According to the Bureau of Health Information, more than 26,000 people are diagnosed with cancer in Wisconsin each year. Mitch Maxey is one of those people. He and his family have struggled with the disease for the last five years.

Sports, family and friends are the things Jeanette Dickinson says her son Mitch enjoyed most.

"His love was soccer," Dickinson says. She says he was like any other 14-year-old at the time, "an independent, strong, driven young man but i didn't really know how far he could take it."

But on April 14th, 2004, Mitch and his mother got the worst news Dickinson could imagine. Mitch was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

"He went through unbelievable agony and disappointment and setback after setback," Dickinson says.

Mitch needed surgery, radiation treatments and chemotherapy which left him paralyzed and unable to speak, but Mitch battled back and just as his cancer was going into remission, Dickinson was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"He pushed me. He really showed me what a hero and a warrior was and I can't say that I have that," Dickinson says.

Dickinson won her battle with cancer and Mitch regained his ablity to walk, talk and even play golf and started to live life the way he wanted.

"He decided he wanted to be like any 16-year-old and wanted to work so he got a job and he tried to attend school events," Dickinson says.

But in 2006, just when things started to look the brighter, Dickinson and Mitch found out Mitch's cancer was back and this time he wouldn't win the fight.

"I was alone with him all night because we thought he kind of stabilized. I sent everybody home and I was with him and he hung on until everyone was there. He took his last breath because that's the kind of young man he was. He just always wanted to do what's right for everyone," Dickinson says.

Mitch died on March 17th, 2009. Dickenson says Mitch was loved by his friends, family and even hospital staff who remember what a brave person he was.

"Every night I think about him. Just thinking of the goofy things and how his outlook on life was so positive," says Cheri Hill, a Gundersen-Lutheran therapist.

Hill says Mitch may have lost his life to cancer, but his friends and family will always remember his spirit.

"He just constantly would turn a bad situation and try to make us all feel more comfortable and make us laugh," says Dickinson.

Dickinson's family has set up a memorial fund for cancer research at Altra Federal Credit Union in Onalaska under her son's name, Mitchell Maxey.