From Darkness to Light

Email To a Friend 05 June 2009 Shortly after graduating college I met and fell in love with the most wonderful man in the world. He made me laugh, sing, and brought out all the good things about me. After dating for just six months he proposed to me and we began planning our wedding. One month later he was diagnosed with Leukemia, which had developed quickly and moved rapidly into a certain death sentence. He was an only child thus he had no close relatives that could offer a much needed bone marrow donation. He began therapy, lost all his hair, was terribly sick, and at one point had resigned to the fact that his life would end all too soon.

I, however, was not giving up so easily. I began a bone marrow donor drive where thousands of people across the nation were tested to see if they were a match. We also decided to forget the big wedding and proclaimed our vows before our close family and friends. The sicker he got, the harder I worked to find him a match. I sent out countless emails, wrote letters to the editors of papers across the country, and held tight to my faith that he would not be taken from me just as our life together had begun.
Three times the family was called in to his bedside to tell him “good-bye” and three times I refused to let go. I told him to keep fighting just a little longer.

I will never forget the day when I got the call telling me a suitable donor had been found and was willing to undergo the painful extraction of bone marrow for a man he didn’t even know. It all happened so quickly; my husband was prepped, the marrow was flown in from California, and then the marrow was placed into my husband’s body. All we could do now was wait and see.

Three weeks later he was discharged from the hospital; the donation worked. His hair grew back, he regained his strength, and three months after his release from the hospital we proclaimed our vows before 200 hundred guests whom were there to not only celebrate our marriage but his resilience and will to live.

That was ten years ago; there has not been a reassurance and doctors believe he will live to be a grouchy old man. That’s just fine with me.

Susie Denton, Newcastle.

Bookmark this: