Over the next few months, Laurin started developing some back pain, but that’s a side effect from all the cancer treatment she had, and we thought maybe she slipped a disk or something. We went to the ER one night and they diagnosed it as muscle spasms. We went to a chiropractor a few times, but things were not improving, so we ended up going to an orthopedist to get scans. The next night we got the dreadful call saying, ‘You need to contact your oncologist immediately.’ The on-call oncologist got her admitted that night and they spent the next few days running a battery of tests. We were told that the cancer had metastasized into her bones, lungs and liver. Hearing this made me feel very useless, I am used to always being able to have some control over a situation. But I was 100% committed to being by her side as she started her second round against this dreaded disease. I wanted to be in her corner and help in every way I could.
Laurin had lost both of her parents to stage 4 cancer and knew all too well what this meant. She looked at me in tears.
‘Are we still going to get married?,’ she asked.
She was not asking me this thinking I was going to change my mind, but was wanting to protect me from the possible extreme costs of treatment.
‘Of course we are,’ I told her. ‘It just means we have more to figure out.’
By this time we had already chosen our wedding date which was the 3-year anniversary from the day we met. We had booked our venue, sent out save the dates and were well into the planning process. The doctors encouraged us to move up the date, fearing the worst. But we decided after much discussion that no matter what, that would be our wedding date.
In between treatments, we continued to travel as much as possible. We spent Thanksgiving in Arizona and saw the Grand Canyon, the slat canyons in Paige, and spent a few days in Sedona. In December Laurin required a surgery because of fluid buildup on her lungs that put her in the hospital for a week. During that week, Laurin asked me jokingly when she was going to get her ‘fun car.’ By the end of the day I found her dream car, and 2 days later went and bought her an Infiniti convertible. At this point she had not driven in months, but as soon as we got this car she got so excited she started driving every day again. A few weeks later we were accepted onto a clinical trial which would start about 6 weeks before our wedding date. So we decided to go on a pre-honeymoon not knowing what the next few months would look like. We took the convertible and spent an amazing week in Key West!
The clinical trial was originally having great results, and by our wedding date, Laurin was even stronger than she had been in months, although she lost her hair again 3 weeks before the wedding.
‘I fell in love with you when you were bald, so it does not make any difference,’ I told her.
She was absolutely stunning as she walked down the aisle. I could not take my eyes off of her the entire ceremony. We kept our eyes locked, smiled, laughed and enjoyed the moment to its fullest! I felt like the luckiest person in the world.
We were able to dance the night away and enjoy a magical wedding. There was not a dry eye in the room during our first dance as husband and wife.
‘We made it!,’ I kept telling her.
Our dance was ‘Perfect’ by Ed Sheeran which perfectly described the day.
