Shelli - Fairbanks

In July of 2015, I went to the doctor because I was having a bad pain that would wake me up in the middle of the night and lasted all day long. I went to 5 different doctors and they all said it was a pulled muscle but I was losing weight and just didn't feel good. I just knew it wasn't a pulled muscle! After about 2 weeks, my parents took me to the emergency room because it wasn't getting better and they said the only thing they could do was a CT scan but the radiation is so much that I shouldn't do it unless it was absolutely necessary. Exactly 1 week later, I was at the movie theater and my parents came out of their movie and I said "mom, we need to go to the ER again, I don't feel good and I want the CT!" I felt nauseated and just blah! We waited in the ER for at least 3 hours and they had me drink all this dye so they could do the CT scan. They did the scan and we waited and waited and finally the doctor came in. I was kinda joking with him saying "Please tell me you found something!" He then sat down on the bed next to me and said "We found something." It is never a good thing when your doctor sits on the bed to tell you something! He said "We found a large tumor on your left adrenal gland.”
I'll never forget how it felt hearing those words. My heart just sunk and I couldn't even lift my head. I just looked at the floor. They med-evac’d me within 30 minutes because they had no idea how to handle something like this in Fairbanks. I was so scared but I knew God was with me and I was just praying and trying to stay strong! I'm even crying as I write this because it was so scary and sudden! I was in Anchorage for a few days in the hospital and they said they couldn't do surgery until they knew that it wasn't a certain kind of tumor. If it was this one kind, then as soon as they touched it with a knife my blood pressure would spike! They took some blood and said it would take about 2 weeks to get the tests back so I went home and waited to have surgery. Surgery was July 28th and it was such a huge surgery! It was 7 hours long and they thought they would only remove the tumor and the adrenal gland but during surgery my surgeon realized that the tumor was stuck to my spleen. Even though he spent 2 hours trying to save my spleen, I was losing too much blood so he had to remove it along with a cyst he found. I was in the PICU for a little less than a week and in the regular pediatric wing for another 4 days before I finally got to go home. When I was home, I found out that it was cancer and it's called neuroblastoma. After many tests, it was confirmed about a month later that I was now 100% cancer free.
But after about 3 weeks, every time I would eat I'd have extreme pain in my upper right abdomen. I went in for my post-op appointment and my doctor said that it sounds like my gallbladder needs to be removed. I laughed because I was like "I just had surgery baha". They did every gallbladder test they could think of and they came back clear. They tried me on many different medicines and nothing worked so they decided to remove it anyway and just see if I got better. They removed it the day before my birthday on November 7th and I was pain free for about 2 weeks. Then everything I ate hurt again and even when I didn't eat. The doctor re-did a few tests and they are showing nothing. I had my 3-month cancer screening on January 11th and they found 3 new growths that weren't there a month and a half ago so whatever it is, it’s growing fast! This is by far the hardest thing I've ever had to go through but God has been with me the WHOLE time. He's never left my side once and because I have Him, I can face tomorrow with no fear of the outcome! His perfect love casts out ALL fear! THANK YOU JESUS
Shelli had scans done in September of this year (2019) and it showed her tumors had grown over the summer. She has exhausted all of the normal protocol treatments for her cancer so she is in Seattle starting a 1st phase trial. It involves taking some of her T-cells and reprogramming them to fight her cancer when they give them back to her. It is a 3 month treatment plan and she is one of first to have this amount of treatment for this trial. Her journey started in 2015 in Anchorage, Alaska, then to Portland, Seattle, New York, and finally back here in Seattle.

Shelli's Dad:
First of all, thank you for your help and support for our family. This was written in January of 2016, but it gives you the beginning story. As of today, she has 3 spots of Neuroblastoma in her bones and is headed to Seattle this week for her 2nd round of isolation radiation. The 1st round showed some improvement and we are hoping and praying that this treatment will be the right one for her. My wife will be there with her for a month while I stay home and work. Her updates are on Facebook if you or anyone would like to follow her story. Her page is Shelli's Fight Against Neuroblastoma.