Fighting back | How one woman didn’t let breast cancer keep her from getting married, living life

It’s Tuesday afternoon, the kids have gone home, and things are quiet at Myrtle Beach Elementary School.

Suddenly, there’s a flurry of footsteps as a quick moving, highly energized Shannon Sommers Johnson heads down the hall, back to her classroom. She’s wrapped up an after-school meeting and is ready to sit down and talk about the past year. It’s been a difficult and challenging one that brought life-altering changes, but hasn’t stopped her.

Not one bit.

It was just about this time last year that Shannon was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 38 years old and had actually found the lump a few months earlier.

“I was putting on my sports bra and I felt a lump,” she recalled, “and I thought, that’s not a muscle. I was like, ‘Nah, it can’t be. I’m too young.’ And I let it go.’”

She had her annual exam in August. Her doctor insisted she get a mammogram right away.

“So, that was when the whole process started. And the hardest part was waiting to get the results.”

The diagnosis came as a shock. She was young, strong, healthy, extremely active and had no family history of breast cancer.

“I eat so, so healthy, low sugar, low fat, I exercise, everything. I was just unlucky. Cancer is not prejudiced, it’s not picky.”

Statistics from the National Cancer Institute show breast cancer is most frequently diagnosed in women between the ages of 55 to 64.

But the numbers also indicate that with regard to new cases nearly one in 10 women (9.1 percent) between the ages of 35 and 44 will be diagnosed with the disease.

Shannon’s husband, James Johnson, says getting the news wasn’t easy.

“The first few weeks were very hard. She had to get her mind set. She’s the type of person that once she decide she’s going to do something, to beat something, you’re not going to stop her. She had to get her mind where it needed to be.”

Shannon was diagnosed with an especially aggressive form of breast cancer that required an especially aggressive treatment plan. She had a lumpectomy, then a series of other treatments.

“I did everything. I had chemo for seven hours, six rounds, then 33 radiation treatments and I still have Herceptin every three weeks for an hour, for a year. And I get an echo cardiogram every three months to make sure my heart’s still working and the drug hasn’t affected my heart.”

She’s also required to take the drug Tamoxifen for the next 10 years.

“Just to keep the cancer away because it’s so aggressive,” she explains. “I’m not a big fan of Tamoxifen because it pushes me into menopause.”

Her diagnosis and the start of her treatment came at what would normally be one of the happiest times of her life. James had proposed two months earlier and Shannon had already begun planning her wedding. She’d also just started a new school year with a room full of excited, eager-to-learn third graders who greeted her with anticipation every day.

“It was hard,” she explained. “It was a new school year with the kids looking at you. They were wondering why I was absent a lot. Unfortunately, a lot of doctors appointments and the testing had to be done during the school day. They wondered why I was absent here and there.”

She told them she was sick and when they said she didn’t look sick, she explained she was “sick inside.” She shared that she had cancer, but waited several weeks to tell them it was breast cancer. She made the decision early on to continue working during her treatment, no matter what.

“I didn’t want to abandon the kids because so many people have abandoned them in their lives. I didn’t want to be that person. So, I showed up every day. They got me here.”

And they were always waiting, often with questions that made her laugh.

“I came in one day and I was so swollen and one of the kids asked, ‘How come you’re swelled up like a marshmallow?’ Another kid said, ‘It’s her medicine.’”

She explained that some of the medication affected her in different ways, telling them it was only temporary. The questions continued through the different phases of treatment, such as when she lost her hair, then when her hair grew back. But with the questions came lots of love and encouragement.

“The notes they would give me helped me so much. ‘You’re beautiful no matter what you look like.’ There were notes every day and that was therapy in itself.”

As she continued to teach school, she also pushed herself to exercise, going to the gym several days a week, even while undergoing chemotherapy treatments. She wanted to stay strong and maintain as much of her normal life as possible. And she planned her wedding, much of it during those lengthy seven-hour chemo sessions.

“I did a lot of things in that chemo chair. People think a wedding is stressful, but it wasn’t, it was a relief. Cancer’s stressful, the wedding wasn’t. I had to look at it like this was the beautiful part of life. And it’s my new life whether cancer be in it or not.”

Shannon’s doctor, breast cancer surgeon Dr. Angela Mislowsky, says Shannon worked hard to maintain as normal a life as possible during treatment.

“She exercised as much as she could through chemo, as much as her body would let her, and she kept up with her regular activities. She planned her wedding, got married and continued teaching, which I think was great, too.”

Mislowsky says Shannon is not only a role model for other women, she set a good example for the kids.

“I think it was great, even for someone so young to see somebody like her who’s so upeat and positive, to show them you can go through it, you can beat it, you can be cured from something like that.”

Shannon admits that despite her strength and determination, she’s had a lot of rough days. She says a book called “The Silver Lining” (“The Silver Lining: A Supportive and Insightful Guide to Breast Cancer” by Hollye Jacobs) which stresses the ability to look at the positive side of the situation, was very helpful.

She says her sense of humor has helped, as well. That comes through when she recounts some of the struggles she faced when she got married this past June. As a result of chemotherapy, she’d lost her long blonde hair, so she bought a long blonde wig for the big day.

“I was going to wear the wig, because I had this image of me with my long blonde hair. I’d spent money on the wig, it wasn’t the free one from the American Cancer Society,” she explained. And yet, she ended up not wearing it after all.

“No,” she said with a laugh. “I looked like a stripper. I was so mad.”

Instead she went with her newer, shorter, thicker, natural hair.

“It’s the new me. I have to embrace the new me, after cancer.”

She’s accepted there’s life before cancer, and life after cancer. Some things you can’t control. And while it’s not always easy, it’s OK.

She’s found tremendous strength from the school, fellow teachers, the principal, her friends and family, and James.

“He went to every doctor’s appointment with me, he didn’t miss one. He’s a very gentle, very caring man and has been very, very supportive. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him.”

James says he’s found the best thing he can do is listen. He says if asked to give advice, he recommends just listening.

“As a man, we have no concept of what they’re going through. We have no concept of what losing your hair means to a woman. We have no concept of what, emotionally, they’re going through. You may not understand it, but that doesn’t matter. You just need to say, that’s fine, whatever you need to do. And whatever they need, you just need to help them with it.”

With much of her treatment behind her, Shannon admits there’s an awareness in the back of her mind that there’s always a chance the cancer might come back, but it’s not something she thinks about often. She prefers to stay strong, persevere and focus on the positive.

“I have to, there’s just way too many sunny days. You see so many people, especially in the chemo chair, they’re just so sad-looking. They’ve given up. There’s a whole big world out there and I want to join it, to live in it. I don’t want to give up.”

This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 1:37 AM with the headline "Fighting back | How one woman didn’t let breast cancer keep her from getting married, living life."