Well the last few months have been crazy and emotional. A few months ago I was told there was cancer in the retroperitineum, the spleen, lungs, and multiple lymph nodes going up into the neck. My doctors had basically said that I will be on and off chemo for the rest of my life. And the rest of my life was assumed to come sooner than I would have liked. Having done chemo 2 times already I decided that I didn't want to do it again. I did an insane amount of research and changed my diet. My diet is no longer a diet though, it is now a lifestyle. I am very fortunate to have an amazing husband that changed with me. We are a team and as a team we cut out all processed sugar and switched to organic. We still eat natural sugars such as fruits but no sugar. We are in no way vegetarians but we cut down our meat intake and increased our veggie intake.
As most of you know I had my first visit to NIH last month and had surgery to remove the lymph nodes in my neck. From those nodes the doctors started growing my T-cells with the plan to transfuse them back into me in mid January. And if everything went as planned those transfused cells fight all the cancer and I would have a chance at a "normal" life that did not include chemo. After my surgery my doctor informed me that my cells were growing very well. Everything was off to a great start. They scheduled me to come back this month to rescan and would probably start treatment in mid January. What no one expected though was that when they redid my scan they were unable to find any cancer anywhere. Now as my mom said the nurse part of me says this is IMPOSSIBLE but the Christian part says that God has bigger plans for me. We have some close friends that said not to question miracles because that's what this is. It's a miracle. I'm a nurse though and I question everything. This scan that I just had done was a CT scan. CTs are very useful and would pick up on a lot. PET scans are a lot more sensitive but they can also give a lot of false results. If you have an ear infection for example it would pick up on a PET as possibly being cancerous. So there is a chance that there is still trace amounts of cancer but that doesn't change the fact that the last CT scan showed stuff that is not on the most recent scan. Am I cured for life? Maybe!
Maybe it was my diet that led to the changes or maybe its the billion prayers that were prayed for me. My 4 year old niece was praying before dinner last week and every night she would pray for me to get better. Well I guess she got a little inpatient because right before we came she prayed for Shannon to get better NOW. When I had asked my husband what he wanted for Christmas his reply was a healthy wife. I never once thought that I would be able to give him his wish. So this Christmas (our first Christmas as husband and wife) is going to be an amazing one. I have an amazing family, friends that are family but more than that I have the gift of life and what better gift is there.
