It all started with a few red flags he could ignore.
Scratchy throat. A touch of vertigo. No appetite.
The symptoms, of course, worsened, though, and after a few weeks, Shannon Canterbury was finding it difficult to sing, let alone play his guitar. Sooner than later, unfortunately, whatever it was, the symptoms knocked the singer/songwriter off stage and into an inconsistent hospitalization cycle.
“What was wrong with me? That was the big question, and no one seemed to have any answers other than, ‘Something.’ The doctors didn’t even know in the beginning,” Canterbury explained. “I can tell you I didn’t feel normal. I didn’t feel right. I felt differently than I had ever felt and had symptoms of something that I had never experienced before in my lifetime.
“I have equated it all to something I learned when I used to hunt deer. When you hit a deer, it doesn’t know it was shot. The deer just knows that something is wrong,” he said. “It just runs to where he thinks things are going to be better, and eventually the deer drops. Well, I think I knew I’d been shot, but I had no idea what was wrong, and neither did the doctors.”
Stat
First, it was East Ohio Regional Hospital. Then consultations with a team of Pittsburgh physicians. Then Wheeling Hospital. And, as Canterbury repeats often these days, “Thank God for Dr. (John) Nasr.”
“When I was in Wheeling Hospital, I had good days and bad days, and usually the bad days were the ones when I wanted to know exactly what was going on inside my body, but no one could tell me,” the East Ohio resident explained. “But then Dr. Nasr started asking a lot of the same questions, but he was ordering tests to get his answers, and finally he found what he was looking for.
“What we found out is that I had a tumor in my pancreas the whole time, and it was creating the symptoms and causing what I call wreckage inside my body. It was horrible,” Canterbury explained. “Thank God I had had enough with how I was feeling and finally went to find some help because if I had not done that, I don’t know if I would be here today.”
Dr. Nasr ordered a diet restriction – no more sugar – and that directive did the trick, Canterbury said.
“He made the change in my diet by removing the sugar, and soon after he did that, they were able to test the tumor in my pancreas,” he recalled. “At first, everyone thought there would be cancer in the tumor because, 99 percent of the time, that’s the case. But guess what? No cancer.
“They had been preparing me for the worst news, and cancer in the pancreas is really bad news,” he said. “But somehow, some way, that didn’t turn out to be my future. At least not yet anyway.”
Beep Goes the Night
“Is there a lonelier place on the planet other than a hospital room at night? If there is, I don’t know about it,” Canterbury said matter-of-factly. “It’s quiet, but it’s not.
“I posted on Facebook pretty late sometimes, but that was because my sleep schedule was so screwed up, and I wanted some company,” he admitted. “It worked a few times but not every time.”
Canterbury tried to count sheep with the beeps of the attached machines, and he even attempted to write songs, but concentrating on his future proved difficult.
“The music was always in my head while I was sick, but, for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t really do anything with it except play it in my head because there were times when I couldn’t sing and other times when I was hooked to something in the hospital,” Canterbury recounted. “I wanted to play the guitar, too, for the people at the hospital because they always seemed so stressed all of the time, but I couldn’t really do that either.
“There were times when I thought of words for a song, but then they would leave my mind because, as anyone who has ever stayed a few nights in a hospital knows, they run you crazy in there with this test and that test,” he said. “I know they did those things so they could figure out how to make me better, but it was hard to concentrate, especially during the days.”
Overnight infomercials, Canterbury has determined, do not make for good television, and those 5 a.m. injections seemed like an unfair replacement for the old-fashioned wake-up call. The past two years represent 700-plus days he never wishes to re-live, but he’s also aware one piece of good news does not end his medical mending.
“The nights were lonely,” he said. “The nights were mostly about really bad TV, but there were those times when I would get into my head and think about my future — more about wanting to have a future because it was pretty scary not knowing what was wrong with me. It’s still scary, to be honest. The tumor is still in there, in my pancreas. I just know it’s not cancerous right now.
“I know this isn’t over, but it’s been nice being out of the hospital and performing again. The reaction has been overwhelming; I can tell you that. So much love,” Canterbury added. “I can tell you … when you are in a situation like I was in, you figure out how much you want to live real quick.”
