This column appears in the January edition of US Lacrosse Magazine. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription and to receive the many other benefits of membership.

I have a confession. I’m kind of a hypochondriac. WebMD is my best friend and worst enemy.

If I have a headache, it might be tumor.

Chest pain? Break out the paddles.

I’m dizzy. What is benign positional vertigo syndrome, anyway?

Cancer and heart disease run in my family (as I suspect they do for many of our readers) and despite living what I consider to be a healthy lifestyle, I anticipate with dread the day I’m diagnosed with something — as if it’s inevitable.

Clearly I’m not as strong as women’s lacrosse players Lexi Kucia, Kathleen O’Connor and Noelle Lambert or official Trina Mangano, all of whom are featured in this edition (starting on page 32).

Kucia nearly lost one leg in a car accident and tore the ACL in her other leg before ever stepping on the field in college.

O’Connor spent 60 days in the hospital fighting bacterial infections and blood clots stemming from aggressive chemotherapy treatments for a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She somehow kicked the cancer in two months.

Lambert, whose left leg was amputated after a moped accident, passed the UMass-Lowell run test in the fall with a prosthesis.

Mangano was diagnosed with two separate, unrelated cancers in the same year, but she’s always smiling. Her doctors call her the happy cancer patient.

I marvel at the fortitude with which these four women faced the kinds of hardship that would make the lesser of us cower. They do it with laughter and love, embracing the support of friends, family and the lacrosse community around them. I hope to see all four of them on the field sometime this spring.