Shannon Brown-Blake’s Fight Against Cancer

    Hi! My name is Brittany Brown-Blake aka Brit. I am writing this story on behalf of my wife Shannon and our family. My wife and I have been together for nearly 13 years and married 11 years. My wife has always been the backbone of our immediate and extended family. She has been an advocate for families and children in our community for the last 9 years. She has worked tirelessly to protect children from abuse and neglect often putting others needs before her own. She has worked in a stressful field that most cannot endure, yet she persevered. All while being a caring mother, aunt, daughter, wife, niece, and granddaughter. She is a caregiver to many children both relative and non and plays a significant role in the day to day care of 7 children. She is a hard worker, support in our community, and diligent mother. She is my best friend, my world, my life. Unfortunately she has been very recently diagnosed with lung cancer. She is not currently nor has she ever been a smoker. She has no risk factors, she is healthy. The cancer is rare and occurs in 60% of non smokers. There are only 20,000 cases in the US annually. Shannon is ready to fight and is at peace with her diagnosis; she knows she will be able to overcome it with the help of her team of medical professionals, friends, and family. While going through this experience we realize we will have to rely on our network and community supports to continue to care for our family while meeting her medical needs. I am asking for financial assistance in order to meet those needs. Let me tell you a little more about what is going on…

     On 4/19/2022 we received devastating news that shook our family to the core and turned our lives upside down. In the past six weeks Shannon has had bronchitis twice that just wouldn’t seem to go away. Even with the bronchitis Shannon was functioning basically as normal, she just had a super junky sounding cough and felt exhausted most of the time, however it never slowed her down! On 4/13 around 9 am I received a text from her while she was sitting in her office at work, it was a picture of a thermometer reading 102.9. Of course I freaked out and wanted her to go to the hospital immediately, if you know Shannon you know how that conversation went… she refused! Fast forward to about noon I had enough and just showed up to her work and forced her to come with me to Waterman ER. The hospital ordered a chest X-ray that showed Shannon had a serious case of pneumonia. Since she had been sick for several weeks with bronchitis that turned into pneumonia the ER Doctor decided to admit her. After a few days of receiving IV medication a repeat chest X-ray was ordered, it showed the pneumonia had not improved any. At this point the Doctor ordered a CT scan of her lungs, the scan came back abnormal… from there the Doctor decided to do a procedure called a Bronchoscopy to take a better look inside the lungs. On 4/19 the Bronchoscopy revealed the unbelievable, it was cancer. There was a mass in her right lung blocking her bronchial tube, this is why the pneumonia couldn’t clear up. All of the infection was stuck down in her lungs unable to escape because the mass had it blocked in. Shannon also has masses in her left lung as well, a portion of her lung had already collapsed. Unfortunately the Doctor that performed this procedure was unable to remove any of the masses due to it being too complex for their equipment and out of his scope of care. Two days later Shannon was transferred to Orlando hospital where a lung specialist performed surgery and was able to remove almost all of the mass in the right lung and confirmed it was indeed blocking 100% of her right bronchial tube. Once the mass was removed he was able to suction out a large amount of the infection that was causing the pneumonia. The doctor did not attempt to remove anything from her left lung at this time because the surgery had already taken well over 2 hours. Shannon has surgery scheduled again for this coming Thursday 4/28 in attempt to having the remainder of the mass in the right lung removed as well as what is in the left lung. At this point we are still waiting for the pathology reports to come back to tell us how advanced and what stage she is in but the preliminary report is rather promising that this is carcinoid lung cancer. I want to be able to be the support for Shannon that she has always been to others.

     I want to be able to attend medical appointments with her and be there every step of the way. Please consider donating to help me take off work to care for and spend quality time with Shannon. We want to spend time together as a family doing many of our normal activities when Shannon feels up to it like weekend beach trips, going to the movies, bowling, and local community events. All funds raised will go directly to medical care, medical bills, and daily living expenses so our family can financially maintain during this difficult time.

 Thank you for your support and we WILL help Shannon best cancer!