'In Sickness And In Health' - Danielle's Story

Ages ago, my friend and client, Danielle, booked this family portrait session with me. This was not unusual; Danielle has been a loyal client for years now. I thought that this was going to be like every session that had come before... I had no idea that Danielle and her husband, Keith, were about to live out a nightmare. I had no idea that these pictures would mean anything more than a physical representation of another year passing.

About a month before our session, I got an email from Danielle that shook me to the core and brought me to my knees. I cried and prayed while I read her story. She kept this story quiet and to herself for a long time, but now she is ready to talk about it.

This is her story...

“My husband and I have been together for 12 years; this spring we celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary while attempting to keep up with a very busy 2 ½ year old little girl. She has my stubborn streak, my husband’s eyes, loves birds, and adores her daddy. I knew my husband was ‘the one’ right away, despite the cliché of it all, and this is the story of how and why our love is stronger and deeper than I ever thought was possible.

I booked this family portrait session ages ago, never realizing how special and important it would become.

I’m sharing this story with the hope that it provides hope, encouragement, and restore faith to those going through a similar situation or might have faced it in the past. And perhaps, this will provide some finality and closure for me. In December 2013, my husband began having some issues with a tooth, and our regular dentist determined that there was an issue with a previous root canal. He was sent to a root canal specialist (who knew they even existed?) and they fixed it. But a few weeks later it became infected, and he was sent to an oral surgeon. Two weeks after his 32nd birthday, in March 2014, he had the first oral surgery to remove the infection and infected tooth.

While sitting at the hair salon with a glass of wine in one hand and foils in my hair, I got a call from my husband. He told me he just spoken with the surgeon and the biopsy results indicate that he has lymphoma. Cancer. My husband just told me he has cancer…over the phone. My stylist took the foils out and quickly washed my hair and I rushed (with the most ridiculous head of half-blonde hair you’ll ever see) to get home. Surely, this cannot be true. We were referred to an oncologist and saw him the next day. We talked about everything and anything, including sperm banking. I kept thinking: Sperm banking? My husband has cancer and this is what you want to talk about? I had no idea that, depending on the treatment, he could become sterile for a period of time and take a chance of it becoming permanent.  

I quickly came to find out there is a lot about cancer and the treatment that no one talks about.

My husband went through two more oral surgeries and a needle biopsy, which showed two different forms of the same type of lymphoma. One was slow growing, while the other was fast growing and extremely aggressive. We were sent to The Cancer Center at UVA to see “The Guy” in lymphoma research and treatment. Meanwhile, the cancer kept growing. In the span of two months, the side of his face was the size of softball… the cancer wrapped itself around the underside of his jaw bone. His teeth were moving and his skin was bruising from the pressure. We were going back and forth between radiation specialists, the primary oncologist… I just wanted someone to decide what this is and treat it! Finally, they had a conclusive test and could move forward with a treatment plan.

Our sixth wedding anniversary was spent in the hospital having his chemotherapy port installed. He began his first round of chemo just after Mother’s Day. He was on too many medications to count, including a high dose of steroids to combat the nausea. The steroids made him so jittery I could, quite literally, see his eyeballs twitching. The week he received chemo he was a steroid mess; I couldn’t talk to him for fear of him jumping down my throat over anything. But I had to take care of him. He was never physically sick from the chemo, but he wasn’t himself. The week following chemo, he was in a steroid crash and white cell depression, so we basically lived in quarantine. Week 3 was a good week: no drugs, no crashes, just my husband. Just when I got him back again, the cycle would start all over again.
Meanwhile, we were both working full time (I don’t know how he managed it), raising a toddler, and trying to keep life a normal as possible for everyone. We had told hardly anyone we were going through this, and I accepted little charity. A friend would occasionally drop off some meals, or mow the lawn. My mom would babysit when I needed her to, but I placed the entire burden on my own shoulders.

I cried endlessly. But I cried alone. I felt like I couldn’t show these moments of weakness because I wanted him to stay strong: to find his strength in my strength. I would sit and read my Science and Health (Christian Scientist) at night, highlighting and underlining sections about love, marriage, and courage. I knew I could make it through this. Somehow.

The day I shaved his head was particularly rough, as silly as that sounds. Of all the things to be upset about, I was torn up by shaving his hair. He has beautiful, thick, coarse, curly blond hair. Over the years, I’ve teased him relentlessly about how much care he puts into his hair and how “prissy” he is about it. And yet I was the one that cried when I shaved it. I had no idea I was so attached to it. Maybe it wasn’t the hair. Maybe it was the realization that now he looked like a cancer patient.We went through some really terrible times. The steroids… they turn you into a different person. It turned my husband into the Hulk. He was mean. He was hurtful. At his worst, he was deliberate about it. I remember one day when he had hurt my feelings particularly deeply, I decided to tell him what he had done. When I told him how much he’d hurt me… he smiled and said, “Good.” My sweet, goofy husband was replaced with a cold, mean, purposely hurtful Hulk. And it was crushing me.

He was so different and I certainly couldn’t blame him. I mean, what was possibly going through his head? How angry he must have been, how he must have felt physically and mentally. He didn’t look the same. He didn’t act the same. He didn’t even smell the same. The chemo and the other drugs changed everything about him. I was so angry, so hurt, so scared. And so exhausted. In so many ways.Things took a dramatic turn in July 2014. The week after his chemo, he went into white cell depression. This means that his white blood cells, the ones that keep you healthy, had died off. While we waited for a shot to stimulate the development of more, we had to live in a bubble. We had to keep him away from public places, not let anyone in the house and keep him germ-free. If you can figure out how to do that with a toddler in the house, please share your secrets.

Somewhere, likely at work, he caught a head cold. He had a fever, which was particularly dangerous at this point in his treatment. Against the Hulk’s orders, I called the physician’s emergency line and got ahold of his doctor. We went in to the office as soon as they opened, and to my complete non-surprise, they admitted him to the hospital right away. Not only was his fever dangerously high, but his white blood cell count was dangerously low. Even in white cell depression he should have nearly 5,000. He had 200.

He was in a private room in the hospital. Everyone had to be decontaminated before they came in the room; there were signs all over his door to not enter. I had to wear special ID bracelets and be checked in to be with him. They had him on three broad spectrum antibiotics to keep him safe. Luckily we caught it in time and he would be fine. Had it been winter…had it been the flu…he would not have been fine.This went on for 18 weeks. Six rounds of chemo in total, with four scans scattered throughout to check on his progress. In those 18 weeks, there would only be six weeks where he was close to himself: the sweet, funny, thoughtful man I fell in love with.

On September 17, 2014, we went to the oncologist for a follow up. The scan revealed that the cancer was gone. My husband was cancer-free! Aside from the day our daughter was born, this was the best day of my life, and the best birthday present I have and will ever receive.

The infection that started this process was still present, and now we could return our attention to that. It needed an infectious disease specialist and six weeks of intravenous antibiotics that we would administer daily through his chemo port. The port was removed in November, and with that, we officially closed this chapter of our lives.

  Since going through this experience together, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and our relationship. He tells me that he couldn’t have carried the burden like I did, had the tables been turned. He praises my strength and I brush it off because it is simply what you do. Our daughter is young enough that she never noticed he looked different, and she won’t remember the tough times.

We are six months into remission, and taking each visit to the oncologist as a milestone towards a full recovery. We are working on putting him back together with some dental implants, but that’s the last step in the process.

I don’t know why we were asked to beat this challenge or go through this experience, but we both came out stronger and more in love than when we went in. These pictures are more than just a snapshot of our family. They are a celebration of love, a reminder that love can carry you through anything, a reminder of how far we have come. In sickness and in health."


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