"This Guy Photographs Wife's Cancer" in Someone Always Has it Worse

I came upon this today on FB (thanks Shauna):

http://www.viralnova.com/wifes-cancer/

I broke down into tears instantly as I was immediately transported back in time...To a time when my Nana (Elizabeth Matthews, Eva's middle name is in honor of a Great Grandma she never got to meet) was taken over by the disease.

It was February 2004...I got the call on the 15th that month that my Grandfather (Thaddeus Richard Kowalewski) had passed away...He lived a full life (we aren't sure if he was 86 or 89...They didn't keep good records on this back in Poland, where he was born...One of his sisters remembers one date, while the other remembers a different date...Both agree on April...But disagree on the year...So we settled with him being 88...Though I don't remember how that was the number the rest of the family settled on).

Anyway...It was just a week after Grandpa Ted passed that I got another phone call...Nana Betty was in the hospital with stage 4 lung cancer.

They gave her 2-3 weeks to live...I dropped everything at once and flew down to Las Vegas to visit her. From that point on our family rotated shifts to help care for her...

Nana was a vibrant 68 year old woman before getting cancer. She was 5'2'', 120 lbs...Always took really good care of herself. She never smoked and very rarely had any alcohol (little champagne on NYE, but that was it).

She ended up living until August 2004 (and made it to her 69th birthday on 7/19/04). I flew down there for her birthday..In fact it was the last time I got to see her...

I'll never forget the feeling of shock I had as I walked through the door to see her laying on the couch...She didn't have any hair and she had shrunk to a fragile 80 lbs (was 75 lbs the day she died).

She didn't look like "Nana" anymore...She looked like some sort of unknown creature...Who was this in front of me? She didn't have an ounce of life left within her.

I ran straight to a spare room and just sobbed and sobbed...I didn't want her to hear me or see me sobbing, so I went into the closet and covered my face with a pillow. I didn't want to see her like that. It was that very moment I knew 100% we were going to lose her to this battle.

She was such an angel, I thought that perhaps if God existed (which she believe, and she was the only true Catholic I've ever met in my life) she would be spared. She had lived her life according to "his will." She didn't make a single mistake ever....Yet, here she was...Her soul at the mercy of the universe.

Perhaps that was just another turning point in me letting go of religion for good...Anyway...My Mom came in and told me to go clean myself up and spend some time with Nana. That is what I did (I didn't cry again until the day I heard she passed).

To watch this unfold before your very eyes is the most tragic of scenes to play on the stage of life.

Just when you think YOU are having a bad day...There are stories like this...A dime a dozen so to speak....