Question: Does anyone really expect this? Answer: stupid question...

We were a complete family of 6; 2 adults, 4 kids. Life wasn't perfect, bit seriously, who's is?
We had been a couple for over 20 years, felt like we had dealt with stuff on a grand scale pretty well. Numerous family bereavements, illnesses, etc, and survived miraculously. Then the entire world caves in...
It was a Friday at the end of May. Yeah, my fiancé had complained of "pains around his heart", previously diagnosed as an ulcer, but today he finally had had enough of feeling more tired than usual. He was 39 at the time. So I got him an appointment for late afternoon. Time spinned from there on.
Doctors appointment turned into chest x-ray. Radiologist advised that perhaps a GP appointment should be made before the booked one on Tuesday... (First alarm bell)
Saturday night, my partner awakens with severe chest pains and difficulty breathing. Ambulance called, off to hospital. Finally 3 litres of fluid drawn from his lungs.
Things become weird. 10 days later: Lung specialist tells us diagnosis is lung cancer. Not curable, and not operable, but treatment can be given. (Second alarm bell)
We were in a daze, in some kind of surreal world. Like being in a TV show. Immediately we both asked the other to get married. Something we should have done, but just never got round to it. Wasn't really important, until now.
We leave hospital and head straight to his sister's house, my best friend too. We phoned ahead to say we were coming, she knew by our voices it was bad news. It was awful, the stark reality of having to relay our bombshell on to her. We stayed for a bit, and tgen realised there were others to tell...OH MY GOD! WHAT DO WE TELL THE KIDS????????
It was a difficult enough job to tell his mum and dad, horrendous, more tears than I've ever seen.
We made a decision, that for now, we tell the youngest 3, that dad has lung cancer, we are going to get him treatment, and we don't know if he might die. This was so heartbreaking, I can't even explain it properly. They cried, we cried, then they seemed to accept it. As kids do. I call our eldest, who's now living in New Zealand, she's in such shock. Knowing she has to come home, but also knowing that she's been taught to be sensible. It's going to cost her a fortune as she's coming back for good. This might take a while, there's none of us millionaires.
Problem is, we really don't know anything. What is incurable, inoperable, but treatable lung cancer mean? I'm now Googling stuff behind his back....it was a Friday. Friday 10th June 2011.
Tuesday 14th June, I'm contacted by his consultants nurse, and I tell her what we've been told, she arranges for us to see the consultant that very afternoon. 4pm that day, we are given the devastation diagnosis of small cell sarcoma lung cancer, stage 4, terminal. WTF???? My fiancé, and father of my kids, is only 39!!!!!! We're told that he could last a year or two with treatment, maybe three, and one person has lasted five years.
Within two weeks, chemotherapy commences, it's awful. We all go to show support, myself and the three younger ones. It goes ahead, and everything is fine, for a bit. We celebrate his 40th birthday!
There's a bit of sickness, but we somehow manage to arrange a holiday for the kids at flamingoland on the "good" week of this regime.
We hired a camper van, and it was fantastic.
Back home, I'm now rapidly arranging our wedding to coincide with when the chemo regime allowed it. Chemotherapy dose number two takes place. This time it's truly terrible. The sickness, the lethargy, it was tearing me apart, god only knows what it was doing to Gary.
I know, that's the first time I've named my fiancé, wasn't sure when I was writing this that I wanted to.
Our wedding was 13th October 2011. It was amazing. Very small, only immediate family, but perfect from start to finish. Gary? He was great all day, although perhaps a little tired towards the end, you would never have known the sadness behind his smiles. Only issue was that I forgot to ask for the "til death us do part" bit to be left out....
Chemo treatment number three, the worst. Gary could barely function for almost two weeks. No more, from this point on, there was no more chemotherapy. This stuff was killing him faster than the damned cancer!!!
On the months running up to Christmas, our house was becoming filled with loads of different tablets, and life for Gary was becoming more difficult. Although he did try to still do as much as possible. He had never been back to work since this all started. 19th December, and our eldest daughter arrived home! Oh how happy and sad at the same time. All together once more! But for how long?
Christmas Day 2011. He so tried, and got up at 5am after only 3 hours sleep, watched the kids open their presents, built a few things with them, but had to go to bed by midday. We all soldiered on with the festivities, and again, the kids just accepted it. New year kinda passed by, and 2012 ramps up the problems. Gary is, by now on a morphine shunt. An automated injection, pumped in over a 24 hour period. January and February are still a blur in my mind. Filled with the shunt being increased constantly, more and more tablets, and somewhere along the line, we get an electric reclining chair, and an oxygen machine. Our kids were helping daddy get his oxygen and anything else he needed, still without question. On numerous occasions, the GP, who visited every couple of days, looked at Gary lying helpless on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness, and shook his head to myself. Indicating that he didn't think this would go on much longer. Then a day later, he would arrive to find Gary tinkering with a bike in the hallway. He was an unknown quantity, was Gary. I had now been trained in giving any additional injections needed, in order that we didn't he didn't need to wait on a nurse being despatched to administer them. After all, I couldn't watch him suffer when I was more than capable of helping him. He was my man!!!
Mid February and we sell our sprinter van, and Gary sources, negotiates, and arranges a beautiful Vito van to be delivered by the private sellers to our house because, he said, "you won't be able to do the school run or go to Tesco in a big bloody sprinter". He asks if I want to continue with the wee bike parts business on ebay that we've started. I tell him yes, so he sources and buys in 6 second hand bikes to get me started. Practical and thoughtful, even though he was terrified to discuss him actually dying. Only ever kept asking me "am I fucked?" And I'd say, "well you're still here aren't you?" We never ever discussed him dying.
We live in a semi-detached house, bedrooms upstairs. All this time, and despite a hospital bed being in our living room for over a month, Gary still managed to pull himself up to bed. Every single night until two night before he died.
Things were very different from usual when the district nurses, who had been visiting every day for weeks, came in on 15th march. There was an urgency with their manner. I was finding this very difficult to comprehend. Suddenly, one of the nurses grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me lightly, but enough to grab my attention. She half shouted at me "Carol, he's dying on his feet!" There was then a succession of getting Gary into the hospital bed, cutting his hair, giving him a shave a clean up, and the ultimate insult to Gary, a catheter...
The kids came home from school, and, again, accepted what was happening. Gary and I had decided that the kids should not be told that there was no more hope until it was absolutely necessary. After all, who wants their kids waking up every day thinking, is daddy going to die today, or today, or today, for god knows how long? After all, I had seen family members previously pass away with cancer, including my own mum. They frequently end up in a coma at the later end, for a couple of weeks, or at least a few days, normal.
My best friend Gary's sister, and I, sat all evening, along with their mum and dad, and our eldest daughter by his bed. I gave him extra morphine when he needed it, as usual, although the doses were becoming alarmingly closer.
Gary was disgusted are horrified at being "bed bound" and catheterised. Gary was NOT a normal cancer victim.
Gary passed away just after 2am on 16th march 2012.
I then had to waken our three younger ones and tell them to come and say goodbye to their dad, not the way it was meant to happen.....
Our children were 24, 13, 10, and 8.