Book excerpt: Cancer Survivor Sharon Parker Is on a Mission . Sharon Parker thought she had a bad case of allergies. But as time went on, she felt instinctively that allergies were not the problem. Sharon asked for a chest x-ray. The x-ray results led to more tests and confirmed her worst fears. She had cancer. As if that news weren't bad enough, Sharon soon learned that she had two separate cancers--Hodgkin's disease and thyroid cancer.