by Jeanne Gorman
Special to The Leaven
OVERLAND PARK — As he neared retirement, Terry Scanlon was looking forward to stepping away from his work in Osawatomie and spending more time with wife Kelly and the rest of his family.
Scanlon had served in city administration in nearby Mission and Osawatomie, as well as in Basalt, Colorado. But the Scanlons were longtime members of — and had raised their children in — Queen of the Holy Rosary in Overland Park.
They looked forward to returning to the many church activities they had been involved in there and their large network of friends.
That was before Scanlon began experiencing a variety of unexplained symptoms.
He wound up returning to Overland Park and Queen with a diagnosis of Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer.
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Scanlon’s journey to a definitive diagnosis was long and challenging. In the fall of 2023, he developed a bad cough that wouldn’t go away and was diagnosed with various things like allergies — not cancer. Around the holidays, his back began hurting and continued to get worse. In January 2024, he had a chest X-ray and was diagnosed with pneumonia.
In January and February of that year, Scanlon begged for as much pain medication as his provider would prescribe. The pain was so intense, he could hardly get out of bed. He was sent to physical therapy. Nothing seemed to help.
Scanlon turned to prayer, praying Hail Marys to get his mind off the pain. When he still did not improve, he was given an MRI in March, which showed he had Stage 4 metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.
Kelly Scanlon, likewise, had to let go and trust God. Accustomed to being able to handle almost anything, now her husband’s very life was in the hands of his medical team and God.
Fortunately, tests determined that her husband had a biomarker that qualified him to receive treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration based on a clinical trial just three months before his treatment began.
This biomarker-targeted therapy consisted of one pill a day for the rest of his life. No radiation or chemotherapy was required. Thusfar, it has been a resounding success.
Scanlon has suffered no side effects from the new medication. And whereas before receiving this treatment, he felt he was dying, within a week of starting treatment, he felt better. Thankfully, the treatment was so successful that Terry was found NED (no evidence of disease, aka, in remission) in April 2025.
While undergoing treatment, Scanlon realized that this lifesaving treatment was the work of extensive — and expensive — medical research. Although lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the country, it has the least research funding.
The Scanlons set out to change that, as well as to raise funds for the Kansas Trails system as Terry was an avid bike rider. He was also motivated by the Athenian oath he had tried to follow during his years of city administration — to basically leave things better than he found them.
In short, he wanted to fund the kind of research that had helped him “for the people who come after me.”
Toward that end, the Scanlons set up a GoFundMe page to support these goals and Terry committed to ride 706 miles of the Kansas Trails system, which he completed at the trails end in the Flint Hills Trail State Park in October. About $50,000 has been raised thusfar, and the Scanlons are committed to keep fundraising into this new year.
In recognition of his efforts, Terry has been invited to go to Washington, D.C., in March to lobby for federal funding for lung cancer research.
Kelly sees their journey as an attempt to put faith into action, and the Scanlons hope sharing it will encourage others facing a lung cancer diagnosis. As they work to promote even further research, they hope their story serves not only a witness to the power of modern medicine, but as an act of appreciation for all those who work and sacrifice to advance cancer cures.
For more information about Terry Scanlon’s story, go online to: www.gofundme.com/f/ride-for-resilience-r4r-help-us-make-a-difference.
