While I have never had cancer, it has been the single most influential thing in my life. In June of 2018 I got married to Kimber and we moved back to St. Louis, purchased our first home and started the next chapter of our lives together. We were both planners and had the next decade of our lives written out. Shortly after our 1 year anniversary I found myself driving my wife to the hospital for the first of what would be many times. She had been experiencing severe abdominal pain that her doctors were giving her the run around on, and she knew it was something more serious. She quickly had surgery, which lasted longer than anticipated. That is when my family and I were pulled into the room no one wants to be in and told that my wife has cancer. I would later find out she had Small Cell Carcinoma of the Ovary, Hypercalcemic Type. Our written-out plans, our honeymoon stage of life, and our dreams of a family had been changed to a new normal. This change brought about multiple surgeries, aggressive chemotherapy, stem cell transplant, radiation, immunotherapy, IVF and much more. We were only 24 at the time, and we found ourselves sleeping at Siteman more than our new home. Sleeping in the hospital bed together, eating cafeteria food and scheduling medicine times is not what newlyweds dream of. None of this was our plan, but she reminded me over and over that for some reason God had a plan in all of this.
We spoke with, and visited, the top doctors for this around the country to be told that they were happy to work with us, but everything can be done in the comfort of our hometown due to Siteman. While Kimber was not their typical cancer patient, they treated us as if we were their only patient. Most times, the nurses were our age, in our stage of life and connected with us on a different level. Our doctor treated us like family. The things we did, both in-line with and not so much with Siteman rules (i.e. bringing Luna to the hospital), made the 11 months of her battle with cancer a little less frightening. Being a 24 year old husband sleeping in the hospital next to my wife connected to machines was truly terrifying, but the Siteman team was always there for me as well. From the staff, the family lounge, the cancer care clinic, they all would drop everything to help us. No matter what we went through, the ability to stay in our hometown, be around our loving family, our dog and our friends was the greatest blessing we could have asked for. Without Siteman giving us that, those 11 months would not have been the same.
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