43
Warren woman waits tables with a smile, despite breast cancer, family hardships
By sarah lehr
GIRARD
Shannon Travis, a 39-year-old Warren resident, is all smiles while she waits tables at the Iron Skillet, a small diner nestled within the Petro Place truck stop off Interstate 80.
She wears a pink polo shirt and a sequin-studded pink-ribbon pin in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And her hair is all gone – a byproduct of chemotherapy.
Travis, a single mother of six, has had a hellish last few months, though you’d never guess that from her demeanor. In April, she received a diagnosis of breast cancer – a shock given that she was just 38 at the time and knew of no relatives with the disease.
Her troubles mounted in August when a car hit her 14-year-old son, Kalil, while he was on his way home from football practice. Kalil suffered a broken leg and 44 stitches, Travis said, but is out of the hospital and doing well.
But, on Oct. 1, misfortune struck again. Travis’ 21-year-old son, River, an honors student at Kent State University, was robbed of $200 and shot in the chest just down the street from the Travis home in Warren. Doctors told Travis that River had a 50/50 chance of living. He remains in the intensive-care unit at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, receiving treatment for an infection from the bullet.
Travis is in her 18th week of chemotherapy, which means she’s often beset by crippling nausea and fatigue. But, she still manages to divide her time between working four days a week at the Iron Skillet and her daily visits to see River. She tries not to let River see her cry while she’s there, but sometimes she can’t help it.
“It’s just so hard to see this strong young man look so frail and tired,” she said.
Waiting tables requires Travis to be on her feet for hours at a time, but somehow she finds the energy.
People often ask Travis how she’s carried on through these difficult months, and she says she doesn’t have an answer for them.
“The truth is I don’t how I did it,” she said. “I’m just thinking, let’s get through this next day, let’s worry about this next house payment.”
For Travis, faith also is a motivator. She prays daily and takes her children to church twice a week at First Assembly of God here.
Family and friends have helped, too. Her daughter and her mother both offered to shave their heads in solidarity, and Travis recalled another episode in which she became violently ill in a hospital waiting room, vomiting all over her mother.
“I remember thinking, who else but a mother would do this?” Travis said. “My mother has been there for me in a way that nobody else can.”
Travis rarely allows herself to stray from the positive, but she said she was heartbroken when her cancer rendered her unable to build the tree house she promised her children and bought lumber for in the spring.
“My children are the only thing that matters,” she said. “I spoil them with love, and I know I have to keep going to work every day to set a good example.”
Travis described the Iron Skillet as “like a second-family.” She said her manager, Lavonne Morgan, also a breast-cancer survivor, has been a source of commiseration and hope.
Morgan found out she had cancer when she was 37.
“When you hear the word ‘cancer,’ you can’t help but think ‘death’ and wonder what’s going to happen to your kids when you die,” Morgan recalled of her own diagnosis. Morgan, however, has now been cancer-free for more than a decade and regularly reminds the women she works with about mammograms.
Travis cried tears of joy when she found out Tuesday her co-workers organized a bake sale to raise money for her medical expenses. The Iron Skillet is open 24 hours, and the bake sale will continue while supplies last.