Every time I go back to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to wait for my test results, and I wonder if I've relapsed or if I'm doing okay, I don't think about my company. I'm proud of everything we've done, but at the end of the day, it comes back to family. I'm still a wife, a mom, a sister - all of those things.

I quickly discovered that scientists go where the funding is, so I knew I had to start a research foundation. If you don't raise money and provide research grants, you'll never attract scientists, and if scientists aren't working on a cure, there isn't going to be a cure.

In 15 years, we've raised $225 million, sequenced the myeloma genome, and opened 45 trials of 23 drugs - six approved by the FDA - which have doubled the life span of multiple myeloma patients. I've taken both Velcade and Revlimid, which we helped develop.

The most important thing a leader can do is set the vision and don't stray. We said, 'We are a research foundation. Our mission is to accelerate cures.'

Now before I work out, I think, 'I love exercise,' and it works.

To do what we are doing in this budget to our children, cutting their health care funds, decreasing opportunity, simply so we can pay for tax cuts and a war in Iraq is beyond belief, and we need to reverse it.

The government has a right - the government and the people of the United States have a right to run the programs of the United States. Health, welfare, housing - all these things.

Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster.