An intensive care unit nurse at Henry Ford Hospital becomes a patient after a handful of surgeries revealed she has cancer.
Ashley Shaffer, the 10-year ICU nurse, was working to save lives when she learned she was fighting for her own.
“I was about 9 weeks pregnant, working in the ICU, and I came home from work that morning, my ankles were super swollen,” said Shaffer, who initially thought it was due to a busy shift on her feet.
The 34-year-old raised the concern with her doctor, who ordered tests anyway. They revealed her potassium levels were low, low enough to warrant two trips to the emergency room.
More answers came later with more tests.
“What really brought everything together is we did genetic testing on the baby, and it came back inconclusive; there were too many of my cells in the sample,” Shaffer said.
The diagnosis was a copy number variant.
“It’s a rare disorder, only 38 confirmed cases out of two million, and it usually means there’s a blood cancer or a tumor,” Shaffer said.
After more testing, Shaffer and her doctors got their first look at her cancer. Doctors told her she had a 14 cm mass on her adrenal gland and that it needed to come out right away.
In May of 2023, doctors removed a mass the size of a football. She nearly died during surgery. Her baby boy did not survive.
Not long after the first surgery, Shaffer underwent open heart surgery to remove a portion of the tumor that broke off and was blocking her pulmonary artery.
She spent 15 days in her own ICU, being treated by nurses she had worked alongside.
“I just didn’t believe this was happening to me, the surgery, losing Noah, then finding out I have cancer too,” Shaffer said. “I just couldn’t believe it was actually happening.”
The cancer Shaffer has is adrenocortical carcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that impacts just one in one million people each year.
Seven weeks after surgery, the cancer came back, this time in her liver. Because the cancer is so rare, there isn’t enough research to show what treatments work, which means the insurance company isn’t covering the cost.
Since her cancer continued to grow on the last treatment, doctors have switched her to a different medicine that costs $28,000 each month.
Shaffer recently learned she was approved for some kind of assistance but says it’s unclear how much that will reduce the cost or how long she will be on this course of medicine.
It’s one of the reasons her sister started a GoFundMe account, as Shaffer is unable to work while she undergoes treatment.