by Deb Saine
GALVESTON — Every morning, Shelly Courture makes a decision between living and dying.
“You come to a crossroads when somebody says you’re going to die,” said the 41-year-old.
“So, every day, I get up and say, ‘I’m going to live. I’m not dying.’ I choose to live and refuse to die.”
In late summer 2004, the Galveston resident was sleeping 10 hours a night but waking up exhausted.
“I thought, ‘There’s something not right about this,’” she said. “I was only 36, sleeping and tired all the time.”
Shelly called her doctor in Kokomo and was told not to worry. But shortly after that, the mother of two found a lump in her breast.
Again, her doctor told her not to worry. She was told that it was “probably just a cyst.” So Shelly didn’t worry. The day she was scheduled for a mammogram, she wore a dress so that she and her mom, Sharol Eaker, could go out and celebrate after her appointment.
“The mammogram didn’t look good at all,” Shelly said. “They did a biopsy right there and within a half hour, I went from being fine to not being fine.”
Two weeks later, the results were in — cancer.
An aggressive disease
Shelly had an aggressive form of breast cancer called HER2-positive. In addition to finding the cancer on her breast bone, doctors discovered the disease had metastasized to two places on her spine, the front of one rib and on a bone in her right leg.
Shelly’s doctor presented her with only one treatment option — to cut, radiate and administer chemo — but she wanted a second opinion.
After doing research on the Internet, Shelly decided to go to Goshen Center for Cancer Care. Despite the lengthy drive from her home in Galveston, she chose the center because it’s known for its comprehensive and integrated approach of treating the entire person, not just the patient’s cancer. Doctors also use alternative medicines and some specialize in naturopathy.
Shelly, who worked for Microchips Day Care in Kokomo at the time, underwent treatment and was in remission by 2005.
Having cancer, she said, transformed her.
“It took the pressure off,” she said. “I felt like a totally different person. ... It changed my whole way of thinking and put a lot of fearlessness into me. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m determined. I’d stopped myself from doing so many things in life before cancer. ... I wasted a lot of my life because I was afraid.”
One of the things she’d been afraid to do was to continue her education.
With her disease in remission, Shelly enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College in 2005 to pursue an associate’s degree in office administration. Taking four courses this semester, she’ll have to take only two more classes before she achieves her goal. She then plans to earn a bachelor’s degree in business from Indiana Weslyan.
According to Deborah Stefanatos Avelis, one of Shelly’s instructors at Ivy Tech, Shelly “always has portrayed a leadership attitude and has consistently sought to encourage her fellow students.”
Avelis also said that Shelly has displayed a mature attitude toward her course work and studies, which serve as a stabilizing influence on her classmates.
But class work and maintaining a positive attitude aren’t the only things on her mind these days. In January, Shelly learned that her cancer had returned. This time, it metastasized on her sixth rib near her spine.
“I woke up one night and couldn’t breathe,” she said.
Shelly underwent radiation in April and started chemotherapy in June. Every third Monday, she travels north to Goshen with her mom to be treated with triple doses of Herceptin.
“That’s why I still have my hair,” Shelly said. “Herceptin makes me tired and causes severe arthritis from my head to my feet. All my joints hurt — anywhere bone meets bone. It hurts really bad but only for the first week.
“About when I get to feeling fairly good, it’s time to go back, and is very frustrating.”
Calling on a higher power
Because her cancer is so aggressive, doctors have told Shelly it will always come back. But she refuses to give in to the negative.
“I choose to live life,” she said. “I believe that what you think and speak has an effect on your body. I don’t want to be sad and depressed. I don’t want my family to be sad and depressed.”
In her family, which includes her 17-year-old son, Joel, and 15-year-old daughter, Sharaya, they don’t talk about “the C-word.”
“We don’t talk about it, and we don’t live like I’m sick,” Shelly said. “I don’t want the kids living with a mom who talks and thinks like she’s sick. When the doctor speaks to me, I don’t accept words of death. I listen to them, but I don’t take them in.”
To deal with some of the harder aspects, Shelly turns to “the healing Scriptures” found in the Bible.
Shelly’s mom, Sharol, is a former pastor of Foursquare Church in Logansport. Shelly also describes her mother as her rock. Sharol drives her daughter to doctor’s appointments and chemotherapy sessions. She takes Shelly to class. Some nights, when Shelly is ready to give up, her mom is the one who fights for her.
“I think every cancer patient needs that one or two or three people to take up the fight for you,” Shelly said. “When I’m tired of being a soldier — so tired I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to pray and I think God doesn’t care — Mom doesn’t say anything, but she prays for me.”
Sharol said the best thing is to let Shelly talk about how she feels, get angry and cry if she needs to. Letting Shelly get her emotions out helps her heal and get through the next day, Sharol said.
“As a mother, you think you have answers for your children,” Sharol said. “Most mothers have the answers for their kids until something like this, and you don’t know any more what to tell them, what to say, what to pray to help them out.”
Strength for life
Throughout the process, Sharol said Shelly has been “extremely strong.”
“She’s done very well carrying this,” Sharol said of her daughter. “No matter how many people you have around you, you still have to carry yourself. There’s only so much a person can do for somebody else in that situation. She’s been very positive. She gets down sometimes, which is normal. But she’s gone against all odds.”
Going against the odds is what propels Shelly. “I don’t intend on dying until I’m old, old, like 90. I want to watch my kids get married and have kids. I want to be around my family and don’t have any intentions of going anywhere.
“Cancer has taught me how to be happy and not let people get to me. It’s just changed my whole way of thinking and put a lot of fearlessness in me. It’s shown me how short life can be.”
Shelly said that cancer is depressing enough and that she wants to encourage other cancer patients, “whatever it takes, to not focus on death but to choose life.”
“It’s not a simple thing,” she said. “There are days where I go good for a while, but for a couple of days, I’m not positive. But anything I can say to encourage other people not to give up I will. ... When I talk with another cancer patient, I try to encourage them, not by telling them to be happy, but by asking, ‘What can I do for you? How can I make your life better?’”
