By Denise O’Donoghue
A young Carlow woman is celebrating one year free of active cancer following pioneering cancer treatment in the US.
Shauntelle Tynan, who was diagnosed with Histiocytosis X, a rare form of cancer, travelled to Houston, Texas in 2017 after raising over €750k for a ground-breaking treatment there when her video appeal for donations went viral.
Her family had been struggling to raise money before her plight gained nationwide attention.
"To be told that we had to come up with a minimum of €500k just for the initial treatment in a couple of months, in my head I was saying this can't happen so I'm going to lose my child. I felt so powerless," her mum Leona told the Ray D'Arcy Show on RTÉ Radio 1. She said she was unaware Shauntelle had posted a video online until donations came flooding in.
"I was down in the kitchen cooking the dinner and my phone started to buzz because she had uploaded this video unknownst to me. It was just in the moment and she went with it.
"Everything was boiling over while I was looking at my phone and I thought there's an error and I started screaming the house down because there was so many emails coming in from GoFundMe that I couldn't keep track. Within a few minutes, the total was over €100k. For the next 24 hours, we didn't sleep, we just sat there refreshing the page. This meant everything to us."
Shauntelle stayed in Texas to receive treatment for 20 months, returning home to Ireland one year ago.
"I feel like I can never say thank you enough. That year [in the States] was just so powerful for me," Shauntelle said.
It was just perfect timing, everything worked out perfectly.
Shauntelle said her life is now back on track as she has gone from planning her funeral to planning her future.
"I matured really well in the hospital but anything outside the hospital, like real adult life struggles, college, things like that, I missed out on. When you have to plan your funeral and do that almost with a smile because you want to be positive about it and you want that experience to be good for the people around you. I didn't really think about it being a funeral for myself but for the living and the people who would be there and how they would cope when I was gone. It wasn't about me.
"Obviously I wanted to live but at the same time, I was worried about everyone else around me if I was gone. That was the biggest struggle. [The doctors in Texas] always kept me positive and always approached everything with a smile. That's what helped us."
Shauntelle said while there is no cure for her cancer, it is dormant which allows her to live normally.
"It doesn't actually get to cancer-free, but it gets to no active cancer. There's no cure but it's dormant. There's no evidence of the disease for a year now. It's brilliant. I'm on one oral chemo tablet a day and I'm on a few other medications but I'm doing really well.
"The first thing I did was get back into fitness because I lost a lot of my stamina throughout chemo and I gained a lot of weight on steroids. I exercise twice a week, I do intense classes and then I do a walk each day.
I'm looking into college now because I wanted to wait until I had a year of no evidence of the disease coming back. Now I'm ready.
Shauntelle and Leona are looking forward to spending Christmas with their family in Carlow.
"I'm so proud of her, we've come a long way," Leona said.
