Before being diagnosed with breast cancer on Aug. 29, 1990, Pearl Carter lived an active life. She was a very busy mother, employee of the Army Corps of Engineers and involved with her church.

However, Carter has been fortunate enough to be a four-time cancer survivor, and has beaten breast cancer twice.

Following her initial diagnoses, Carter has had skin cancer removed. In 2010 she was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and last September when getting a routine mammogram she found out she had malignancy.

“I’m doing fine, I feel fine. The only thing I’ve noticed is I get tired real easy and that’s probably attributed to both age as well as the diagnoses of leukemia. It is a side effect of leukemia, you don’t have quite the stamina and get tired easily.”

When Carter received her first breast cancer diagnoses, she became overwhelmed. Her family didn’t have much of a history with the illness at the time when she was diagnosed. One of her grandmothers was diagnosed with cancer in the jaw and one of her sisters battled the disease 12 years prior.

“It was a total surprise. It took a few days for it to sink in,” Carter said. “Then I just determined I was going to fight it.”

Carter caught the cancer early while it was still small. She didn’t have to go through radiation or take intravenous chemotherapy. Although, Carter did take Tamoxifen for four years before she became sick from the side effects.

“We scheduled my surgery right away. I got my diagnoses on Friday and had surgery the following Wednesday,” Carter said. “The ongoing day-to-day activity was a little difficult for a while. It took about a year before I actually felt back to normal.”

The most difficult part of her battle was telling her family.

At the time, her husband was working out of town with the Corps of Engineers and was able to come back the same weekend. She withheld the news from one of her daughters until he arrived and had another daughter living out of town.

“That was very hard, the waiting and not being able to share. They were shocked and concerned but rallied behind me as well as the rest of my family and friends,” Carter said.

A year after receiving her first diagnoses, she began volunteering with the American Cancer Society and the Reach for Recovery program, which is for survivors to counsel and share their experiences with women who were recently diagnosed.

Since her fight, she has become lead advocate of Mississippi’s second congressional district for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network.

“The Cancer Action Network doesn’t deal directly with patients. It’s the sister network of the American Cancer Society that is the advocacy side,” Carter said.

Carter lobbies Congress and developed a relationship with U.S. Representative Benny Thompson. Each September, she travels to Washington D.C. on behalf of the Cancer Action Network to lobby for their initiatives.

“We had three asks this year. Every year we ask for more research dollars,” Carter said. “This year we asked for $6 billion over two years for the National Institute of Health, of that $1 billion will go the National Cancer Institute. That’s where the American Cancer Society gets their funding.”

The other two asks were for the Quality of Life Bill to be cosponsored by legislatures and for the colon cancer bill to close a loophole in Medicare.

“I was very fortunate that Benny Thompson supported all three of my asks,” Carter said. “The others indicated very positive support for our asks, both the senators and the representatives.”