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Then Cancer Struck. Both of Us.
The Crazy Story of a Couple’s Unexpected Double Diagnosis
It’s not a story you’ll believe. If I had pitched it to Hollywood, I would have gotten laughed out of the room for being ridiculous. In December, my fiancé was diagnosed with acute leukemia, at 38. (I wrote about it for Medium here.) We had just gotten engaged. After three years of Covid and finally seeing the light at the end of that fucked-up tunnel, life was stabilizing. We put a ring on each other’s finger. (That’s how these gays did it.) We playfully argued over how to announce said engagement. Our paralysis is why you didn’t get a card in the mail. Or a post online. Then cancer struck. Fuck.
At first it was a chronic form. I didn’t know there was a chronic form. But apparently there is a medication that can control leukemia so it’s not blasting in your blood and killing you. Well, killing “one.” One being him. Right after Thanksgiving, that medication failed. Big time. And it all morphed. We saw his numbers reverse. After months and months of a steep decline, now they were suddenly going up. He was petrified. He knew trouble was ahead. I didn’t. I was being positive, hopeful, optimistic that it was an anomaly — something we would be sure to see over a lifetime of chronic disease. It’s not the first time my naive sunniness would be crushed by reality, like one of…
