I don't really know what I'm trying to accomplish by posting this. Maybe I'm looking for comfort. Maybe I just need somewhere to get everything out.
My girlfriend, Jennifer, lost her battle with cancer on September 29th. We'd been together for 13 years. Marriage was never really for us, but she was my partner, my best friend, and the person I shared my life with.
It's hard to describe exactly what I'm feeling. It's a kind of hurt that cuts deeper than anything I've ever experienced.
Back in 2020, Jennifer came home from work one day and noticed a lump on her stomach. It felt like a tennis ball. It was weird, so she made a doctor's appointment. About two weeks later, we got the diagnosis. Synovial sarcoma.
I have a pretty extensive family history of lung cancer from smoking. Just about everyone in my family, with the exception of two people, has died from it, me being 1 cause I don't smoke. So, of course, hearing the word cancer scared the fuck out of me.
I immediately dove into researching synovial sarcoma, trying to learn everything I could. Which turned out to be a bad idea. Extremely rare. Extremely aggressive. Everything I was reading painted a pretty terrifying picture. The kind of cancer where, by the time symptoms start showing up, things can already be really bad. But we'd caught it early. We had the tumor removed, and she went into remission.
Then, during one of her follow-up scans, they found a tiny nodule on her lung. The cancer had metastasized.
They tried targeted radiation, which was mostly successful, but there was still living sarcoma tissue. So they performed a wedge resection surgery, which was successful.
Then came another scan. Another tiny nodule. Another successful wedge resection.
Six months later, during her next routine scans, they found five more small tumors in her lungs.
At that point, more surgery was going to be too much on her body, so they decided to start chemotherapy.
And that's pretty much how the next several years went.
Six years of cancer treatments. Six years of chemotherapy, scans, appointments, surgeries, and constantly waiting to find out what came next.
She never let it stop her from living. Sure, she slowed down quite a bit over the years, but she still got up every day. She still went to work. She was a lab manager for a genetics company, and fortunately, her job allowed her to work from home when she needed to. When she felt well enough, she'd go into the lab. She kept going. She kept living her life.
Then came September 2026.
On September 1st, Jennifer and her entire team were laid off. The company shut down their whole building without any warning.
This was terrifying for us. She had an $81,000-a-year job with excellent benefits, and that health insurance was incredibly important for her cancer treatments.
We eventually learned that we wouldn't lose the insurance immediately and that we could continue coverage through COBRA afterward. It was going to be expensive, but we could make it work.
Then, on September 10th, she got sick.
She threw up. Nothing particularly alarming at first. She was on chemotherapy, and while she hadn't experienced much nausea recently, it wasn't exactly unusual. It happened again that night and then again the following day.
At a scheduled doctor's appointment, we learned that she had pneumonia. We also found out that she'd developed Fanconi syndrome, which was causing the vomiting and was a result of the ifosfamide chemotherapy she'd been receiving.
They had to take her off that treatment. And at the time, they didn't have another plan. Again, we were scared. But we were hopeful. About four hours later, her oncologist came back with some news. There was another chemotherapy option called eribulin. He told us it had roughly a 40% chance of keeping the sarcoma from growing.
At this point, they were trying to prevent a tumor measuring approximately 5–7 centimeters in her right lung from getting any bigger.
Then we got some news that genuinely made us excited. Back in 2022, we'd looked into a clinical trial, but Jennifer didn't qualify because of something in her blood testing. I honestly can't remember the specifics anymore. Something involving a marker called MAGE-A, I think.
Later that year, we'd learned about another treatment called lete-cel therapy.
This one, she qualified for. We were told that there wasn't an available opening at the time, but when one became available, we'd be contacted. Well, here we were in September 2026, and a spot had finally opened.
Her oncologist told us we could schedule her first appointment at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City for as early as September 15th. We were beyond thrilled. After years of chemotherapy and watching this cancer keep coming back, we finally had something new to be hopeful about.
There were just two things we needed to work through first. She had pneumonia, and they also needed to give her body about a week to clear the previous chemotherapy from her system. But we had a plan.
The trial was going to require her to stay in New York for roughly two to three months. I took a week of PTO so I could go up there with her, and my plan was to come back periodically on weekends to spend time with her.
Financially, it was probably going to be one of the most devastating things we'd ever had to figure out. But we were going to figure it out.
On September 14th, she was discharged from the hospital, and that night we took a train to New York City. The next morning, September 15th, we got up, grabbed some coffee, and headed straight to Memorial Sloan Kettering. It was a good day. I remember that. It was a genuinely good day.
Unfortunately, when we got to the hospital, she was having trouble breathing, so they decided to admit her through the emergency department. After about 16 hours, I ended up going back to her parents' house in Brooklyn because there wasn't anywhere for me to sleep in the ER. I planned to come back first thing the next morning.
When I came back, Jennifer was confused. Delirious. She didn't know where she was or what was going on.bWe found out her carbon dioxide level was 92, which was dangerously high. They put her on a BiPAP machine to help her breathe, and fortunately, it worked. As a precaution, they moved her into the ICU so they could monitor her more closely. But something was different. Every time she fell asleep, waking her up was almost like having to bring her back to reality. It could take 25 to 30 minutes before she really understood where she was or what was happening. It scared me, but we still had hope.
The doctors were telling us that her pneumonia was improving. Her numbers were getting better. She was requiring less and less oxygen. We were still working toward the trial. We just needed to get through the pneumonia first.
Then September 19th came. In all the excitement and chaos of packing our bags and rushing to New York, I'd forgotten my passport back home. So I had to take a train back. It was going to be a 14-hour train ride.
About three hours into that trip, Jennifer texted me. She told me that when I got home, she wanted me to video call her because we needed to talk. She'd gotten some bad news.
I told her there was absolutely no way I could sit on that for another 11 hours and asked if we could just talk right then.
They'd done another CT scan after I left. The tumor in her right lung had grown so aggressively that it had overtaken the entire lung and destroyed the tissue. The cancer was terminal. The clinical trial was no longer an option.
After six years of fighting, six years of treatments, surgeries, hospital visits, and holding on to hope, we were being told there was nothing left they could do to stop it. And somehow, despite everything, Jennifer was still Jennifer. She was sad but she didn't cry and she didn't waste time groaning about it. She wanted to just enjoy her time. I IMMEDIATELY hopped on a flight the next day back to NYC.
We still talked. We still watched movies. We still spent time together. On the night of September 28th, we stayed up a little later than usual watching Fast X because that's what she wanted to watch. When the movie ended, I suggested we get some sleep. She agreed. Around 2:00 in the morning, she woke up from a nightmare.
We talked for a while. And even though I can't sing worth a damn, I sang to her. The nurses eventually came in and asked whether she wanted something to help with her anxiety and help her sleep. She said yes.
At 4:21 p.m. on September 29th, Jennifer took her last breath in her sleep. And my entire world changed.
I don't really know how to explain what life has been like since then.
I haven't slept more than about three hours a day. If I'm not distracted, I feel like I completely lose control of my emotions.
I've spent an unhealthy amount of time sitting at my computer playing video games because it's one of the only ways I can keep my mind occupied long enough to stop thinking about everything. I've had good days and bad days. But the bad days are really fucking bad.
Someone who was a constant in my life, every single day, for the past 13 years is just gone.
And I don't know what to do with that. I want to sleep. God, I want to sleep. But every time I lie down, my mind starts going. I look around our bedroom. I see her things. I grab my phone and start listening to old voicemails or looking through pictures of us. And I cry. I cry so fucking much.
For the past six years, I've been her caregiver. And yes, it was stressful. It was exhausting. There were days when it was incredibly hard. But I didn't care. Because she was happy. Because she was getting what she needed. Because I loved her.
Now I don't know what to do with myself. There's no more water cups to refill. No more snacks to make when she's hungry. No more baths to draw when she's hurting. No more TV shows to watch together. No more checking on her to see if she needs anything. No more hearing her voice coming from the other room.
All these little things that had become such a normal part of my life are just gone. And I feel like I've lost my purpose. I've barely even heard my own voice in two weeks. The house is so fucking quiet.
I haven't been able to bring myself to clean up or put away much of her stuff. Every time I think about moving something, it feels like I'm erasing a little piece of her. I know that's not true. And honestly, Jennifer would probably think I was being silly about some of it.
But I can't help it. I miss her. I miss her so much it physically hurts. It's been almost three weeks, and somehow I feel like I miss her more every single day.
I'm tired of people asking me how I'm doing. I know they mean well. I know they care. But I don't know how many different ways I can tell people that I'm not okay.
I'm tired of hearing people tell me they're sorry. I'm tired of death. I'm tired of cancer. I'm tired of walking through our house and knowing she's never coming home. I'm tired of trying to distract myself just so I can make it through another day.
I'm just tired. And I feel like I'm tired in a way that sleep can't fix.
I don't even know what I'm supposed to do next. I spent so long taking care of her, fighting alongside her, and planning our lives around whatever came next with her cancer.
Now there's nothing to plan for. And I would give absolutely anything to fill up one more water cup for her.
It's 8:53 in the morning, and another spiral of thoughts and emotions somehow led me here. I haven't been to bed since I woke up yesterday, so I'm going to try to get some sleep. I'm exhausted from crying while writing this so hopefully I can pass out.
I don't really know what I'm expecting from posting this. Maybe I'm looking for comfort. Maybe I'm looking for people who understand. Maybe I just needed to tell someone about her.
I don't know.
I just know that I love her, I miss her, and I don't know how to live in a world where she isn't here anymore.