Widowed DeKalb man honors late wife with $13K cancer center donation

DeKALB – For the second year in a row, a widowed DeKalb man has donated thousands to the healthcare facility where his late wife received treatment before she died a month shy of her 50th birthday.

Shannon Finnan died on April 12, 2020, after battling melanoma, a type of skin cancer. Her husband Roger Finnan said her cancer started as a three-inch long spot on her back, which her doctors tried to surgically remove.

“Apparently didn’t get it all,” said Finnan, recalling wife’s terminal sickness. “We didn’t know melanoma was that bad of a cancer. Any cancer is bad but you didn’t think it would lead to this.”

Now, near the first hole at River Heights Golf Course in DeKalb – where the married couple could often be spotted golfing – sits a bench bench commemorating Shannon Phillips Finnan as a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend to her community.

Four years on, that community continues to pay their respects.

In June, about 128 golfers came together for a charity golf event that raised $13,000 for the Kishwaukee Medicine Foundation.

“That’s a big sum, and that’s just through people donating,” Finnan said.

Angela McCrum, director for Northwestern Medicine Living Well Cancer Resources, said she was impressed by the amount of money raised from one day of golfing.

She said the charity donation will enable the Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital Cancer Center to provide additional resources to patients undergoing cancer treatments.

“What this funding has allowed us to do, is support patients with aspects of care that may not be covered under insurance,” McCrum said.

McCrum said government regulations prevent the money from going directly to pay for patient’s healthcare costs. The items that don’t fall under the umbrella of insurance are where the center hopes the Finnan funds can help patients, she said.

“Insurance covers the treatments, and it’s really the supplemental things that insurance doesn’t cover, and it’s those thing’s that have an impact on a patients quality of life. That’s where we’re able to offset where a patient may have shied away,” McCrum said. “We know that there’s a financial toxicity to going through cancer treatment, whether it’s the out-of-pocket cost, not being able to work. And so, to be able to have this support from Roger, and his friends and family in the community to help another patient offset some of that, it makes an impact on their [patients] quality of life while they’re going through treatment.”

Finnan said he believes his wife would love having a charity golf outing, and a commemorative bench, in her honor at the DeKalb golf course.

For his part, Finnan said he was moved by his experience aiding his wife through her sickness, and wanted to give back to the facility that helped them through their roughest days.

“We spent nine months at the cancer center. I’ve seen a lot of people that I didn’t even know had cancer, basically somewhat friends of ours, and it just amazes you when you sit out there. And then quality of care between the nurses and doctors is amazing,” Finnan said. “The nurses, I don’t know how they do that day after day, especially when you know some of the out comes are not going to be good. I mean, she [Shannon] had hope. She had hope up until a month before she passed.”