Hi I'm Shannon and in November of 2025, 2 days before Thanksgiving, my entire life changed when I was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS). Unfortunately, 2 months into my battle, I found out that my dog, Ripley, also had cancer. We need to your help to fight this.

Here is my story: I went in initially to urgent care due to some persistent stomach pains, nothing too concerning, but I wanted to rule out anything before thanksgiving and get an appetite back before one of the biggest eating days of the year! Fast forward a few hours and the urgent care sent me to the emergency room with no other explanation than, "all of your blood levels are really off". I was luckily able to be seen quickly both at urgent care and at the emergency room and was discharged with a plan to see a provider the next day. Little did I know that walking in the next day, they would let me know that I had cancer. They told me that I had a form of leukemia and that I would be needing to go into treatment ASAP. I knew I would need a bone marrow biopsy and chemotherapy, and had about a 10 day turn around time before we could start.

I went into straight planning mode and started contacting my close support system and trying to get things situated at work so that I could be out for at least a month. After the first bone marrow biopsy, we found out what I actually had was MDS. This basically means that my body was on the way to full leukemia but not quite there yet and unfortunately the only way to stop it is a bone marrow transplant.

Since I had to do more testing and find a good match for a bone marrow donor, this allowed me some time to get my stuff in order. I went through three different rounds of chemo and multiple bone marrow biopsies during this time (about 4 months) While I was taking this day by day and trusting the treatment plan and dealing with all of the emotions that come with a diagnosis like this, what I was not expect was for something to go wrong with my pride and joy, my baby dog Ripley. He was diagnosed with a malignant tumoe in his anal glands. He unfortunately cannot have surgery on the area because of the growth being too large and risky. So he too is going through chemo, and will be for the remainder of his life.

I was admitted for inpatient treatment officially on April 1st (not a joke) and Ripley received his first round of chemo on April 6th, and I officially got my transplant on April 7th after another round of chemo. I have all new bone marrow, but a long recovery ahead of me. I won't be out of the hospital for about a month while they monitor for graft vs host disease, and then from there I will need to basically live in a bubble for 100 days while my immune system rebuilds itself from the ground up. I'll be living with my dad during that time, as I will not be allowed to live alone, but on day 101 I should be able to start living a bit more normally though recovery will continue.

I have had such a great support system emotionally and mentally which has been amazing because this is far from over. Over the next 2 years I will have tons of appointments and procedures, not to mention a laundry list of restrictions while we aim for the lable of "in remission". But as you can imagine, the medical bills are stacking up with no end insight. It is also not cheap to care for a dog with cancer, but he deserves to live out his life comfortably and I need him to support my own recovery as well. I'm not sure what I would do if I lost Ripley during this toughest battle of my life.

So with all of that, I am humbly asking for financial help to pay off medical bills so I can focus more on my health and recovery and caring for Ripley, and less on the very real stress of medical debt.

Thank you for reading my story.

So much love ❤️

Shannon & Ripley