If you ask Shanta Tailor about her past eight years – there are stories of playing softball with her cousin, and holiday memories – but there are many more stories of inexplicable pain, frightening diagnoses, emergency department visits, cancer treatments, medical complications, countless hospital stays, and an abundance of hope and gratitude. As she tells the tale of the health issues she has endured, the word she uses most frequently: Amazing. In an hour’s time, you might hear it a dozen times, as she recounts the care she received at Capital Health.
She will describe her physicians, spanning many specialties, as amazing. Moreover, in describing her time spent with Capital Health’s emergency team, oncology nurses, techs and aides, she describes them as amazing as well. She’s grateful for each day, and the good health that is allowing her to pursue her passion.
After high school graduation, Shanta’s intuitive empathy and compassion drove her desire to focus career aspirations to help others, and to join the medical field. Nursing school, at the time, was cost prohibitive and she set her sights on becoming an emergency medical technician. Unbeknownst at the time, Shanta would soon endure surprising and serious medical conditions – giving her firsthand knowledge of the excellence in care and compassion of Capital Health – and underscoring her desire to deliver the person-centered care she experienced – and to do so in the community that was along her side through her health journey.
Shanta was only 22 years young when she discovered what felt like a golf ball size lump in her left breast during a routine self-exam. As it turns out, the lump was actually bigger than a golf ball. Despite her age, no family history of breast cancer and her otherwise excellent health, the large mass had to be removed and biopsied. She vividly remembers the words of her physician, as the results were delivered to her, “… not what we’d hoped. You need to come in on Monday and bring anyone you’d like.” Her mom was next to hear the news, and as Shanta recalls, “she didn’t cry as I told her, and looking back I needed and appreciated her strength.” Triple negative breast cancer Stage 2 required surgery (mastectomy) and 8 cycles of chemotherapy before reconstructive surgery.
“My healthcare team was amazing through it all, I felt like they treated me as if I was their own child.”
For the next few years, Shanta realized cancer survivorship and the normalities of day-to-day life, until the day that life’s tests would meet her once again. Shanta states that the day it was confirmed, a 7-pound cancerous tumor resting on her left ovary, which was causing nearly intolerable pain as it pressed against her stomach and diaphragm, is the same day she fully learned what remission meant. “That taught me that each day should be lived as best as it can be, because you don’t know what might be around the corner.”
In that moment, Shanta learned that she would need to undergo 6-hour chemotherapy sessions, 5 days per week with constant nausea, and her appreciation of simpler times was amplified. Week one, Shanta remembers feeling like she was going to pass out in her shower and her vision was blurry. A blood clot had developed, and led to a weeklong hospitalization - delaying chemotherapy. When anesthesia from surgery wore off, she went straight back to the chemotherapy suite where nurses volunteered to stay late, allowing minimal delay in her treatment – the protocol was rigorous and at times, unforgiving.
“I felt the love, I felt like family.” From surgeons, to nurses, to schedulers and others, Shanta recalls the warmth of each encounter she had. “It was amazing to feel like I was their only patient, their only concern.”
When scans showed yet another mass, 10 cm in her pelvic area, Shanta and the team hoped the current chemotherapy would shrink that tumor as well. Nevertheless, the mass grew, and a hysterectomy was ultimately required. With the prospect of a very big operation that would also remove part of her intestines, Shanta reminded herself to stay strong and she leaned into the confidence she had in her team of specialists. There have been other nodules, thankfully benign, and Shanta is as diligent about self-care as she was when she discovered her first lump. “I have learned to make the best of each day and embrace each moment.”
These days, when she is not working at Capital Health as an Emergency Medical Technician, or preparing herself for nursing school, you are likely to find Shanta nurturing her adventurous side – skydiving, ATV riding, and motorcycles, balanced by howling and enjoying the sounds of Reggae and Soca that take her back to her Caribbean roots.
Capital Health is fortunate, as is our community, to count Shanta - once a patient, now a caregiver- among its amazing care team. There is no doubt that the compassion that was poured into her recovery is being shared with everyone she encounters.
Shanta Tailor’s testament of her unique health journey becomes the fortune of our community, as she is an Emergency Medical Technician with Capital Health. Shanta’s ambition is to become a registered nurse, having completed course registration for the fall of 2024. There is just no doubt that Shanta’s lived experience will inform care that is the bedrock of Capital Health – care that is exceptional, compassionate, and informed.
For more information on how to make a donation or gift of support to Capital Health, please call 609-303-4121 or email [email protected].