EXCLUSIVE: Teen Cancer Survivor Set Her Sights on Becoming a Marine. Now She’s Weeks Away from Bootcamp: “Life doesn’t end when they tell you, ‘You have cancer,’ it keeps on going,”

Ever since she was a young girl, Britney Moyeda had her sights set on joining the Marine Corps. Now, years after surviving cancer, she’s just weeks away from starting bootcamp.

“I’m very excited,” Moyeda, now 18, tells PEOPLE. “It’s something to be proud of – because I can actually prove to other kids that had cancer that they can do whatever they want in life and nothing can stop them.” When Moyeda was in 5th grade, she saw a classmate’s father at graduation in his Marine Corps uniform. “I thought that was really cool,” she says. She decided then that she eventually wanted to enlist.

But a year later, when she was 12, Moyeda got sick. She remembers taking a nap after school, and when she woke up, she couldn’t stand. “I fell,” she says. “Half of my body wasn’t working.” She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on May 25, 2018.

“When they first told me I had cancer, I cried. And then I told my mom everything was gong to be fine,” she says. “I knew it was going to be fine – I just felt it. I wasn’t scared.” Britney went through 15 cycles of chemotherapy and 11 different medications, and multiple blood transfusions. After years of treatment, she rang the bell being declared cancer-free at Texas Children’s Hospital on September 7, 2020.

She was also still determined to become a Marine. “I think that’s really great, that she’s been through everything that she’s been through with her cancer treatment and has been able to make it through that and focus on a long-term goal like joining the Marines and serving our country,” says Dr. Tim Porea, Texas Children’s Hospital pediatric oncologist and retired U.S. Navy Captain.