Goldsbury, who grew up in Sunnyvale and graduated in 1992 from Homestead High School, was charging through life at top speed. In July 1999 she married Chris Goldsbury. They met at Sonoma State University. In 2000 she earned a master's degree from San Jose State University and went to work at Westmont High School in Campbell as a counselor. A year later she became a dean of students there, and in July 2002 her son Ty was born.

"I was driven," she says. "I had the plan: get a master's degree, work, have baby number one." The cancer "forced me to slow down, to appreciate what I have now."

A journey begins

In the beginning, Goldsbury noticed a little weight loss, and she felt tired. But she worked full time and had a 17-month-old son. Who wouldn't be worn out, she thought. Then she noticed blood in her stool.

Goldsbury mentioned it to her husband and parents. "I was alarmed immediately," says her mother, Georgeanna Hargrove, an instructional assistant in the English Language Development program in the Cupertino Union School District.

She saw her doctor within a week.

"She was very thorough and didn't blow me off, " Goldsbury says. "She said it was probably nothing, but I should have a colonoscopy. The doctor told me, 'I'm not even thinking cancer.' The test saved my life."

During the colonoscopy, the doctor found a mass. Goldsbury had surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose to remove it. The diagnosis: stage III colon cancer. On Christmas Day 2003, she came home from the hospital. Four weeks later, she began six months of aggressive chemotherapy.

She brought two friends with her for each of her chemo treatments. "It was nice," Goldsbury says, "three hours of uninterrupted time" with friends to talk, not time she could take when she was living her high-powered life.

She had an IV every three weeks at South Bay Oncology in Campbell, followed by five pills a day every day for two weeks. Then her body rested a week before another round of chemotherapy.

The going is tough

At work, Goldsbury had only three weeks of sick days. Her superintendent in the Campbell Union High School District, Rhonda Farber, allowed people in the district to donate sick days. Goldsbury received more than 100. "The support that I had..." she says.

Goldsbury didn't lose her hair. But she lost her strength, getting weaker and sicker as the weeks passed.

Her mother took a leave of absence from her job. She would arrive at the Goldsburys' San Jose house at 7 a.m. when Chris Goldsbury had to leave for work. "It was such a gift to have them," Goldsbury says of her parents. "They picked up the pieces." Sometimes the Goldsburys stayed at her parents' home in Sunnyvale.

Ty didn't understand about his mother's cancer. "When I'd be lying in bed, really sick, he'd come and rub my arm. At least I was home and able to watch him play," she says.

Chris Goldsbury, 32, particularly appreciated the help from his in-laws. "Having Amy's family close by, you learn what's important," he says. "You learn what's dear to your heart."

Chris Goldsbury works for a contract manufacturing business, as a purchasing supervisor, in Fremont. As his wife grew worse, "management came to me. 'We'll support you,' they said. That was a big burden off my back," he says. His bosses allowed him to work a four-day week.

Goldsbury continued to weaken and lose weight as the chemo stretched into months. It became too much for her mother to take care of her daughter and her grandson, so Goldsbury's father, George Hargrove, stepped in and took care of Ty.

Help keeps coming

George Hargrove, 60, is retired and substitutes in Cupertino schools. He was able to arrange his schedule to be with Ty when needed. Ty was "a bright spot," George Hargrove says, during a dark time. "I feel lucky we had that time together."

With help from the Hargroves, Chris Goldsbury didn't miss much work.

"He's a trooper," Georgeanna Hargrove, also 60, says. "He has a lot of energy. If Amy needed a prescription at 10 at night, off he'd go. He went out and bought a little freezer to hold all the food people brought."

In addition to food, Goldsbury's school in Campbell and her mother's school gave the family restaurant gift cards so they were able to eat out when they were too tired to cook.

Chris Goldsbury was touched and buoyed by the people contacting his wife. "Friends, friends of friends--that carries of lot of weight--anything that made her smile," he says, really helped.

Toward the end of the chemotherapy, Goldsbury, too weak to walk, was in a wheelchair. She couldn't eat, couldn't keep food down and got dehydrated. She needed intravenous treatments for fluids.

"I wanted to get better. If I died right now, Ty wouldn't remember me. So I wanted the highest dose" for the chemotherapy, she says.

After her final treatment, she was in the hospital for two weeks. Her doctor told her, "You did it. Barely. But you made it." While in the hospital, she had blood transfusions; she was quarantined because her immune system was so depleted. She got pneumonia. She missed Ty's second birthday.

But the hospitalization seemed to jump-start her recovery. She came home from the hospital in July of 2004 and gained weight and strength.

By the fall of that year Goldsbury and her husband and son moved to another house in a different neighborhood in San Jose.

"It's a new scene, a fresh start with no memories of being sick," Chris Goldsbury says.

Now Goldsbury is feeling strong. "Everything is looking good," she says. She passed her three-month blood work, her six-month scans and has had two more colonoscopies. The doctor says she can go three years before her next colonoscopy. But that makes her nervous.

She's coming up to the two-year mark for being cancer-free. "That's really significant," she says.

She's currently not working outside of her home. "I say I'm retired. I want to hang out with my son." Doctors say she can have more children.

A pinup girl and a triathlon

Goldsbury began wondering what was next. "Do I wait for the cancer to come back?"

Her mother says Goldsbury experienced some post-traumatic stress, from dealing with the after-effects of the cancer, the frequent testing, the "what ifs."

A friend in Southern California sent her a copy of the 2005 Colondar. The models, all under 50, have survived colon cancer. They show their scars. They flex their muscles. They display their cleavage. This racy calendar tells their stories, and shows that there is life after cancer, that the disease can affect one at any age and that colon cancer is not a death sentence.

"It was a perfect time for me to read their stories," to see how they got their health back and went on with their lives, Goldsbury says.

She applied to be a model for the 2006 Colondar. The Colon Club, founded in 2003 by Molly McMaster, 28, a colon cancer survivor, publishes the Colondar. Goldsbury was accepted.

In June 2005 she and 17 other models flew to Lake George, N.Y., for the photo shoot. Goldsbury looked forward to meeting the other survivors. She thought it would "be cool. But it is was way beyond ­ really amazing," she says. They each understood what the others had been through.

The photo shoot lasted only four days, but the friendships she formed continue. The morning Goldsbury shared her story with The Courier, she'd already had 10 e-mails day from Colondar friends.

"I love it," said Goldsbury's mother, when she saw the Colondar. "It was therapeutic for her to go" to Lake George. "There were immediate connections for her. She came home from her New York trip all pumped up." So pumped up, in fact, that she did a triathlon this past August.

Goldsbury is proud of the Colondar and sees it as a motivator to get people to have a colonoscopy. She's on a personal campaign to encourage those around her to have the test. Her uncle has not had one. So she sent him a Colondar and a note. "I've had three colonoscopies, he can handle one," she says. Her mother-in-law has not had one.

Her parents are big supporters. "I'm on her bandwagon with this," her mother says. She and Goldsbury's father have both had colonoscopies. Her brothers George, 34, and TJ, 26, each went out and got theirs.

The Colondar is about "prevention and early detection," Goldsbury says, and "saving lives." It demystifies colon cancer, and it gets the word out. "People need to be more open."

But talk of colon cancer is hardly parlor conversation even though it is the second deadliest cancer in the United States after lung cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates there will be 145,290 new cases of colon cancer this year. About 56,300 will die from the disease. In Santa Clara County, there will be 635 new cases of colon cancer and 195 deaths, said Angie Carrillo, spokeswomen for the American Cancer Society.

There is good news. The death rate from colon cancer has been going down for the past 15 years. According to the American Cancer Society there are fewer cases thanks to colon cancer screening. Polyps can be found and removed before they turn into cancer. And colon cancer, when found earlier, is easier to treat and possibly cure.

"Colon cancer can almost totally be prevented," Carrillo says. "Remove the polyps [from the colon] and that puts a stop to them becoming cancer," she says. As for testing, "the best test is the test that gets used."

The 2005 Colondar models are all young women because, Goldsbury says, some see colon cancer as an older male disease. For the 2006 edition, models are both male and female. Colon cancer actually strikes men and women about equally. The majority of those who get colon cancer are 50 or older, according to the American Cancer Society.

Some younger patients are misdiagnosed at first. Tonya Adams, 36, the Colondar model for February, and a gastroenterologist herself, thought at first that her own rectal bleeding couldn't be serious, even though she sees patients with colorectal cancer. Her colleagues agreed that she probably had hemorrhoids. Finally, she had a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with stage III rectal cancer.

Even with all she has been through, Amy Goldsbury feels lucky. "Cancer hasn't been all bad. Lots of positive things have happened." After she was diagnosed, one of her parents' friends had a colonoscopy. "He had precancerous polyps removed."

That's what the Colondar is all about, Goldsbury says--saving lives.

The 2006 Colondar is $15, including shipping and handling. For more information, contact the Colon Club, www.colonclub.org.

For more information about colon cancer, contact the American Cancer Society, 408.879.1032 or www.cancer.org