“Life ain’t always beautiful, but it’s a beautiful ride” - Gary Allen. In the last five years our little family has been hit with tragedy, over come the odds, and flourished with love and good health. My name is Shelby and my husband is Kevin. We are a military family living in San Diego. We have our son Barron, who soon after he was born was referred to as mama’s guardian angel. With his birth, doctors discovered my diagnoses that ultimately saved my life but unfortunately left me unable to be pregnant again. Two days after I gave birth to my beautiful blue eyed blonde haired little man, my life was changed forever. I was approached alone in the hospital room, holding Barron waiting for Kevin to pull the car up and take us home, and was told that I wasn’t going to be leaving the hospital like we planned. Pathology reports came back on my placenta, indicating that I had cancer and it had metastasized to my placenta. I needed to stay in the hospital and get further tests done. Shocked is an understatement, I was so confused and convinced that there had to be some kind of mix up with the reports. I was a very healthy 24 year old new mama. How could I have cancer? Despite my disbelief, it was true. After further test I was diagnosed with stage 4 Metastatic Melanoma that had spread throughout my entire body. My specialist explained it as, “the most disease he has seen in one patient in the whole 25 years he’s been a melanoma specialist”. 11 days after my son was born I had my first round of two different types of immunotherapy. In the weeks following I had two different types of radiation, one was done to the inside of my femur for cancer that wasn’t responding to treatment and the other on my brain. 13 months after that, right after my son turned one, I was in complete remission. A miracle on all accounts. I wish my cancer journey stopped there, but it was only the first half of my battle. Almost 11 months into remission I had a recurrence. I started back on immunotherapy along with oral chemotherapy and dove heavily into Eastern medicine with the help of a functional medicine Doctor named Dr Jess. Doing this integrative approach the second time around made all the difference in the world for me. I was in remission in 8 months and felt amazing! I’ve been in remission ever since and in good health. With the exception of some little life long diseases I developed from all the treatments. Cancer was one of the worst things that happen to me and my family but I’m thankful for what it’s taught me. It’s taught me that true love has no boundaries, that the mind and body are more powerful than any medicine, that the important people in your life will stand by you in your worst and best times, that life is so much shorter than they say but that there is so much life to live! In getting diagnosed I was also told I wasn’t able to have anymore children. After further research, I’m now told something different. Amazingly, we can have more children but with the help of a surrogate. This was huge news for our family. My husband and I were raised with siblings and want to give Barron a brother or sister more than anything. Trust me when I say, hearing that little voice always asking for a brother or a sister doesn’t help the deep desire to build our family. Please share our story and donate if you can. We need all the help we can get to build our little family. Thank you, from the Benson family