Story
Laura's diagnosis came as a shock to us. Having only been married for less than a week and on our honeymoon when we discovered the mass in her left breast. When we returned from our honeymoon we immediately got it looked at and initial thoughts went from optimistic that it was a benign cyst to terror as we discovered it was an aggressive triple negative invasive ductal carcinoma, a form of breast cancer. Since her diagnosis we have been trying to get the best treatment options started, but it will be a long and difficult road to beating this. Right now, the treatment plan includes surgical placement of a vascular access port, 20 weeks of Chemo (hopefully starting soon) with added immunotherapy, followed by surgery, and finally followed by 4-6 weeks of daily radiation. All told, this is about a years worth of treatment. This is not how we expected to spend our first year of marriage, but it will be full of more love and support than we even knew we had. The support we have been shown by our families, friends, and coworkers has really moved us. Our community is full of so much love and support and we can't properly express how much that means to us. Just knowing you support us means the world to us. We don't ask anything from you aside from your love and prayers, but we know and understand that many of you want to be able to do something to help us through this hard time. If you feel so compelled, we will try to post the things that we would normally do but may need help with as the time goes on and treatment becomes more difficult. Hopefully this will give me more time to spend with Laura, as we learn to lean on the grace of the community around us.
Special Notes
In case of food: Shawn has an allergy to bananas and plantains. Anyone at Enloe can bring food to room 611 (Shawn's Room) or leave it with David West across the hall. There is a refridgerator and freezer in room 611, so refridgerated and frozen items can be brought at any time. While we will do our best to return food containers, it may be best to use disposable containers so we don't have to try to keep track of who owns what container.