When you ask Arielle Mello, 13, if she thinks her older sister Lori Mello is brave, you get an unequivocal ?yes?.

Not long ago Arielle was suffering from home sickness on a school trip to Spain. The first thing she did was call her big sister, Lori, 23, who comforted her and made her feel better.

It would have been a small thing for a big sister to do, except that Lori Mello was in the middle of cancer treatment. Despite feeling rotten and sick, she still had time to be a big sister.

A couple of months ago, Miss Mello was in the middle of a second college degree in behavioural science when she started to suffer from what she thought was a torn muscle in her left shoulder.

?I went on a trip to Hawaii with my boyfriend and while I was there I used so many Ben Gay patches and Tiger Balm that my boyfriend said I should take out shares in the company,? Miss Mello told .

Miss Mello waited for over a month to have a chest X-ray at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, in the meantime suffering from repeated bouts of the flu. When the X-ray came through Miss Mello was sent straight to her doctor. There was a mass in her chest.

?Even when they told me about the mass I was in denial,? she said. ?I still didn?t think anything of it. I thought maybe it was scar tissue or something.

?The last thing on my mind was cancer. You are not expecting it to be anything bad. I was expecting it to be something stupid like a pulled muscle.?

Lori had recently lost 20 pounds, but attributed that to joining the gym and getting a personal trainer. Illness was the last thing she expected, but at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Massachusetts the news was devastating.

She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma which is cancer of lymphoid tissue, a part of the lymphatic system. She had a mass that was ten centimetres by ten centimetres and over her heart.

Just in the short time she was at Dana Farber it grew by another five centimetres. The diagnosis was something of a surprise for Miss Mello?s doctors because non-Hodgkin lymphoma is more prevalent in older people, while Hodgkin?s is more common in people Miss Mello?s age.

?My symptoms were similar to Hodgkin?s,? she said. ?I had night sweats really bad. I was sick all the time. It is kind of a blood cancer. You have no immune system.?

As soon as Miss Mello was diagnosed, she was started on chemotherapy treatment. Unfortunately, she had a bad reaction to one of the drugs and almost died.

?I stopped breathing and my throat swelled up and shut,? she said. ?That is why I fly out there every three weeks. They did surgery and removed two pieces of the biopsy. That is how they decided what kind of chemotherapy.?

She will have to undergo chemotherapy until the end of the year, at least.

?I am taking a chemo called Chop R,? she said. ?I had eight rounds of that. I am going for my fourth round next Monday. Then I had four weeks of radiation after that with radiations every day.

?All of November I will probably be in Boston. They said I would probably need radiation because the tumour was so large.?

So far Miss Mello has been lucky in that she hasn?t been completely ravaged by the chemotherapy, but she is tired all the time, and has lost all of her hair.

?There are so many side effects of the drugs I am on,? she said. ?The chemo is ripping apart the tumour and is putting pieces of it into my blood stream, which is like poison.

?When we were out there they did a bone marrow biopsy because they were afraid it was in my bones. After surgeries you get sick. With the chemo I have one good week a month.

?Right after the chemo I am sick and tired and I am on nausea pills to keep from vomiting. The next week after chemo I have a low week where my immune system is shot. I have no white blood cell count. My blood doesn?t clot. I have to be careful with cutting myself.

?Luckily, I haven?t had to be on a white cell count booster. I can?t be around anyone who is sick because I am so susceptible. I can?t work.?

Through it all her friends and family, particularly her mother Sharon and her two sisters Colby and Arielle have stood by her side.

?I get really depressed and cranky after chemotherapy,? she said. ?No one likes to be around me. My family and friends have been around me unbelievably. It is a horrible feeling. I feel completely alone and no one knows how I am feeling.

?You feel like you are dying. My mother has taken some serious verbal beatings from me, but has been with me from day one. She has been with me for every chemotherapy.

?Both my sisters Colby and Arielle have been very supportive. In the beginning, I think they took it worse than I did. They were crying every day.?

Her friends have also been supportive. One of her friends came with her and her mother to the doctors and wrote down everything the doctor said, because Miss Mello and her mother were in too much shock to take everything in.

Other friends held a barbecue to raise money so that Miss Mello could buy a wig. ?When my hair fell out it was a huge thing,? she said. ?One day I was in the shower after swimming and a huge clump came out.?

Miss Mello telephoned her friends, and they came over with the clippers. They held her hand as the rest of her hair was removed.

?We sat around and laughed and cried,? she said. ?I have a collection of hats now. My my old classmates had a barbecue when I first found out I was sick and they all gave me money. I used the money to get a really nice wig. It cost about $1,500.?

While in the hospital, cards, letters and drawings from her mother?s nursery school Kiddie Academy cheered her up enormously.

?My first degree was in early childhood education,? she said. ?During school breaks I would work at Kiddie Academy. I was teaching at the nursery and then I started to go back and do behavioural science. I was looking at autism and ADHD and brain injury.?

Now, when she is back in Bermuda she sometimes helps her mother with nursery school paperwork, or goes to Kiddie Academy to see ?her kids? when she feels good.

?For awhile there I didn?t know if I was going to live or die,? she said. ?Don?t take things for granted. Always say ?I love you?. Don?t hold back.?

The boredom is one of the hardest things about being ill for Miss Mello who was used to an active life. One of the things she likes to do as stress relief is cook.

?I have taken up cake making as a hobby,? she said. ?I was in Wal Mart one day and saw a book about it. II know that this is part of God?s plan for me like to cook. I cook everyday. I made a cake for my sister?s graduation party. The baking part isn?t the problem, it is decorating that is the challenge.?

One of Miss Mello?s concerns is that her particular cancer doesn?t have a big publicity machine like breast cancer or heart disease.

?Tim Hulse who works for Ariel Re in the United States said he would donate all the fundraising from the San Francisco Marathon to me,? said Miss Mello. ?That happened because I wrote him an e-mail to thank him for running for people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

?I said: ?If your feet feel like you can?t take one more blister just remember you are the one person who is running for me and my disease.?

Miss Mello has also turned to her own religious faith for emotional strength.

?I pray everyday,? she said. ?Even though this isn?t something that anyone would want to go through, . Everything happens for a reason. With him by my side I know I can get through it.?

She hopes to finish her behavioural science degree through an online programme.