When the Road Forks Twice: Shirley’s Story
Some people face a rare cancer diagnosis after years of searching for answers. For Shirley Leonard, the discovery of EHE arrived differently — quietly, almost hidden in the shadow of a battle already being fought.
About eight years ago, Shirley was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma. What followed was a long and exhausting road through thirteen different chemotherapy regimens, none of which worked. Her daughter Tiara, who has been at her side through every step, drove her to Vanderbilt Cancer Center in Nashville in April 2018, in search of something more. There, Shirley was placed on Venetoclax — and it worked. By early 2019, her Multiple Myeloma was in remission.
For a while, the family could breathe.
Then, in June 2025, routine scans revealed a couple of spots on Shirley’s lungs. Her local oncologist suspected infection, or perhaps the Multiple Myeloma returning. A biopsy told a different story: Epithelioid Hemangioendothelioma. When the family pulled an older scan from her pulmonologist’s office, they discovered the EHE had likely been there for two to three years before anyone thought to look for it — an incidental finding that had been waiting in plain sight.
For Tiara, the moment of that second diagnosis was the lowest point in their entire journey. “After all she had been through with the first cancer” — thirteen failed treatments, years of uncertainty, the relief of remission — learning that Shirley was now living with a second, ultra-rare cancer was a weight that’s hard to put into words.
In January 2026, Tiara took her mother to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. The news there offered some reassurance: no further biopsies were recommended, and the fact that Shirley’s EHE is contained within the lungs was considered a relatively favorable presentation. The team has discussed a bone marrow biopsy as a next step, though Shirley herself has declined for now — a choice that reflects something essential about who she is.
Shirley isn’t spending her days worrying. She’s spending them with family, and especially with her three great-grandchildren. Being told you have a very rare cancer, she seems to have decided, is not the same as being told how to live.
Her story is a reminder that EHE doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it arrives as a second diagnosis, tucked inside a scan taken for an entirely different reason, found only in retrospect. And sometimes the person at the center of it all simply refuses to let it define her days.
