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Katie Casserly never knew how much the Scout Motto — “Be Prepared” — would apply to her life until she was diagnosed with cancer last fall.

The 18-year-old Venturer from Staten Island, N.Y.,��wanted to be in Scouting ever since she was little, and she��has enjoyed every minute.

“Scouting teaches you numerous things, gives you millions of chances, makes you cross paths with many people,” she says. “I’ve done things I never would’ve imagined, met people who have become family, and I’ve learned things that have set me for life. Without Scouting, I would have nothing right now.”

Katie��got the word she had��Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a rare cancer of the lymph nodes, two days before she was to receive the Venturing Silver Award at a court of honor.

“The��hardest thing was going from something happy like that to something devastating like this,” she says.

A cancer diagnosis can be crippling, but Katie was determined to find a solution to this problem life had thrown her way. Scouting taught her how to survive in the wilderness, she figured, so��surviving cancer should be no different.

“When you’re in Scouting, you’re taught how to survive and handle any situation,” she says. “To be prepared in case of anything:��emergencies, weather, etc. The first thing you’re��told when approaching any situation is to not panic. To stop and think.”

In fact, she found seven ways surviving cancer reminded her of wilderness survival:

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