‘Only half of what I was’: Mourning the loss of beloved nurse Shannon Adams
Even in her dying days, Shannon Adams was still a nurse.
An unflappable, open-hearted, laughter-is-the-best-medicine kind of nurse.
Caring and compassion," a friend would eulogize, were Shannon's superpowers."
Like on that January day at Juravinski Hospital.
Shannon's husband Brad Adams, a Hamilton police sergeant, carried her to a wheelchair when they arrived. Shannon hadn't been able to walk for weeks. The rare plasma cell leukemia form of multiple myeloma she was diagnosed with 13 months earlier had swollen her body and impeded her breathing.
Shannon's cancer team gently told her she was palliative now. Yet she stubbornly wanted to keep going with treatment, because maybe it would buy her more time with Brad and their daughters.
So she was at the Juravinski yet again.
Nearby, an older woman was having her cancer treatment too. Shannon noted her colostomy bag and remarked that it was about to burst.
Then it did.
Brad, feeling squeamish, went to retrieve the wheelchair.
When he returned a moment later, Shannon was on her feet changing the stranger's bag, cleaning her up, telling her not to worry.
Both women were laughing.
It was one of the proudest moments I've ever had," Brad says, his voice breaking.
Two days later, Jan. 28, Shannon died in Brad's arms at their home in Canfield.
I was laying beside her. Hugging her," he says.
Shannon was 43.
Shannon's story is first, foremost and forever the story of a woman who loved her husband and children - Abby, 13 and Emma, 10 - more than anything.
It is also the story of a woman who was fiercely protective of her own privacy, yet blessed Brad's mission to raise awareness for stem cell donations in her honour. Brad did media interviews and rode his horse Sandor for 233 kilometres from Dunnville to Tillsonburg, to Port Dover and back to Caledonia, and posted to social media in the hope - at first - that a life-saving match might be found for Shannon. When it became apparent her leukemia was too advanced for a transplant to help, he carried on, hoping someone else's life could be saved.
Shannon loved him for his efforts but chose not to participate.
She didn't want people to feel pity for her," Brad says. She didn't want to ever be on display. The ride and the registry was my thing really."
Shannon, a farm girl on her own horse, joined Brad, who was once with the police mounted unit, on one day of his ride.
She chose a day when it was raining, because she knew no one would see her," he says.
Brad's campaign paid off. Thousands of people - it is impossible to know an exact number - registered as potential stem cell donors in Shannon's honour. Others donated blood in her name. Some $20,000 was raised for research and another $50,000 for Juravinski Hospital.
This is also the story of COVID.
Shannon had worked at Norfolk General Hospital for 17 years, delivering babies and caring for the dying. When the pandemic hit, she was in the trenches every day. When she felt off and needed to stay home just before Christmas 2020, she thought she had COVID.
I was just wiped out," she told me back then. I could hardly get out of bed. I knew something was wrong."
Like other cancer patients, Shannon had to face many of her hospital appointments alone because of pandemic visitor restrictions. In her final days, Brad was allowed to join her because she couldn't manage on her own.
I learned how lonely she must have been," he says. I was just crushed."
Shannon knew she might not see the end of COVID and she refused to let it steal the remainder of her life. She surrounded herself - cautiously and as best she could - with the people she loved most.
This doesn't feel like the way it was supposed to end," says Brad. Without her, I'm really only half of what I was."
To register as a stem cell donor: www.blood.ca/match4shannon
Susan Clairmont is a justice columnist at The Spectator. sclairmont@thespec.com