Why read the diary of a dying young woman, the mother of three children, someone with a loving marriage, a stay-at-home mother who teaches her children, and a woman with a barrage of loving family and friends? Why read the story of someone who is about to lose everything, someone who is watching her life slip uncontrollably through her hands like sand from an hourglass that shattered, setting a life on a wholly unpredictable and unfortunate course? Why share that sadness? Why share her hopes, especially those that are eventually dashed? Why eavesdrop on the discussions between this mother and her children when they brave the reality that she is leaving them? Why be a voyeur into a marriage where "in sickness and in health" is not a promise but a daily reality?
I am this dying mother, wife, daughter, friend, and sister. I assure you that I am no one special. I am simply a woman facing a premature death and learning day by day, how to balance hope and reality; how to laugh through my tears; how to find joy despite my shattered heart and anxious mind. Why read my diary? Because I am just like you. It just so happens that I am currently facing the grim reality of my own death forty years ahead of schedule.
After almost two years of living with lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, I have grown increasingly ill over the past six months. The fallout from my medical crisis has been significant. Imagine living a life where death feels just around the corner. For me, it has been a physically and mentally bruising battle, one that often made me wish for death because I was so tired of fighting. But then I would look at my family and step back in the proverbial ring. My husband has the difficult job of managing my health care, being an optimistic cheerleader, and still addressing his own grief. And my children worry that they are losing their mother long before they are ready to let her go.
I know it all sounds so very depressing. I can assure you that it is not! Ours is an incredibly rich and sweet life. Yes, we cry often, but, we laugh more. We don't do it with photos or videos, though we should do a little more of that. We do it by being truly present in the moment.
I have learned that fighting for your life is incredibly hard work, but, with an open heart, it brings a multitude of gifts. My family and I learn from this struggle every single day. It has brought us closer than I have ever dreamed possible. And we have learned to find humor in absolutely everything.
This blog is a collection of very personal essays about my experiences as a somewhat typical parent in the face of a difficult present and uncertain future. Honestly, I do not think this blog is particularly sad. I think it is a candid, open, and real diary of a life in the balance, peppered with humor without resisting the inherent pathos of the subject.
In this life, we all share only two things in common with absolute certainty: birth and death. C.S. Lewis supposedly observed that "we read to know that we are not alone." My dream and hope is that in this blog I will not only make the sick and dying feel less alone but also make the living more fully aware of the precious gift they experience every day: to feel the ease of their breath moving in and out of their lungs, to notice the freckles on their children's faces, to look at their loved ones more intently. And if reading this blog means they waffle between sobbing and laughing out loud, then I accomplished my goal because truly living means feeling everything....all the way.
I blame myself so much of the time for being so sick. Every since I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I have been sitting here blaming myself not because I truly believe any of this is my fault, but because I want so desperately to believe that I can fix this somehow. I want so much to believe that all will be well if I just zig at the right time, make the right choice, or take the right medication.
What underlies blame is a belief that we humans have control. Sometimes we do, but probably far less often than we would like to think. I think I can finally let go of the blame now that I realize that it was just a corollary to the fallacy that I am in control of my destiny. And, I hope I can reorient all that misdirected energy to something useful for a change.
Love you all...mean it,
Shanna xoxoxo
I'm participating in an event to raise money to fight lung cancer—and I need your help!
I'm planning to attend LUNGevity Foundation's National HOPE Summit in Washington, DC, in May - it's a special conference just for lung cancer survivors like me. If I can raise $1000 or more in donations, LUNGevity will cover my travel expenses, including US round-trip transportation and hotel accommodations.
Proceeds from this fundraiser will benefit LUNGevity Foundation, the leading private provider of research funding for lung cancer. LUNGevity Foundation is firmly committed to making an immediate impact on increasing quality of life and survivorship of people with lung cancer by accelerating research into early detection and more effective treatments, as well as providing community, support, and education for all those affected by the disease.
Please join me in my efforts to stop lung cancer—the leading cancer killer—now!
Please become a prayer warrior and support my war against lung cancer by liking our Facebook page. facebook.com/hope4shanna
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