BOSTON -- Since her diagnosis with breast cancer in December, NewsCenter 5's Kelley Tuthill has been flooded with letters from our viewers.

Now she has decided to share some of her favorites with you by profiling women who are fighting and beating this disease, and inspiring Kelley along the way.

“Dear Kelley, sharing your breast cancer story with the channel 5 viewers took courage, but your heroic act may have prolonged my life. After watching your first sharing, I decided to do a breast exam. There was a large lump,” wrote Shirley.

Kelly, a young mother, said, “I had like a patch a little white patch on my breast and I showed it to my doctor and she's like I wouldn't worry too much about it. A month or so later, I noticed a lump right at the end of my pregnancy around 8 months. Four months after the baby, I wasn't breastfeeding anymore and the lump still there. Within two days, I get a phone call and they told me it was ductal carcinoma so it all just happened so fast.”

Michelle from Boston told Tuthill, “I'm a single mom with three kids, divorcing at the time. I was diagnosed at 35 like you. We're young diagnosis and it was hard, it was hard being a young woman and finding out that this is something that is going to take your life over for a couple years, but I didn't let it.”

Shirley and Kelley hugged upon meeting. “Thank you, thank you,” she told Tuthill. “It was all contained. Now, if you hadn't been on TV, I wouldn't have done anything about it and it would have spread. Because it was fast-moving.”

“Cancer at 80, caner at 40 is a lot different than cancer at 30,” Kelly said. “When I saw that special on chronicle, so many things that you said just really hit home to me. I'm 27 years old. I have a whole family a new husband. We just got married. It's just different. It's very different for someone younger than for an older person. Everyone tells me I'm so strong, but I don't think I have any other options. If I thought I could hide under my bed and cry, you know, maybe I'd go with that. I don't really have an option. I have little girl to take care of. I have to go to work everyday. You know, I just do what I gotta to do.”

Tuthill caught up with Michelle at church, where she was celebrating five years of being cancer-free. “It goes by so fast, so quick, and here I am, and I am just so thankful. I am so thankful.” That same day, Michelle cut off her hair in order to donate it, saying, “I've been blessed. You know, five years ago, I didn't have any hair. I remember going to an organization that sponsored wigs and there wasn't a wig available for African Americans. This is my opportunity to do this for someone else.”

Kelly, the mother of a baby girl, said she was going to be out of work for six weeks after her surgery, and “as it is now, we live paycheck to paycheck.” Her friends and family organized a fundraiser in her honor. “It's amazing everything was donated. It's just unbelievable.”

Michelle said, “You've been through the storm and God has brought you out and here you are. You are here to say 'I am a survivor. I'm a survivor!'”

Shirley told Tuthill, “I always said I'm going to live to 100 and I believe it. Because I put myself in God's hands and whatever happens I'm all right with it.”

Kelly said her baby daughter’s face gets her through the difficulties of cancer. “She just smiles at me and it's like, you know, she helps it so much and she makes it that much harder just to look at her and know you got to get through this.”

Another viewer who wrote to Tuthill understands. She wrote, “Dear Kelley, When I was 36 I had a radical mastectomy. My son was only 11 months old. However, it may encourage you to know I’ve never had any more problems, and I am now 92 years old.”