Living with TERMINAL CANCER

Everything changed when Becci Edmondson found out her husband only had a year left

- ASHLEIGH PAGE

Nothing can prepare you for finding out your other half has cancer. A million scenarios run through your head at lightning pace, each posing a crucial question. How will we tell the kids? Will I become a single parent? How long do we have left together?

When my husband of nine years Mark, then 34, started experiencing abdominal cramps, diarrhoea, rectal bleeding and weight loss in late 2016, he was quick to see his GP. He thought it was IBS or IBD, but test after test came back clear.

With no explanation as to what was causing these worrying symptoms and his doctor suspecting Crohn’s disease, he was referred for a colonoscopy.

I was at work in my job as a product owner on the day of Mark’s appointment. Sitting at my desk, I heard my phone buzzing and saw Mark’s name appear on the screen. I knew he must finally have an answer for his symptoms and I felt a sense of relief.

But, as I stepped out of my office, I’d barely even greeted him before he blurted out the terrible news. ‘I’ve got cancer.’

I was dumbfounded. As tears welled in my eyes, Mark explained that he was awake, watching the screen during the colonoscopy. An angry-looking cyst had appeared and the technician’s face had dropped before he said he was almost certain it was colon cancer.

Mark had always been endlessly positive and pragmatic – it was something which had drawn me to him when we’d met through a mutual friend in 2004, and a quality he’d tried to instil in our two boys, Finn, then five, and Wilf, three. He took this news with that same attitude.