be afraid of this. They really need to concentrate on checking themselves."

The next surgery on her horizon is a vertebrae replacement, but before that surgery is undertaken doctors want to be sure her treatments are working, she said.

"They're waiting to see what the cancer does. It's a watch and wait game."

Finding out she had cancer again made her mad, Burgstrom said. The first time was enough of a shocker, considering she was 31 and had no family history.

She responded by walking into the American Cancer Society offices and asking how she could help, and also got involved in the Young Survival Coalition for young women with breast cancer.

What gets her out of bed every day are two daughters — ages 2 and 7 — who need her to be mom. She coaches one daughter's basketball team. She and the girls ride bikes. They load up their little wagon and go fishing, she said.

"I try to fill them with as many happy memories as I can, so we do it all," she said.

She also thinks it's kind of cool to fool people into thinking she's as healthy as they are.

When she gets around to mentioning she has stage four cancer, "people say, I'd have never guessed it," she says.