Last year, May 10th, 2013, my husband was acting as if he was drinking a lot. His personality changed and he was being forgetfull. Never in a million years would we have guessed a brain tumor.

We went to the ER, and sure enough, we were told he had a mass. The mass was deep in the brain and all they could do was biopsy it. It came back as an Astrocytoma grade 3. We went to Duke University and worked with the doctors here. He did chemo and radiation. The tumor shrunk a little. Then in October, we were told that the tumor grew to a glioblastoma and they needed to be more aggressive. So they changed his chemo and gave him a treatment of Avastin. The month before he had a pulmonary embolism and survived.

The next day after the Avastin, he got a bowel perforation. My husband was a very fit man and had turned into someone different. He blew up from all the steroids, his personality changed to someone who became angry easily, and he became frail. He had to walk with a walker, he needed a broom stick to get out of bed, he slept a lot, was unable to drive, play golf, and bathe himself. He ended up with a colostomy and 1 month later went into septic shock. He died 6 months after diagnosis from Septic Shock. He was hospitalized numerous times in those 6 months because when he would try to wean off the steroids, he would get confused and would bump into walls. His dignity and independence was taken away from him. Our 13 year old daughter had to watch this strong wonderful man deteriorate and become someone she did not recognize. For me, I had to watch the man I love suffer. He was in so much pain. He was determine to provide for us, so he worked all hours on the computer trying to do his job as a controller. Thank God for his job, that they let him believe he was working. His father who is 91 had to watch a 3rd son die. My husband Marc, was the apple of his eye. He was kind and loving. Never in a million years would we have expected this to happen. November 26, 2013, he passed. My daughter and I had to watch him die and our hearts were forever broken; our lives changed forever.