Let's all help Peggy Shanahan (Parrish)!

Cancer sucks.

Our dear friend, sister, auntie, Peggy Shanahan knows this all too well. You may or may not know that Peggy has survived stage 4 cancer twice (Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma) in the past 10 years. Unfortunately, her battle continues. Her cancer reared its ugly head again earlier this year. The lymph nodes in her neck were so grossly enlarged and hard, she called them the rocks in her neck. And in her typical joking way, she would comment that she looked like Jabba the Hut. But the third time isn’t always the charm. For Peggy this meant pursuing a bone marrow transplant/stem cell therapy; without it she would have about a year to live. After five weary months of some pretty awful chemo (all chemo is awful, but this regiment proved pretty grueling) in preparation for the transplant; driving back and forth to Emory in Atlanta, GA from Brunswick, GA (approximately 640 miles round trip) every other week, Peggy received some unexpected, unfathomable news, the chemo wasn’t working. This meant she was no longer a candidate for a bone marrow transplant.

Fortunately, there was another option, she was a candidate for a fairly new treatment called CAR T-cell Therapy; she is one of just over a thousand people to receive this treatment. The basics are, they harvest your t-cells (a type of white blood cell), personally accompany them to a lab in California where they are genetically modified, then these modified t-cells are sent back to be administered back into your body. The genetic modification makes the t-cells ninja serial killers, and they seek out and kill the cancer cells (pretty cool). Peggy spent 25 days in the hospital; once she was released, she had to remain close to Emory (within 30 miles) for the next few months in case of any complications and for physical therapy, follow up appointments, etc. This certainly adds a new meaning to travel expenses (apartments in Atlanta aren’t exactly inexpensive). Peggy was able to return to Brunswick in November to continue her recovery, now with just the occasional trip back to Emory.

Is there a price on life? In this case yes, and it isn’t cheap. Peggy’s July statement from the hospital showed over $1.4 million. Peggy co-owns a small business, Ned Cash Jewelers. And as we all know the pandemic hit small businesses hard; throw in two or three hurricanes...well you get the picture. She and her business partner have had to make some tough decisions to attempt to maintain business knowing she couldn’t be counted on to continue working through all her treatments and recovery. I know for a fact she has gone many a week without a paycheck already and faces more of the same.

So how do you cover not just medical expenses but additional expenses such as gas, lodging, food, and everything else involved in traveling, especially without a paycheck?

All this leads me to why I have set up this GoFundMe page; it is something we can do to help Peggy! She would never ask but I know she needs the help. She has helped so many of us, even in the smallest of ways. She is one of us, a member of our community, a friend, family. If you can help that would be an amazing gift to her.

We love you, Peggy!