Her doctors call Shamara Archie a mystery.
But she prefers miracle.
Now the Galloway Township mom is hoping to find someone to become a life-saving part of her miraculous journey.
In early May, Archie found out she is in full liver failure.
The community has joined her search for a living donor who would give 25 percent of one lobe of their liver.
The only organ in the human body that can regenerate, the section would grow back within 30 days, she says.
There are several requirements, including a B positive or universal O positive blood type and no health issues. Whoever meets the criteria would then donate directly to Archie.
The search is a difficult one, but Archie has gone against the odds before.
In February 2020, she was lethargic when she was taken into emergency surgery where she coded.
The next day, Archie was upbeat as she greeted her doctor. She didn’t remember the danger she had been in the day before, only that she now felt better than she had in years.
The doctor called in his whole team, not understanding how there had been such a turnaround.
“At that point, they started calling me a mystery case,” she said.
“I’m not a mystery case, I’m a miracle case,” she told them. “Now God is going to use me to show you who he really is.”
Archie also has shown who she really is.
While she has battled, the Atlantic City native continued to work toward her bachelor’s degree, writing papers while in ICU and getting in trouble with her nurses.
Archie graduated with a 4.0, although she was unable to walk.
Her determination continues as she fights to live for her husband and young son.
She and Dale Archie have been together since she was 16 years old.
But from October 2018 until March of 2020, she was mostly apart from everyone as she was hospitalized.
“There were times he would ask me if I was ever going to come home again,” she says of Jayden, now 6. “He would also ask me if God was going to give his mommy back to him.”
His daddy did all he could with Shamara Archie away.
"My husband was a machine that never stopped going," she said.
He would drive two hours from their Galloway home to his teaching job in Trenton, work, drive the two hours home and then pick up their son. It would be another 2½- hour drive to take his wife to Capital Health Systems.
"He never complained," she said. "Not one. I would always ask him if he was OK. He would tell me that he's not thinking about himself, he's focused on me."
ADVERTISEMENT
Her illness not only took Archie away from her family, but also from her career.
She worked for AtlantiCare since the age of 17. But her doctors decided she was too sick to continue.
Her background in health care was a bit of a curse, as it was hard for those tending to her to hide how serious things were. She knew what they were saying, even when they would have discussions outside her room and she would pick up only certain words.
But she also saw how important the compassion she always had for her patients at the Cancer Center was to them firsthand.
It took a while for Archie to find a group that tended to her not only as a patient but a person.
“When I had physicians and nurses who treated me like a number, that bothered me,” she said. “You treat people how you want to be treated.”
She found that group at the University of Pennsylvania, which just so happened to be one the best transplant teams on the East Coast.
They would check on her in the middle of the night, call her husband to give him updates and even gave out their cell phone numbers to call with any problems or concerns.
“I needed that compassion,” she said. “I told them, ‘I need you to fight just as well as I’m going to fight.’”
While she fights, she prays someone will come forward to donate.
Anyone who would like to see about donating can reach out to Archie through the following links: Facebook, email or call 609-442-6204.
