By LAURA BROOKHART / Community Columnist

As a member of the Fit ‘n’ Feisty class at SNAP Fitness, Dorothy Green’s arrival is always noticed, as she arrives on crutches.

Dorothy Green has one leg less than most folks, but it is more the glow about her, an aura, that draws one to look at her.

“No matter how much down I have, my ups supersede my downs and therefore I wake up every day and thank God and I say, ‘This is the day that the Lord has made; let this household rejoice and be glad in it,’” she said.

Green can do most everything for myself—clean house, cook, drive and she enjoys travel. She has been married 47 years to her husband, John.

“I knew I had cancer. I was driving down the road and I heard a voice say, ‘you have cancer’ and I told my doctor this,” Green said. “I knew because I know God.”

It took a year from her first doctor visit in 1990 for specialists to finally pinpoint sarcoma.

Green, then living in Ohio, was accepted for treatment gratis at National Institute of Health as it specializes in treating unusual diagnoses. Green was told her cancer had been growing for perhaps 10 years.

Her leg and pelvis were removed; her monthly chemo was so strong, she remained nauseated for a week after each treatment.

“I could not even keep water down. On my last day at NIH, I weighed 97 pounds,” Green said.

Green was born in Houghton, and has extended family in the metro Birmingham area. The Greens looked at 30 houses in the area before finding a wheelchair assessable one in Helena that was not on a hill.

“I would sit and watch the birds on my ‘burning bush plant’ and say, ‘God, I don’t understand why I am here,’” she said. “Finally I hear God say, ‘you are here to be a living testimony.’”

“Dorothy brings her sunshine with her. I have never seen her have a down day,” noted Sam Stuart at SNAP Fitness.

Green looks forward to inviting all her friends/supporters from Cleveland to celebrate her 25th cancer-free anniversary in 2015 with a special Gospel Dinner.