Foster challenged the player, saying, "I bet you can't put one leg over your head and hop across the room." The player failed, and Foster took off his leg, held it over his head, and grinning, hopped.

"Like half the room was screaming," Dinonno says. "We didn't know!"

Despite his prosthetic leg, Foster played baseball, basketball and tennis in high school. He was also president of the student body, and he says he was often asked to give inspirational speeches as "the kid who played basketball with an artificial leg."

"I would have said stuff like 'if you can dream it, you can do it,'" he says, his voice trailing off. "I guess now I realize that your dreams don't always come true."

The cancer returned in his lungs during junior year, and again during senior year. Operations on the cancers became less and less successful.

He started on chemotherapy and radiation treatments, again at the Mayo Clinic, and deferred his admission to Harvard for a year.

Numerous Operations

The cancer returned again during spring reading period of his first year at Harvard. He had three more chest operations last summer, and decided to forego additional chemotherapy to return to Harvard for his sophomore year.

His check-up this November found inoperable tumors in the femur of his good leg, in his ribs, in his lungs and around his heart.

In the last eight years, Foster has had 11 surgical operations, a year of chemotherapy and a month of radiation.

"I was kind of thankful when modern medicine couldn't do anything this time," he says. "I don't want any more cold, sterile hospitals, or needles or impersonal nurses and technicians. It's just so nice that I don't have to have that ever again."

While Foster is relatively calm about his disease, he is emphatic about the positive changes in his life since the bad news.

"Actually, a lot of good has come out of this because it has forced me out of the rut I was in," he says. "It's forced me to ask what I'm living for and what the meaning of all this is."

"The only thing meaningful in life is to love God and love other people."

Foster told his story to a Christian Fellowship large-group meeting at the end of September, and has been talking a lot with friends.