Thoughts On A Life Upended

My name is Trenton – in October 2015 I had my first in-person date with an amazing woman named Sara, who I’d met online. Right away, we knew we had something special. She and I just clicked – we complimented each other in the right ways, fostering a relationship in which we both were encouraged to try and be our best selves. In July 2016 I proposed that we get married (she said Yes!), and in November 2016 we got married in a small but wonderful ceremony in our newly-purchased home, surrounded by close friends and family. Some people might say that we moved fast, but we both knew it was right.

Life went on – I worked full time, Sara was going to school full time to finish her undergraduate degree, and life was wonderful. In our downtime we enjoyed reading, watching Bob’s Burgers, X-Files, true-crime shows, playing games, spending time with our pets, spending time with friends/family, playing the Sims 4, and occasionally going on adventures like trips to mountain towns or our Honeymoon in Florida (Harry Potter world!). Really, we just enjoyed being together – no matter what we were doing.

Sara graduated in summer 2017, and in fall of that year, we started laying the groundwork to grow our family. Before meeting me, Sara had given up on having kids due to having lost her ovaries because of complications from the removal of a benign tumor years before she met me. I offered to carry a child for us; as a trans man who still had the ability to do so, I was happy to be a “seahorse dad” for us, if it meant helping grow our family. It turned out I had some thyroid issues that had to be addressed before it made sense to start trying, and that took me until late spring 2018 to get sorted out.

In Summer 2018 we started trying, and after 3 unsuccessful attempts at home, we decided to go see a fertility doctor (donor sperm is not cheap!!). I was diagnosed with PCOS, started taking some special supplements and some medication, and we worked with the fertility clinic to help with the timing of our attempts. Two attempts went by with no success in Jan & Feb 2019, and then we had to take a month off because my grandmother on my Dad’s side passed away.

Around that time, Sara started having some concerning symptoms with her own reproductive system, and met with her primary care doctor, who referred her to a specialist. She saw the specialist toward the end of our waiting period to find out if our 3rd attempt took – April 2019. At that appointment, the specialist indicated it was highly likely that Sara had cancer. A few days later on April 29th, we were amazed and scared to get a positive pregnancy test! A few days after that, the doctor called Sara up and told her that she had advanced cancer, based on the scan results. She’d already set Sara up with a gynecological oncology doctor, even before the results came in.

Talk about a roller coaster…

We immediately talked to some close family and friends and told them about both pieces of news. Normally people wait longer to announce pregnancies, but given the magnitude of the situation we decided we needed them to have the full picture.

Sara was hospitalized in early May for a week, we determined she had Stage 4 endometrial cancer that had spread throughout her reproductive system, and to her lymph nodes and lungs. During that time in the hospital she underwent her first session of chemo which continued as a 6-ish hour session every 3 weeks after that on an outpatient basis. My pregnancy was progressing well and around the 10 week mark in early June we graduated from the fertility clinic to the midwife group we wanted to work with for my prenatal care and the birth.

At the end of June when we were at 13 weeks, we announced our pregnancy. Sara had finished up 3 chemo sessions by this point and was responding fabulously.

A month and a half later, on August 12th, I went into the hospital with some cramping. We soon found out that despite the baby looking okay on an ultrasound, I was in early labor. Four hours after arriving at the hospital, my water broke. Four hours after that, in the early morning of August 13th, I delivered our son George, who was no longer alive.

We didn’t have much time to grieve George, because Sara had more chemo to go through, and then in early September she was hospitalized with new symptoms that led to us discovering the cancer had spread to her brain. She went through 10 days of radiation treatment on her brain, waited a few weeks to get a new brain scan, and then they scheduled her for a hysterectomy in early October since she’d had good response to the radiation.

After the hysterectomy, she started getting progressively weaker in her arms and legs. After about a week and a half, she hit a point where she couldn’t get up from most seated positions easily at all. She ended up getting stuck and unable to get up; at that point we called 911 and she was taken via ambulance to be readmitted to the hospital, after we called her doctor to make sure he agreed that was the most appropriate action.

That was the evening of October 18th, 2019 when she was taken away in the ambulance. Sara never came back home. The next two weeks were the worst weeks of my life, watching her become weaker and weaker as the many doctors tried to figure out why her electrolyte levels were so out of balance. After over a week in the hospital, I noticed her eyes were becoming jaundiced – they did more testing/scans and we found out that the cancer had re-metastasized to her lungs/lymph nodes (where it had previously been cleared from the chemo), and had also spread to her liver.

The multiple large liver mets were the final hurdle that Sara just could not overcome. She wasn’t healthy enough for chemo at that point, and the amount of radiation required to try and kill the cancer in her liver would’ve also killed her liver. She wouldn’t have been a candidate for a new liver.

By October 31st, 2019, Sara had lost her normal awareness – she was sleeping most of the time at that point, and had difficulty speaking or responding. She was moved to ICU overnight that night, and on the morning of November 1st, her oncologist and I agreed it was time for inpatient hospice. In ICU that morning she spoke the last words I heard from her lips – when I told her I loved her, she very quietly said she loved me too. Less than 24 hours later she died with me by her side on the morning of November 2nd, 2019. Sara was only 42 years old.