It Was A Very Good Year...

Susan: 

Shannon continued to amaze our family with her strength, faith, and sheer will to live. In December of 2010, Shannon changed the focus of her blog, www.shoeaddictsurviving.wordpress.com, to shoeaddictthriving.blogspot.com. Everything about Shannon and her attitude was about thriving.

 

During this time period Shannon took two cake decorating classes, shopped for and refurbished antiques, painted rooms in her house, and created a space for Ben that she called his "Man Cave". Shannon bought new furniture for several rooms in her house. She participated in friends' birthday parties, weddings, and lived life as if there was a tomorrow. During this time she also taught a Discipleship Class on Sunday mornings with her husband Ben at our church. To say I was proud of her would be a gross understatement. I loved watching my girl thrive. 

 

There of course were times that Shannon would have to be taken out to the car to sit, or sit on the store floor for a few minutes to compose herself. But she didn’t let her cancer stop her. She continued to work at the Pentagon, enduring a hard commute for even a healthy person. 

This was a year in my memory that I draw so much strength from. I like to think about my determined and strong girl. Her new focus blog, started on December 30, 2010 and stopped with her last blog post on February 23, 2011. It was on February 28th that Shannon got the shocking news that her cancer had returned and spread with 5 new tumors. Shannon did not blog anymore after this but I do have her journal where she documents some of what she felt and writes in her unique style about the way the medical world looks at you when bad news is being delivered. 

For the next bit of time I am going to feature posts from Shannon’s blog from the time she felt she was thriving. You will be nothing short of entertained. Shannon had a gift for writing and my thought is that it should be included in this blog as well.

Strength in Weakness, Part 4

Susan:

This entry is a part of the blog where you may question what I say. You may ask, "Was Shannon in her right mind to make such a decision?" You may ask, "Why didn’t her husband step in and force the surgery on her?", "Why didn’t her mother vocalize what she felt and scream from the mountains, 'Have the surgery, Shannon! Have the surgery!'?"

This much I do know: our adult children will do as they want, not what we want. I lived this, I know.

It was January 2010; Shannon had finished 6 cycles of her clinical trial treatments. She was starting cycle 7 when she felt a small lump in the spot where the melanoma had been removed from her breast. She and her physician could not be certain that it was not breast fiber, scar tissue or something else for that matter. No conclusive results would be known medically without surgery. If Shannon’s cancer was back again, then for her it would mean going all the way back to Cycle 1 and starting again with 6 more months of the dreaded and sickening stomach shots of IL2.

Before Shannon and Ben told her father and me about the lump, they prayed. Shannon and Ben prayed until they felt they had direction and peace with their decision. Shannon told her father who in turn told me. No one knows about this but her immediate family. I am not sure she told anyone about this, ever. Shannon decided that she felt peace and should not have any surgery. Ben supported her decision. So when Sean told me that is how I was told. A decision was already made. Sean also felt that Shannon made the right decision. Christopher and I both had different feelings about this lump. I was happy and felt great joy that my daughter would trust the Lord with her body. She was exercising powerful faith. However, I felt Shannon should have the lump removed surgically. I felt that this was the only true way to know what it was and then deal with it accordingly. I felt that Shannon was in a fight for her life. I told Shannon one time-- only one time-- that I thought she should have surgery. She shut me down and told me to stop being negative. Shannon said what she needed was positive support. So that is what she got from me. But as hard as I tried I could not shake that uneasy feeling of the possibility of cancer being left to do its deadly work. Throughout the rest of Shannon’s battle that lump would come and go. In the end this is where the spreading began and took off like a wild fire. I never felt sicker at heart that I had been right. I didn’t want to be right.

I have shared these feelings with you for a testimony of what real strength in weakness is all about. What a gift my daughter received that she was able to have so much faith in her decision. For me? Well, for me my feelings are best left at the feet of a loving God, who loves me and will help me to emerge from the ashes I find myself in. I will emerge from the ashes a stronger woman, a more tender woman, who has suffered and learned a lesson that could only be taught by living it.

I know as a reader of my blog posts this one may seem so different to you. But it is an important entry. Shannon was strong in faith. Strong in love, strong really in everything she did. She was a truly amazing person who I respected and admired. She held fast to the promise she felt she had gotten from her Saviour. Was she right? Was she wrong? I don’t know. Is there a right? Is there a wrong? I don’t know. This I do know: Shannon teaches us all by how she lived and how she believed until she had no more breath.

Strength in Weakness

Susan:

This begins a series of posts that will tell about the heroic and full of faith steps Shannon took in her life after diagnosis. She lived hard and strong. Having faith all along that she would be healed she also gave her life back to God many times in prayer to take or to heal. She was small in stature but strong in faith.

After finding out her diagnosis and prognosis, surgeries, and finding the only clinical trial in the area that offered hope, Shannon moved on to the next natural step of her life. On July 2, 2009, Shannon bought her first and last brand new black VW bug. She could not have been more excited. When she drove it by here to show me my internal reaction was, "Shannon you are dying, why would you buy a new car?" But Shannon had 2 1/2 years with that car and she enjoyed every minute of it.

The second thing Shannon did is this: on my birthday, July 9, 2009, she went to Franklin Square and picked up her shots and all the equipment she would need to administer both leg shots of IL2 and stomach shots of IL2. She and Ben came home and did the first of her leg shots. Shannon then ran to Sam's Club, buying me a birthday cake, Ben went to buy us all dinner, then Sean took me on the boat and there they were all waiting for us on the end of a pier with dinner and cake and Shannon in her glory showing strength in physical weakness.

This was just the beginning of things she did for others and that is what I will continue with for a while.

Favorite Scriptures

Susan:

In Shannon’s journal I found the following list of scriptures that she wrote down during her long stay at NIH. I think this is a fitting post for her birthday.

She listed this as "Favorite Scriptures":

Hope:

Psalm 119:116-
Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.

Jeremiah 17:7-8-
Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

2 Thessalonians 2:16-
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace.

Hebrews 6: 18-19-
That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast and which entereth into that within the veil.

Psalm 31: 24-
Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord.

Psalm 42:5-
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of his countenance.

Psalm 71:14-
But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.

Romans 8:24-25-
For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do with patience wait for it.

Afraid:

Psalm 27:1-
The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

Psalm 56:3-
What time I am afraid? I will trust in thee.

Psalm 112:7-
He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.

Believe:

Matthew 9: 28-29-
And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him yea Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying, according to your faith be it unto you.

Mark 9:23-
Jesus said unto him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

2 Corinthians 4:13-
We have in the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.