Help Get Shelby to Hope4Cancer and Healing Journey

Blessings Everyone!

We’re the Brewers; never did we think we would find ourselves here, or atleast at this stage in our lives. We are a Christian family of 3, Shelby, husband (David) and daughter (Monroe). Love the outdoors, spending time with family and serving our community. We currently are a part of a Church plant in Chandler, AZ which we believe God has used to really prepare us for this journey. We have created this fundraiser in hopes to raise assistance for the next few months to help with uncovered treatment expenses and the burden of finances due to loss of income.

Shelby was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer on Monday, December 19th, 2022. We won’t know what stage until Shelby’s entire thyroid and lymph nodes are removed and the tissue is further tested. The surgery is awaiting scheduling, trying to take the next best steps forward for Shelby’s health, family and the future. We will provide an update as soon as we can. Backstory follows and additional details about recovery are at the end.

We’re sure a lot of people who know us are wondering, “how did we get here?” Well, it’s a little LONG winded, but we will do our best to explain it as clearly and swiftly as possible.

Fall 2019 Shelby visited the doctor due to chronic fatigue and feeling like mommy brain hadn’t left after having our daughter in Spring 2018. She continued to feel “off” or “not right” but all of her labs weren’t considered “concerning”. Thankfully, her doctor is quite proactive and still requested an ultrasound of her thyroid to see the functioning a bit better. There was a suspicious mass found that she would then have biopsied, but thankfully was determined benign. We would schedule yearly monitoring; little did we know COVID would happen.

Fast forward to 2022 Shelby is fairing pretty well as she’s learned to live with the symptoms resulting from the toxic thyroid nodules. Nearing mid-year she began to have new symptoms she hadn’t experienced before and because it had been three years since her last full thyroid check-up; she felt it would be best to get one done.

November 2022 She met with an endocrinologist, her usual doctor was booked out into January; so she saw another one within the same office just to get in beforehand- to address labs and further diagnostic testing. She’s thankful for God giving her instinct and was able to advocate for herself as the patient, another biopsy was completed on 11/30/2022 by 12/5/2022 the results came back inconclusive. Thus, sent off for molecular genetic testing. Almost two weeks later, she was diagnosed with Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma, again, we will not know exactly, nor how aggressive, until follow up tests are complete after thyroid and lymph node removal. Depending on those findings, we will know how to proceed with treatment.

So here we are... survival rate is 95-98% and only 1 in 40,000 people reject the replacement hormones. However, it can be extremely difficult and a bumpy start to adjust and maintain initially. Recovery time could be 6-8 weeks, more or less. However, we know Cancer can be very tricky and every case is different. This will be only the beginning to a life-long journey of healing. Yes, we are extremely nervous, yet optimistic. We know God will make a way. One of the most powerful, though difficult, lessons we all need to learn is that even when bad things happen and we do not understand why, we can trust God to be present and working on our behalf. We truly believe no experience is wasted with God! We have found an amazing team to work with to prepare her body for surgery, to help foster deep healing throughout and after recovery but it comes with great financial expense that isn’t all covered by insurance.

There is probably so much more we could say, but we’ll spare you the reading for now. :)

All donations AND shares are GREATLY appreciated and will be received with much GRATITUDE. We LOVE you all; and so thankful for your support in giving, sharing this post and praying for us!

Shalom! It is well!

Psalm 18:28 “You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.”