She can still feel the tumor just underneath the surface of her skin, where it will probably remain for a while.

But she knows it's harmless. Now, it's simply her badge of honor - the reminder that she, Kim Tinkham, defeated cancer without any surgery, invasive procedures, radiation or chemotherapy.

"It's not killing me. I could have this for the next 15 years," Tinkham said. "I'm cancer free by all medical terms."

A recent blood test proved that the stage three breast cancer diagnosed in February is absent from her body. But she really didn't need a blood test to tell her that. Just hours after she had her blood taken for the test, and days before she knew the results, she was confident that her new lifestyle had allowed her body to fight the cancer.

"I really feel like they aren't going to find anything," Tinkham said.

Tinkham, of Boyd, was diagnosed with breast cancer Feb. 14, just days after her 50th birthday on Feb. 7.

After a mammogram and a biopsy, Tinkham's doctor told her that she has stage three breast cancer. That moment, she said, was one of the rare times in her life that she broke down and didn't know what to do.

"My 50th birthday was a milestone. I started thinking, 'What am I going to do for the next 50 years?' I never, ever planned for this," Tinkham said. "I'm not someone who breaks down. It was a scary time for me and it wasn't a situation I wanted to deal with, but it wasn't going to go away. I had that feeling of hopelessness and that feeling when you finally realize, 'I'm not immortal.'"

Her doctors wanted to perform a partial mastectomy immediately, as well as remove her lymph nodes. She had 15 minutes to call her husband before going through more tests and discussing a combative plan.

"I don't work like that. I needed time to think about this," Tinkham said. She called her husband as she got dressed, then went home, giving herself the two-hour drive to figure out what her next step was going to be. "I've always been a spiritual person, and I kind of snapped back into it after about two hours of thinking, 'Oh my God, what am I going to do.' My moment only lasted two hours. I went through depression, I went through shock. I went through all these emotions in the time that it took me to get in my truck and drive home."

At the end of the drive, she found solace in her thoughts, deciding she was going to find the silver lining in this particular storm cloud.

"I told myself, 'There is a reason for everything.' When things happen to you, you can choose to make it a positive or a negative. I thought, 'You can make something good out of this'," Tinkham said. "Being the positive person that I am, I always thought that I was someone that God would use to help other people. I think I can help people through this."

Tinkham had many questions and needed answers before she decided how to fight breast cancer. She started by talking with a number of specialists across the nation.

"Everybody I came in contact with in the medical field told me that I couldn't fix this on my own. That scared me at first, and I don't get scared," Tinkham said. "It was my body, and all of a sudden it was a situation where I had to get someone else involved. There are people out there like me - they are always the one people look to for help. And when it comes time for them to do some leaning, they have no one to lean on except themselves.

"I was not afraid to ask questions of doctors. These are doctors that are specialists in their field. The question that I asked every one I talked to was, 'What causes cancer?' They all looked at me and said, 'We don't really know'," Tinkham said.

Hours and hours of research followed, and Tinkham realized that an alternative solution would be best for her.

"I knew, for me, the best route would be alternative. I don't like surgery. I guess I don't like the loss of control," Tinkham said. "After thinking about it, there's a quality of life that is involved. It's not about just existing. For me, the quality wouldn't be there if I had the surgery and went through the other things. I decided not to do it. That was a big step."

In deciding to treat cancer without surgeries and chemotherapy, she had to tell her husband, Scott, son, Garrett, and her family and friends.

"I already had the next 50 years planned," she said. "I told them, 'I cannot die from this, and I won't. You are just going to have to trust me.'"