Celebrities seem to live charmed lives, with expensive houses, nice cars, and great relationships. They have it all don’t they? Truly they do but sometimes life brings them down to our level and we can relate to the troubles they face. Nothing humanizes an idol like an illness such as cancer.

Here are some of the famous celebs who have faced down deadly diseases – and come back on top.

Melissa Etheridge

At age 43, Melissa Etheridge, the rock singer-songwriter, discovered a lump in her breast in October of 2004. She had been feeling tired and not completely well – a biopsy revealed it was stage 2 breast cancer. A lumpectomy was performed and Etheridge had all 15 lymph nodes removed when it was shown that the first lymph node, called the sentinel lymph, had cancer in it. 

 "The good news is they took out the tumor and a few lymph nodes, only one of which was positive. . . . After that my margins are clean! I still have both of my breasts and whether I will keep them is a bridge I have to cross later," said Etheridge six days after her surgery.

Through five rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, she fought nausea, fatigue, bone and muscle pain and sensitivity to light and noise. Confronted by her cancer diagnosis and treatment, Etheridge underwent a spiritual awakening.

“It’s created a change of life,” she said. “I have a different way of looking at the food I put in my body, the stress I take on, the choices that I make – it changed all of that.”

Rod Stewart

British rocker Rod Stewart found he had a malignant tumor on his thyroid gland at age 55. The surgery entailed cutting through his singing muscles to get to the thyroid. The surgeon carefully removed the tumorous growth as it was extremely close to Stewart’s vocal cords. One mistake, and his career would be over. Thankfully, Stewart didn’t have to go through chemo or radiation because they completely removed the growth.