Transitioning from dating to marriage and caregiving (Ashleigh’s story)

March 1, 2011

In this video, Ashleigh talks about when her husband, Doug, was diagnosed with a brain tumour three years ago when they were dating

Watch as Ashleigh talks about the shock and the surprise of Doug’s initial diagnosis of a stage 4 brain tumour with short life expectancy. Then there was relief when it was downgraded to stage 1. She talks about how they grew from the experience and found their own path through treatment and recovery.

She discusses how they still need to deal with grand mal seizures due to Doug’s treatment. She shares how they decided to get married 10 days after he was home from the hospital and although it was stressful, they decided to focus on one day at a time.

She talks about needing to find maturity earlier, dealing with cancer on an ongoing basis because of checkups, coping thanks to the support of family and facing the reality of changes due to treatment and healing.

You all of a sudden have all these things that are on your mind that wouldn’t normally be there. So, for me it was an adjustment of, ‘Okay, let’s get real. There’s some things that have to be done and I got to do it.’ I found that when this was all happening that there was a strength in me that I had no idea that I had. And starting out on marriage on such a rocky place it makes me think, ‘Wow, we can get through a lot in marriage now.’

A lot of things can happen and we’d be fine with it, we’d be like, ‘Well, we can look back and say we got through that, so I’m sure we can get through this.’

Watch the video of Ashleigh talking about transitioning from dating to marriage and caregiving

The Partnership’s Person-Centred Perspective initiative is committed to improving the patient experience. We are working with partners across Canada to find the best ways to offer a person-centred perspective throughout a person’s cancer journey and to help information flow throughout. The impact of a cancer diagnosis goes far beyond the physical disease. It affects every aspect of a person’s life. The initiative has focused on reporting about the patient experience, and giving health-care providers patient-centred tools and resources, which have been validated and standardized.

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