I wasn't terribly ugly mind you. Just plain. Well, according to my classmates, I was pretty ugly from the ages of 9 until I was about 16. I permed my hair in the sixth grade (that didn't help matters any). My brother would always save his money to buy name brand clothes, and I was satisfied with K-Mart (another x next to my name). I had a hard time breathing due to some severe sinus issues, so people in class called me Darth Vader. The one thing I had going for me was my shortness. Oh....and I could sing, still can.
Even if I had been blessed with good looks, I wouldn't have known what to do with them. I'm not the best at applying make-up, doing my hair, or dressing fashionably. I look at my sister-in-law, Tamie, with considerable envy. Tamie is one of the people I know who wakes up beautiful. She is not only stunning, but she can speak her mind at the drop of a dime (something I have always wanted to do)- a rare combination of terrific looks and personality. I swear my brother must stare at her sleeping face every morning and gleefully remind himself, "she's mine." But of course, she must do the same. Even in sweats, Tamie looks better un-showered and make-up free than most women do on their wedding days, mine included. When she makes the effort, she
could stop traffic. Her hair and make-up are flawless and her attire timeless; she looks like she just stepped out of a photo shoot. Her only imperfections are her height and sometimes her mouth and, let's face it, with a face like an angel no-one notices that she's only 5'1.
I guess surrounded by men my whole life, I just never found any enthusiasm for such feminine pursuits. Suffice to say that I am just not adept at the transformative options available to women for the purposes of enhancing the looks God gave them.
All this is not to say that I am above it all, because I am not. All the energy that I did not focus on my hair and make-up were funneled into my intelligence. I was never skinny, but I was smart. I threw myself into my school-work and choir. And at some point in time...I became pretty. Well, pretty in my eyes. I went through a period in which I did nothing but work-out. I became thinner than I ever had in my life. I thought I was something else for the first time in my life.
But, my lifetime of gluttony finally caught up with me in my twenties. Suddenly, I could no longer button my pants. I panicked; here I go again with not being skinny. It didn't take long for me to join the ranks of young women dieting and exercising obsessively. Before long, it seemed like the more I tried to lose weight, the more I gained. I found myself vacillating between severely restricting my intake and bingeing. Since I couldn't figure out how to make myself puke, I purged through exercise. I was so desperate to be skinny that I would do almost anything to make it happen. I even wished to be sick.
I have thought about that desperate wish over and over again. You have to be careful for what you wish for; the fates are listening. Oh, they aren't listening if you wish for peace in the Middle East, but wish for something inappropriate like a deal-with-the-devil trade involving the loss of your health and they are all ears. Next thing you know, BAM, you are gaining weight instead of losing weight due to all of the steroids and feeling like shit. It's a sad statement on society when perfectly healthy women covet a figure that is the consequence of chronic illness. And, as I struggle to meet the needs of my children when I am almost devoid of energy I realize that the ideal of the robust female body was a nod to the need for women to sustain not only their own lives but also the lives of their children well beyond pregnancy and infancy.
My disease is disfiguring. The pulmonary fibrosis makes my body and my face puffy and swollen. I do not recognize the woman looking back at me in the mirror. And, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Now when I take pictures as opposed to a year ago, I see the changes so clearly. My face is covered with red blotches. I have never looked worse. I am embarrassed by my appearance. Thank God I was not born beautiful because the fall to this state would have been a horrible one.
I want my old face and body back. I have a new appreciation for how cute I once was. No, I was never as attractive as my brother was, but I was attractive enough. But in some ways, the transformation seems appropriate as if the change in my outward appearance reflects the change in my outlook and my life and is a sign of all I have endured and overcome; it is my stigmata. I am no longer that 20 something girl that defined herself by her appearance. I am a woman who knows, at the very core of her being, that outward beauty is meaningless and fleeting. And I know that my time is better spent being a better person than a more physically attractive one. My disease has delivered me from a tyranny of a looks-obsessed society. I cannot compete with models and movie starlets. I never could. But, now I have an excuse to opt out of even trying. I have to be satisfied with my appearance because there is nothing I can do about it. I look in the mirror and realize, "I am what I am" and that is good enough. Better late than never.
There are so many things I feel overwhelmed about in my life. I have health issues that are going to kill me and I still cannot wrap my head around it. The craziest thing about all of this is that the cancer is the least of my worries. I learned today that I have Ventricular Tachycardia which is also extremely rare and can cause cardiac failure in an instant. And, much to my surprise, I find myself faced with a series of choices that could hasten my death or potentially lengthen my life. I feel overwhelmed by the enormity of these decisions and the grim reality that there is no guidance except my own heart. And my own heart is so conflicted because I am afraid to suffer but I do not want to leave my children without a mother.
When it comes to being terminally ill, we have to always plan ahead. People always tell me, "do what is right for you." It is so hard to trust that. It is so hard to know what to do.
I am reminded of my early twenties when I constantly engaged in what I called "One False Move" thinking. I was always afraid I'd miss that one phone call or party or whatever (where my destiny lay and lose my chance at happiness). It was a ridiculous way to think, yet I spent years prostrate to this irrationality. And then my first marriage went down the toilet. In the months following that loss, an enormous sense of peace settled into my life. I finally realized that happiness wasn't going to occur like some long-awaited event but rather already resided in me waiting to be set free.
So, here I stand at the threshold of the end of my life, unprepared and scared despite all the forewarning. I keep thinking of Yogi Berra, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." What Yogi didn't say is "Don't look back." It's a recipe for misery to look at your past choices and think, "I should have done this; I should have done that." What's done is done. Perhaps I should have never smoked. Perhaps things would have turned out differently. But I made what I thought was the best choice at the time and hindsight is always too late by definition.
My choir teacher once called me "fearless" because I would do anything to be there, to show up. While it was certainly a nice compliment, it was completely inaccurate. I certainly was not without fear. It was just that my desire to learn and push myself through was much greater than my fear of getting hurt. The thrill of flying was much stronger than the fear of falling. I loved Mrs. Mayo for her belief in me.
Now, my fears have shifted. Everything boils down to the fear that I am not going to survive long enough to watch my children grow up. If my heart fails on top of my lungs, it would mean that whatever limited options I had were up. It would mean facing the fear that my time on earth is much, much shorter than I would like it to be and that this disease will take me away from the life and the people I love so much.
I was never fear less, but now I do have less fear. I have less fear about little things, less fear about speaking my mind, less fear about taking chances, and less fear about what other people might think of me. I have one giant fear that trumps everything else and that puts it all in perspective.
My drive to get everything I can out of this life is much greater than all the little fears. We only get this one life (I think), so it only makes sense to grab on tight and get all the living you can out of it with God by your side.
Love you all and truly mean it....and God loves you too,
Shanna xoxoxo
LUNGevity National Hope Summit: 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!
Official prayer warrior page for my fight against lung cancer: facebook.com/hope4shanna
Official blog Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/shannabananahealthandfitness
My Go Fund Me Page (any and all donations will help with my medical funds) gofundme.com/hope4shanna2016 
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