Even now, with tumors growing in her lungs, liver and bones, Sunny Carney is talking about how lucky she is.

A Plum resident, Mrs. Carney said she hopes that, with help, she can raise the $50,000 to $100,000 required for the treatment that is now her only hope for a remission of her rare form of cancer, called carcinoid.

"I'm fortunate. I have a big family, friends and a supportive community to help me," said Mrs. Carney, 37, and the mother of three boys, ages 9 to 11.

"I was in a chat room with a woman in another state who has carcinoid, is a single mom, and she said the cost [of the treatment] was impossible for her. And I can't accept she's just going to die."

Mrs. Carney's first name is Alicia, but her husband, Mark, and friends agree that her bright outlook and concern for others make the name she's known by -- Sunny -- a true measure of who she is.

Desiree Veasy, who lives in Greenfield, said Mrs. Carney always looks for the good in any situation.

"I call her Superwoman. She's always pushing through her pain, always smiling," she said.

So it's no surprise that even though she's fighting for her life, Mrs. Carney views her struggle as an opportunity to raise awareness about carcinoid cancer, a little-known disease that often goes undiagnosed for years. Treatment remains experimental -- and costly.

As many as one in 100 people in the United States have small carcinoid tumors, but most never cause problems and are not detected. Only 20 to 40 out of 1 million people will be diagnosed with carcinoid cancer, making it very rare.

Doctors sometimes call carcinoid "cancer in slow motion," because it grows very slowly and can go undetected for years. Mrs. Carney has the atypical kind, which grows more aggressively.

Because the tumors grow from neuroendocrine cells, which produce hormones, they flood the body with chemicals such as serotonin.

Carcinoid is curable if the tumors are removed before they metastasize beyond the liver. But because it is so difficult to diagnose, it becomes for most a chronic disease in which tumors slowly invade every major organ.

For Mrs. Carney, this merciless spreading is the most frustrating thing about carcinoid. She had surgery in 1995 to remove an ovary, and again in 2004 to remove most of one lung.

"But with this disease, you can cut it out, and it just pops up somewhere else," she said. "It's like you can never be free of it."

It was just three weeks before her 1995 wedding when Mrs. Carney's doctor told her the ovarian cancer they thought they had removed had spread to her remaining ovary.

"They told us to hurry up if we ever wanted to have kids," said Mrs. Carney, who was then 25. "Five months later I was pregnant."

It was not until 2004, when tumors were detected in her lungs, that Mrs. Carney's doctors suspected her ovarian cancer might have been carcinoid. Even then, she said, they left her unprepared for the difficult recovery after lung surgery.

"When you have carcinoid, your serotonin levels are very high, so you tend to have a good outlook even when you feel physically unwell," she pointed out.

"But when you remove the tumors, your serotonin crashes, and so do you."

She added that cancer is often harder on the family than the patient. She found it particularly hard to break the news to her husband and children in May that her doctor had told her the carcinoid had recurred and spread to her bones and liver.

Mrs. Carney said each of her boys took the news differently. The oldest, Austin, "actually passed out. Then he said, 'It's not fair. You're not supposed to get it more than once.' "

Middle child Logan has had sleep problems and sometimes asks "when I'm going to die," while youngest son Nolan jokes about the side effects of her chemotherapy.

"He says now I can be blonde if I want, with a wig," Mrs. Carney said.

She added that she, too, uses humor to keep things positive.

"We call my cancer 'the C word.' And when we're out, I joke that Mommy can park right by the door, because of the 'C.' "

Mrs. Carney believes strongly that cancer patients have to be their own advocates. In 2004, her lung doctor gave her six months to two years to live and said he couldn't help her.

"I told him I'd sit in his office until he found another option," she said. "It took awhile, but he found someone to help me."

But her greatest challenge is that she has exhausted the treatment options available in the United States, which do no more than keep her condition stable. Her last hope is to undergo a new treatment available in Switzerland, in which octreotide is combined with a radioactive isotope for delivery straight to the tumors.

Her insurance will not pay for this treatment, despite its promising results. She is relying on donations to the Sunny Carney Carcinoid Cancer Fund to get the treatment she needs.

A Wiffle Ball tournament in Boyce Park is planned for Sept. 28. Laura Caruso, of Plum, a friend of Mrs. Carney, has been heading up another fundraiser in which people pay for her and other volunteers to post sun signs in the yards of friends.

"We were doing flamingoes for breast cancer," Mrs. Caruso said. "And I wanted something like that for Sunny. We call it 'being Sunned.' "

Mrs. Carney admits it's difficult for her to ask for help.

"I'm the one who likes to do the helping."

She is an active volunteer for various charities and community organizations. Mrs. Carney even founded her own charity through her photography business, which takes photographs of critically ill people with their families.

But her husband said he has to remind her that even the most positive person in the world sometimes needs others to help him or her shine.

"She's like that guy in 'It's a Wonderful Life,' George Bailey. She's helped so many people that she's got a lot of chips saved up," Mark Carney said.