Finishing what her dad started: MUSC employee biking 50 miles in LOWVELO24

Her dad never had the chance to finish.

More than 20 miles into his 50-mile ride in last year’s LOWVELO, which raises funds for lifesaving cancer research at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, Shannon Phelps’ father, Henry Hardy, had to drop out. He was fatigued. His energy was low, and his riding partner noticed he was just not himself. Henry ended up feeling better after medics took him to MUSC to get checked out and get fluids. But the fact that he was riding at all was impressive. Not only was he 79 years old, but he had been diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in 2021.

“I was like ‘OK, something’s wrong with your blood. We can fix that. No problem,’” said Shannon as she remembered hearing her dad’s diagnosis. “Little did I know that it was a way bigger thing than I could have ever imagined.”

MDS is a group of cancers that occurs when blood-forming cells in the bone marrow become abnormal. In a healthy person, the bone marrow makes blood stem cells that mature into blood cells over time. In patients with MDS, those blood stem cells never mature, causing infection, shortness of breath, weakness, anemia and easy bruising or bleeding.

To treat his MDS, Henry’s physicians had tried different medications, and he was receiving blood transfusions that his daughter likened to a recharge for his batteries.

“Earlier this year, he had actually started developing antibodies that were not accepting blood transfusions anymore – regardless of the type, regardless of how much,” said Shannon. “It’s like they kept recharging his battery, and then, all of a sudden, his battery just wouldn’t charge anymore.”

 

LOWVELO23 ended up being Henry’s last ride. Five months after he had to drop out of the ride, his doctor told him that his battery was going to run out – that it was a waiting game. He was given two to four weeks to live. He died four days later, on April 19.

“He was the best man. He was a good father. My mom worked a lot, so he would drop us off for school in the morning and I would hold his hand the whole way. It was one of our favorite memories together,” recalled Shannon. “He was the one picking us up from school or making us dinners. He was just very involved and very active himself, but also active in our lives.”

After his diagnosis, Shannon wanted to repay her father for being such a strong force in her life. She and her husband, Riley, built a garage with an in-law apartment above it so her dad could be close and spend as much time as possible with their young daughters, Freya and Phoenix. That’s where he spent the last six months of his life.

“He joked that he lived in my backyard,” she remembered. “I just never wanted him to feel like he was not surrounded by love when he was as sick as he was.”

Familiar with loss

Caring for and supporting a sick parent, unfortunately, wasn’t new for Shannon, as she was forced to deal with cancer and loss at a young age. When she was just a junior in high school, her mother, Cheryl Hardy, was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. After a year of treatment, she went into remission.

“It was awesome. We took a trip to Hawai’i that year,” recalled Shannon with a smile.

The excitement didn’t last long, though. As Shannon started her first year of college, Cheryl’s cancer came back, and this time it had spread to her lymph nodes and eventually to her brain. As a woman of faith, Cheryl decided to travel to Brazil in the spring of 2007 to visit with a healer in hopes that it would help but suffered a fall while there and had to cut her trip short. Not much more than a week after getting home, hospice was set up and Cheryl passed away in her sleep.

“It was the morning of April 1, which was also my birthday,” remembered Shannon. “I turned 19 that day.”

She took a few weeks off school at Coastal Carolina University to be with her father and 13-year-old sister.

But the memory of her mother – a ‘tough cookie' and brilliant real estate agent who has served as her inspiration as she’s navigated womanhood, her career and motherhood – propelled Shannon to return to school and her life.

 

“I think a lot of people would have used her death at the time of my life as an excuse,” she said. “I just remember laying in the bed during those two weeks I took off from school, and I said ‘She wouldn't want this. You need to go back to school.’ That was her coaching me and saying, ‘Get up. Go do your studies. What are you doing? There's no time for this.’ So, I think I just used her as my inspiration and motivation.”

When she returned to school, there were still days she didn’t want to leave the couch or her dorm room.

“I would just lie down on that couch, and I would be like, ‘I miss her. I miss my mom,’" remembered Shannon. “I count myself lucky, though, because of the stage I was in. I was easily distracted by my social life and sporting events and my friends and my education and what I was going to do.”

Looking back now, she knows that her grief journey was easier than her young sister’s, who was still at home with her father.

“Life didn’t change for her. She was still at home. She was surrounded by memories and her things and the way she decorated the house, and she wasn’t able to sort of escape it like I was.”

And so, after finishing the school year at Coastal Carolina, Shannon decided she needed to be closer to home and transferred to the College of Charleston. It allowed her the chance to be a bigger part of her sister’s life and help to guide her through her teen years.

A passion for biking found in grief

Her father, meanwhile, found a new passion to help him through his grief.

“That’s when he found biking. Reading and riding his bike – those were his ways of filling the gap of grief, I guess,” she said. “He got himself a road bike and started riding around Folly Beach. And then biking became races, and the races became this whole passion of his.”

Henry rode in LOWVELO23 for his wife, and for Riley’s dad, Gary Phelps, who died after a battle with esophageal cancer in 2017. Losing a parent early in life to cancer was something she and Riley had bonded over early in their relationship.

 

Even though Henry was forced to end his ride before finishing, watching him ride through his sickness to honor their lives and to raise funds for cancer research inspired his daughter.

“My dad was courageous. He was strong. I don't know a lot of people who could be so deeply sick and still get out there and get on a bike and ride for cancer,” she said.

In June, Shannon, who works in the orthopedic department at MUSC, took that inspiration and put it into action. She made a trip to the Trek Store and purchased her first road bike. She plans to finish what her dad started in November – and has registered to ride the 50-mile route in LOWVELO24.

“I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it’s my way of now grieving. We lost him in April, and I said, ‘Well, I’m going to start biking,’” Shannon said with a laugh.

Losing so many people she loved, she said, makes it impossible not to think about her own mortality. So, she’s made fitness and building a strong, healthy body a major priority in her life – a priority that training for LOWVELO can only help.

Shannon plans to start getting out on Tuesday night rides with LOWVELO and the Charleston Beer Riders to learn the rules of the road and get her body ready for 50 miles. She already has a feeling that somewhere between the 20- and 30-mile mark on ride day, her dad will send her a sign – and she’s sure it’ll push her along to the finish line.

“Everybody has a ‘why,’” said Shannon. “I’m riding in LOWVELO to honor my dad. It’s going to help me in my grief process. It’s going to help others in their grief process or their journey with cancer. But ultimately, starting the group and wanting to fundraise, it can only help drive forward the research and the studies to someday make a difference in cancer medicine. I ride to lighten the load for people in the future so that they don’t have to lose as much as I have.”

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