SPRING VALLEY -- You're 20 years old, care-free, and love most everything about life, especially traveling around the country with your race car in tow.

How would you react if your doctor told you you have cancer?

If you're Grant Junghans, you never even consider putting the brakes on. You go at that cancer as hard as you drive your Modified into the corners at your local dirt track.

"I've had a lot of people tell me I handled it really well," said Junghans, now 22, who is at Deer Creek Speedway this weekend to compete with the United States Modified Touring Series at the 13th Annual Featherlite Fall Jamboree. "I had the feeling that it (was cancer) before they told me. I mean, what other kind of lump keeps growing? So I was just like, 'what do we do now?' Those are the cards I was dealt, so I'll deal with it."

Junghans first sensed something was wrong in February, 2010, when he couldn't shake some pain in his shoulder. He rubbed the shoulder constantly and one day felt a knot "about the size of a pea," he said.

He visited a doctor in his hometown of Manhattan, Kan., who told him to rest it for a couple of weeks, then have it checked out if it wasn't better.

The pain became worse.

"I couldn't take it, so they did surgery, cut out (the lump), looked at it and decided they didn't like what they saw," said Junghans, whose brother, Chase, 18, also competes with the USMTS on a regular basis. "So they told me to see a specialist."

That's how Junghans ended up at the Mayo Clinic. His doctors here put him on chemotherapy for most of the spring and summer of 2010. He spent his summer in a Rochester hotel room with his mom, though he took in races at Deer Creek as often as he felt up to it.

"Going to the track helped me get away from things a little bit," he said.

He returned to racing shortly after Thanksgiving last year. Two weeks later, Junghans was at Mayo for a checkup and discovered the cancer had returned to his lymph nodes, through his neck and shoulder, and his upper chest.

"I had surgery right away," Junghans said. "That messed me up for awhile. I was cut from ear to ear and down to my chest. I lost a lot of motion in my arms and neck. But I'd say I feel about 85-90 percent now."

And that's good enough for Junghans to be back in a race car. He raced for the first time this year, six weeks ago in Topeka, Kan., about 40 miles from his home. He was running fourth in his first race back, but an accident sent him to the back. He still worked his way back up to a seventh place finish.

This weekend, Junghans is just happy to be in southeastern Minnesota for something other than a doctor's visit. And while he still has chemotherapy and checkups on a regular basis, he's ready to get back to living his life again.

"I missed racing a whole bunch when I couldn't do it," he said. "But when I race a whole bunch, I miss a lot of things, too, like just hanging out with friends. So I don't know how much (racing) I'll do (in the future). I want to enjoy things for awhile and just see how it goes."

Source: www.postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1469568