“The doctor looked me square in the eye. ‘Brain tumor.’ WHAT?! I looked at my baby playing with Tonka trucks. ‘I’m sorry, but I think we both knew it.’ WHAT? Are you freaking kidding? No, I didn’t! I sat in the pre-op area signing consent forms. I wrote in large letters, ‘NO STUDENT OR RESIDENT IS TO TOUCH HIM.’ Never again was I going to just accept what a doctor said without question.”
‘Help me, mama. Pleeeease, help me!’ Covered in sweat, he escaped the doctors. That was it! I was DONE.’: Boy beats cancer 3 times, loses vision, ‘he wasn’t supposed to survive his first day’
‘Jess, call 911,’ he gasped before the phone went dead. I arrived home to discover my husband laid out on a stretcher.’: Woman loses husband to brain cancer, marries again after receiving ‘message from a complete stranger’
“‘Oh God no. Please no…’ I whispered that night, my legs numb from sitting motionless. I stared straight into the eyes of the young doctor, trying to digest the news I’d just heard. Brain cancer. Earlier that evening, within 5 seconds of pulling into the driveway, I received a frantic call from my husband. ‘No, no, no,’ the only coherent thought I was able to form.”
‘In a quiet voice, holding back tears, they asked if they could have ‘their’ dance. YES! You will have your dance!’: Daughters share emotional wedding dance with dying father before it’s too late
“Jason has always been the most attentive father. He’s never missed any of their events. We have raised two daddy’s girls and I was about to break their hearts. Their future suddenly looked very different. The dreams they had of their daddy walking them down the aisle had come to a screeching halt.”
‘I’m so sorry I can’t take this away.’ He looked up at me with absolute perfect clarity. ‘It’s okay.’: Parents ‘astonished’ by infant son’s miraculous response, lose him days later to rare brain tumor
“We stood in astonishment. Prior to this, he’d only known how to say one word: ‘Dog.’ My wife and I leaned in to tell him we loved him. He looked up again and said, ‘I love you.’ We held his little hand, his little frail body in my arms, and begged him to visit us. I asked him to watch over his siblings. We put him in the black Suburban, and watched them drive away.”
‘If I have surgery, I might not wake up. If I don’t, the tumors will grow, killing me anyway.’: Mom with 23 tumors pens heartbreaking love letter to her sons
“I want to watch you grow up. I want to see what you wear on your first day of school, who you fall in love with. I don’t want to miss a moment. If I wake up, I will fight for you every day. If I don’t, please don’t ever doubt the power of my undying, unrelenting, never-ending love for you.”
‘You need to go home to your wife, not be in here with me tonight,’ mom told her newlywed doctor. She was their favorite patient. They loved her determination to fight.’: Daughter feels ’emptiness’ after her mom’s 15-year battle with cancer
“She was my best friend, my go to for everything. Our dream was to go to the beach and have a cabana boy for the day. On her 60th birthday, I made our dream come true. Unfortunately, she couldn’t put her toes in the sand as she was in a wheelchair, but we had the perfect day, cabana boy and all.”
‘She’s going to have emergency brain surgery.’ I screamed. What the hell would I do without a mom?’: 19-year-old daughter suddenly loses mother to stage 4 cancer, finds healing through ‘roller coaster’ of grief
“My parents frantically came down the stairs. The entire left side of my mom’s body was numb. My dad was taking her to the hospital. Contrary to my wishful thinking, my mom was not going to be the ‘miracle.’ There I was. 19 years old, trying to figure out how I would go on in a world without my mom in it.”
‘Something had changed. He’d never be the same again. I came undone. I was losing my husband.’: Mom loses husband to cancer shortly after giving birth
“‘Why? Why now?’ Alex had just become a dad. I couldn’t imagine my life without Alex. I didn’t know how I would raise our son alone and it killed me to think Ezra would never fully know his dad. I was watching my husband slowly die of cancer.”
‘I woke up with the worst pain. ‘They’re just headaches,’ I said. Something in my mom’s heart kept pushing. ‘There’s something in your brain,’ the doctor said. I was 11, and so confused.’
“I was rushed to the PICU. I tried to stay calm, but I was terrified. I couldn’t help but think, ‘How could I have done anything wrong to deserve this?’ I hid everything behind a smile, but I knew my life would never be ‘normal’ again.”
‘The guy who brought me to the party passed out. I should have left him, but I’m a loyal person. I fell asleep and was awoken by a man’s body on top of mine. I couldn’t move and yelled for help.’
“I remember telling my mom, ‘I would die if something happened to you.’ She always reassured me, ‘I’m not going anywhere Erica.’ I whole-heartedly believed she would live forever. Then she started complaining of severe headaches. Selfishly, I thought, ‘Well if God took my Grannie, he can’t take my mom too.'”
