Candy Cynkar says she's been to hell and back.

Cynkar has a cancer so rare, only one in a million are diagnosed and there isn't a lot of information on it.

She has peritoneal carcinoma, a cancer that attacks the lining of the abdominal cavity, and goes on to destroy organs.

Cynkar was diagnosed two years ago. Just a year earlier her sister had died of the same, rare disease.

After complaining of bloating for a few days, her husband urged her to see a physician, which she did.

But she was not ready to hear the diagnosis.

"It's a very aggressive, dangerous cancer," she said.

And the cancer had already spready so quickly, she needed emergency surgery to remove several organs including her large intestine, part of her liver, and all of her reproductive organs.

Then she underwent a unique hot chemotherapy treatment called Hyperthermic Intraoperative Peritoneal Chemotherapy.

She says during the initial surgery, the hot chemo rinsed through her open abdomen.

"Today I have good days and I have bad days..the kind of chemo they gave me was one of the strongest they could give," Cynkar, 55, said.

But without it, she'd likely be dead.

The man she says is responsible for developing the hot chemo treatment is Armando Sardi, M.D., of Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore.

And he happens to have been a foreign exchange student at Mosinee High School 40 years ago.

He graduated with Cynkar's husband, Lenny, and they ran track together.

Cynkar herself will meet the oncology surgeon Sept. 19th, during a peritoneal carcinoma fundraising walk in Baltimore called, Heat it to Beat it.

The survivor is currently raising funds for the walk, and hopes more research will be done on the disease that nearly killed her.

Her cancer isn't gone, but it hasn't grown for more than a year.