CRUEL REAL LIFE
Sarah Tuckley, 46, from Derby, was devastated when she found out her husband was dying – but he had a plan...
Swaying around the room with my new husband as Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars played, I really was on cloud nine.
‘I can’t believe we did it,’ I smiled at him.
Dan and I had been together since 2003 and since then, it had been us against the world.
And in 2011, during a trip to Las Vegas, we were out shopping and walked past a jewellers when Dan stopped in his tracks.
‘So, shall we get you a ring then?’ he grinned.
His subtle proposal was perfect and the following year, in 2012, we flew back out to Vegas to tie the knot.
As we shared our first dance as husband and wife, I didn’t think life could get better.
Settling into married life, we both focused on our careers and Dan focused on his fitness.
And in August 2022 we completed on a place in Spain, planning to move out in October that year.
Busy planning our future together, when Dan came back from the gym with a wince on his face, I didn’t think too much of it.
‘I think I pulled something lifting weights,’ he said, clutching his stomach.
Dan was always working out and I thought it would resolve on its own in time.
Only, when the pain got more intense and we went to A&E on 16 August, things went from bad to worse.
‘We’ve found a mass on your stomach,’ the doctor explained.
Another scan confirmed it was cancerous, but we didn’t know what type.
As scary as it was, we got the hint that it was going to be treatable. Dan was kept in hospital, having different scans, tests and a biopsy.
‘We can still go to Spain,’ Dan said. ‘I’ll just fly back and forth for treatment.’
But we had to wait another week for the results to find out what type of cancer Dan had, and during that time he went downhill quickly. His appetite had significantly reduced and he was unable to digest food, too. On 2 September 2022, he was officially diagnosed with renal medullary carcinoma – an extremely rare type of kidney cancer. ‘How long have I got?’ Dan asked bluntly.
‘At best, a year,’ the doctors replied. The news felt like a sucker punch to the gut. But rather than fall into hopelessness, we made a plan.
‘We can have Christmas in Spain and invite everyone across,’ I said tearily.
Over the next week though, Dan was unable to keep anything down. He was deteriorating by the hour.
Another CT scan showed that the tumour had grown five-fold and any treatment had less than a 1% chance of working.
Our year together was turning into months, then weeks.
But unbeknownst to me, Dan had been on the phone to his siblings –
