Widowed at 22
In 2001, I met one of the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. Little did we know that we lived over 4,000 miles apart from each other. Little did I know that he was suffering from a terrible illness called Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Fast forward to 2007 when we were deciding that after communicating with each other pretty much all day, every day and he was 5 years in remission. We were planning our wedding and my move to the UK from MD. He finally landed his dream job and seemed the happiest he had ever been. I was so happy that I was able to attend his last real check up at the doctors while I was visiting him in the UK. The doctors told us that he looked perfect and that he was in the clear now. We weren't thinking about cancer anymore, just about any issues it might cause him in the future because of all the radiation and chemo he had to endure. Not to mention all of his close calls to death and the toll that these poisons took on his organs.
It wasn't even a week after I got back and suddenly I fell ill and David started acting strange. He
started finding weird bruises on himself and was acting very withdrawn. While I was in the cab on the way to the doctors, I received a text saying that the cancer had returned as Acute T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia (we found out later it was NK cell). David has always been a brave person and we knew we would get through this together. I did everything I could to get my visas sorted so that I could be there and get married as soon as possible. It was very hard to deal with because I couldn't be there for him or take care of him and I didn't sleep. I had to research so
much information about visas etc. The chemo they were trying on him wasn't working and he needed a bone marrow transplant which means, he would need a donor that matched him. I never lost faith and eventually they found a chemo that would work and they had to basically kill his immune system completely which would make him susceptible to death - even if he caught the tiniest cold. They gave him his bone marrow transplant and he had to deal with graft versus host disease which made his skin flake off everywhere and he couldn't take an actual shower because he had central line hooked into his chest so that he could receive fluids and medicine directly into his line. His mouth would be so painful sometimes that he had to be on a morphine drip which made him so loopy. When his mouth wasn't as sore, we'd scoff pizza and ice cream together. He would always throw it up afterwards though. He couldn't eat and drink lots of his favorite things because his immune system wasn't working properly. He had to have whole body irradiation which left sores all over him and made him sick. They had to give him the nastiest immunosuppressant drugs so that his body wouldn't reject the bone marrow that he was given.
David was getting better eventually and he was able to leave the hospital so we could get married. That was the happiest day of our lives. Everything seemed to be looking up! He made it one month, 3 months, 6 months after his bone marrow transplant. However, right after 6 months he started coughing really badly. We went to the hospital after my days of nagging him and we found out that he was actually in septic shock and had a terrible infection in his chest. They had to immediately remove his central line (no pain killers or anything). They started treating him for his infection and we thought the worse was over. It was painful removing his line, but he was excited to finally take a real shower by himself. Then, when his mother and I were next to him in his hospital bed, the doctors came in and told us something that would change our lives forever. They told us that his cancer had returned and there was nothing else they could do. Even if they could, his body wouldn't be able to take any more chemo and radiation. I was in shock and the person I thought I'd spend forever with was just told that they might not even live to see the age of 24. He was told he only had weeks to live.
They did give him an option to take chemo pills which would prolong his life for a couple of days. They still treated his chest infection and he took the pills. He lived just long enough to eat his last dinner at our favorite restaurant, surrounded with friends and family. After that, he was confined to the couch and throwing up coffee grounds and I had to help him go to the bathroom because his body was failing. He only took the chemo pills because I, selfishly wanted him with me for as long as he possibly could be. Eventually, he came to terms with his impending death, but I don't think I ever really will. We did everything we could together and spoke of our dreams and how lucky we were to share the kind of love we did. We were lucky that we had time to do that, but no one my age should ever have to. Before his body started to fail, he grabbed my face in his hands and told me that he loved me and gave me a kiss.
I remember that his mind started to fail first and then his limbs became cold and his breathing slowed and he would slip in and out of consciousness. He lived to be 24 and then he passed away in 2010, on Easter morning with his mother and I holding his hand. That's an experience I would never wish on anyone. His mother lost her only son and I lost my husband. All of this is because there wasn't enough knowledge about childhood cancer and they don't really have treatments for people that were in his age range because usually children get the kinds of cancer that he got. He was first diagnosed when he was about 14 or 15. Every one thinks my story is sad, but no one thinks it could happen to them or someone they love. They're wrong. It happens all the time. It is time we do something about it.
- Ashley Hurle's life was changed by childhood cancer. She is now 26 years old and became a widow at the early age of 22
