Cutting Through Cancer
- Nov 24, 2023
- 9 min read
A Surgeon’s Survival Story
The shrill of the hospital telephone bounced off the muted orange walls, and the bed rumbled in response. My dad’s hand, taped up with multiple colored tubes of IV and fluids, reached for the phone above his hospital bed. My eyes scanned across the room in a frenzy, and I gazed into my mom’s eyes filled with pure fear. I looked back at my dad, with his now stiffened demeanor, and his surgical laptop opened to a PET scan.
I hear the softest sigh escape my dad’s lips as the muffled voice grows more frantic on the phone. Suddenly, my dad lowered his head, and an energy of despair filled the room. My mom, now crying for an answer, rushed over to his bedside to reveal my dad’s PET scan glowing with cancer around every major organ in his body.
As my dad remembers it, he said that out of all the PET scans in his surgical career, the scan he saw on July 30, 2022, “ironically was the worst cancer I’ve ever seen…and it happens to be me.”
As he stared at the screen in shock, Dr. Frank Shannon knew stage four esophageal cancer at 70-years-old was death. All his life was spent in a hospital, and now his final moments would be there too.
As the chief cardiac surgeon in southeast Michigan’s largest hospital, Frank is known for being kind and empathetic when he tells his patients about their fatal diagnoses. However, when told about his life-ending diagnosis, the medical professionals treated it as a matter of fact.
“I tried to follow the medical professional’s rational thought, but it was so amazingly shocking that it didn’t register. I just kept thinking, ‘This is the most drastic thing to happen to me and my family,’” said Frank.
Frank listened patiently to the monotone voice on the hospital phone for his treatment plan, but as it continued, it seemed he didn’t have one. Normal procedures for low-grade esophageal cancer include surgery to remove the parts of the esophagus that contain cancer, as well as normal radiation and chemotherapy. However, medical professionals concluded that he was too old and frail to receive any treatment. Frank’s only option was hospice.
“They underestimated my strength,” Frank said. “There was so much fight left in me, and I wanted to go out swinging.”
Frank’s fighting spirit inspired Dr. Tom Quin, a radiation oncologist and longtime buddy, to change the medical board’s decision. Dr. Quin oversees radiation therapy treatments for a living, and he argued that Frank was the perfect candidate for a new experimental treatment called proton beam radiation therapy.
Proton beam therapy can precisely target cancer-filled areas of the body to receive the high-energy proton dose. This differed from regular radiation therapy, which cannot target and would have damaged his major organs. So, proton beam radiation proved his best chance of survival since it killed the cancer cells by hitting them directly.
After much deliberation and insistence by Dr. Quin, the medical board allowed Frank to proceed with the experimental proton beam treatment. While this opportunity was what Frank and his family had been praying for, his cancer treatment was no joke.
“I remember being asked by physicians, ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’ and I would always respond, ‘I will do anything if it means I get to live another day,’” said Frank.
His cancer treatment spanned from August to October, where his body endured 28 high-dose proton radiation treatments and 12 high-dose chemotherapy sessions. In addition, he had a surgically placed port underneath his skin near his chest wall and a feeding tube that bypassed his esophagus. The port was used to administer IV fluids, lipids, and liquid nutrition, called total parental nutrition (TPN).
To put his treatment into context, Dr. Quin marvels that he gave Frank “more radiation than anyone else has ever had in my life.”
In just three months, Frank went from saving patients to being wheeled through the hospital halls. Over time, fellow surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists couldn’t even recognize him when he came into the hospital for treatment.
From a healthy 230 pounds to a staggering 129 pounds, Frank was a walking skeleton. As his family hugged him, pieces of his skin would slough off, and every bone was visible. His once chestnut brown hair morphed into wisps of grayish-white hay, and his navy square-rimmed glasses looked gigantic on his bony nose. His daily attire included black and white striped Adidas joggers, a San Francisco 49ers t-shirt, hospital-issued fuzzy socks, and a Celtic-style rosary with an ornate cross pendant. Despite his sometimes haunting exterior, Frank could still be recognized by his warm smile, thoughtful eyes, and hopeful soul.
While Frank knew he looked different, he found it even more difficult to live in his cancer-treatment body. He recalls that everything took energy…which was the only thing he didn’t have. During the worst moments, he had to choose to take another breath because the easiest thing to do was stop breathing.
“To go through such misery through treatment, you need someone to be suffering for,” said Frank.
Frank’s primary goal through treatment was to survive for the sake of his family. He felt that his children were at an age where they still needed his guidance, and he did not want to burden them with his absence.
Conor and I received news about our father’s fatal cancer diagnosis during pivotal moments in our lives. On July 30, 2022, I was in the hospital room when my dad received the call. I had only five days to process my dad’s impending death before I left to start my freshman year of college at Indiana University. Despite my wishes to stay home and take a gap year, my dad insisted that I continue studying entrepreneurship and enjoy my first year at college. My brother, Conor, was in Boston, completing his internship with the Boston Celtics on the day of the call. Conor planned to return home and finish his senior year at the University of Michigan, studying business administration. During his summer internship, Conor realized that professional sports management was not his dream career anymore and wanted to become a lawyer instead. Conor struggled to tell our dad about his realization since he felt he bonded with Frank over their love for basketball. Conor heard about his dad’s fatal cancer diagnosis when I flew solo to Boston to help him pack up his apartment.
“I remember being really confused when Keira was the only person at the airport. She had this concealed look of distress on her face, and I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right,” said Conor. “I couldn’t imagine having to fly alone, knowing that I had to tell my sibling that our dad was going to die,” Conor paused and let his statement linger. “Wow…that’s a lot to ask from Keira, but she did it.”
While Conor and I were away at college, my mom, Lori, was my dad’s primary caregiver. Like Frank, Lori was also actively involved in the medical community as a registered nurse anesthetist. Highly aspirational and gifted, Lori worked as the assistant chief for nurse anesthesia at the same hospital as Frank and as a professor of nurse anesthesia at Oakland University. Frank’s cancer team appointed Lori as his primary caregiver due to her extensive medical background. Juggling two jobs, two children, household duties, and her dying husband, Lori was given an unbelievable amount of responsibility without much question on how she was doing emotionally.
“There is a difference between providing care to a patient and your dying husband. Frank’s medical team just automatically assumed it was my duty as a wife to take care of him, but no one really understood the strain it had on me,” said Lori. “During the worst points of his treatment, I remember my mom saying to me, ‘My god Lori, this is going to kill you.’”
After three extensive months of proton radiation and chemotherapy, Frank’s cancer treatment was over. However, the aftermath of his treatment proved to be even harder for the family. His cancer team instructed Frank to wait until February to rescan his body to see if all the cancer was gone. If any cancer was seen on the PET scan, his treatment failed, and he would die.
“It was so naive to think that since treatment is over, it would be easier to take care of him. To everyone’s surprise, it was, in fact, much, much harder to keep that man alive,” said Lori.
Frank endured every complication possible. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Frank contracted full-body shingles, COVID-19, and developed an allergy to his TPN formula given to him through his IV fluids. During college winter break, Conor and I visited him in the hospital with N95 masks and were instructed always to remain five feet away. He was released from the hospital on Dec. 23, 2024, after three weeks in the hospital.
“I remember seeing him sit at the head of the dining room table on Christmas Eve with a morsel of food on his plate. He hadn’t eaten a bite of food in months but wanted to be there for us. He used his single bite on Grandma’s kielbasa and sauerkraut dish, and that is just such a dad thing to do,” said Conor.
As the February PET scan loomed closer, Frank chose to combat his sense of doom by believing that everything happens for a reason. His fatalistic approach gave way to a sense of inner peace and joy for the present. His family followed suit and began to let go of the need to control, and Frank began to embrace the unknown.
“Our mind has so much power, and I learned how to positively shift my mindset to focus on the good. I realized that you can never give up because giving up will guarantee a failed outcome. Live your life to the fullest, and be grateful for each and every moment,” said Frank.
On Feb. 13, 2023, Lori wheeled Dr. Frank Shannon back into the hospital for his PET scan. Frank’s bony hand clutched his Celtic rosary, and Lori kept her phone close in case she had to call Conor and me to come home. Frank’s cancer team greeted them with a mix of anticipation, hope, and pride.
Frank prepared himself to analyze his PET scan again, as he had on that fated day in July. His original PET scan lit up the screen with bright speckles of cancer around his entire body, and he feared that he would see those same specks on the screen again. Frank’s heart fluttered as he knew that it would take a miracle for him to be cancer-free, and any speck of cancer on his new PET scan would mean death. He took a long, deep breath and grabbed Lori’s hand as the medical professional showed his PET scan on the medical computer screen.
Frank adjusted his glasses, which slipped down the bridge of his nose, and leaned in closer. His eyes zoomed in, expecting to see a flash of bright cancer cells across the screen, but all he saw was complete darkness. His mind grappled with the simple yet incomprehensible fact: his PET scan was clear. The cancer that had surrounded every organ in his body was no longer growing, and he was deemed cancer-free.
Dr. Frank Shannon, diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer at 70-years-old, survived.
“For months, I felt so silly because I was praying for a miracle. But God listened, saved my husband, and protected my family. God gave me a true miracle,” said Lori.
Frank and his family have been forever changed by his cancer journey and continue to do good in the community. After spending a much-needed family vacation in Maui for his 71st birthday in May, Frank returned to saving patients as chief cardiac surgeon and walks the hospital halls in stride.
Conor, my mom, and I adopted Frank’s fatalistic mindset and now appreciate the gift of the present moment. In light of this, we have all made significant changes that have helped us become our happiest selves. Conor officially changed career paths and will study law at Texas A&M in the fall. I coincidentally fell in love with Boston after visiting Conor, and I am now a sophomore transfer student at Boston University. Lori, after being responsible for Frank’s life, has learned how to love life again and engage in more self-care. My dad’s seemingly devastating cancer journey has brought so many unexpected miracles to our family.
At the end of Frank’s interview, when asked what he would like to say on behalf of his cancer journey, he scratched his chestnut brown hair, adjusted his well-fit glasses, and tugged at the now-snug collar of his dress shirt. He let out a sigh of relief, and a crumb from his mid-afternoon cinnamon roll fell down into his lap.
With his thoughtful eyes, kind smile, and hopeful soul, he said with his heart, “Do good, be good, and you will receive good.”
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