An unfinished Love Story...

The garage door to the vacant condo next to mine opened, "Oooh, new neighbors," I yelled to my roommate. We ran to the window and found ourselves pleasantly surprised by the two cute guys standing downstairs in the driveway. Little did I know, at 22 years old on that beautiful day of August 2002, I was about to meet my future husband. Celeste and I headed downstairs and I found myself face to face with the man who would become my partner in life and the father to our beautiful little girls. John Hicks, he said as he shook my hand. We quickly became friends, born from our mutual adoration, but our relationship beyond that took years to develop. After being good friends for 3 years we decided to start dating and it was another 7 years before we were engaged to be married. A whole decade after that first chance encounter, in the fall of 2012 he popped the question, and the following spring, we tied the knot. In the fall of 2015, we welcomed our first daughter, and in summer 2018, our second daughter joined us. For a year and three quarters, our family was complete.

On April 6, 2020 we celebrated 7 years of marriage, just weeks after our country essentially shut down due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. It wasn't our ideal anniversary celebration, out on the town, alone for a few blissful hours. Still, we were safe at home with our girls, and for that, we were thankful. We celebrated happily that evening, clueless that it would be our last. Twenty days later the future we had planned and worked so hard towards for our family would come crashing down around us with one simple but heartbreaking word, Cancer.

After a few days in bed with a fever, back pain, and night sweats, John headed out for a Covid-19 test, it came back negative. How could this not be Covid? If not the novel coronavirus, then what? That test was on a Wednesday, on Sunday, April 26, 2020; John left for urgent care to get blood work done. He was headed back home by early afternoon with 15,000 platelets and directions to follow up with primary care the next day. Thankfully, my mother and father were highly alarmed by his platelet count and urged me to take him to the ER for medical attention immediately. The girls and I piled out of the pool, got dressed, and waited for John to get home so we could rush him to the hospital.

As he laid in a hospital bed that night being poked and prodded, I went to sleep with a naivety that I long for to this day. I had no clue what was about to happen and all the subsequent, terrifying moments we would have to endure.

On Monday morning, John called to give me an update; I only heard the word Cancer. My ears were ringing, and my head was spinning. My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma a mere 7 days after his symptoms began. His was a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. The official diagnosis took weeks to finalize, stage 4 Diffuse Large B-cell Burkitts-like Triple Hit Lymphoma. I'm going to bet you've never heard of it; I've never met a person who had before the words entered our world.

I spent Monday and Tuesday working frantically to get John transferred from our local hospital to the University of California San Diego. I was determined to have him treated by the best cancer team in San Diego. He was being put in an ambulance for the thirty-minute drive to La Jolla by Wednesday night so that the brilliant doctors and nurses at Jacobs Medical Center and Moores Cancer Center could try to save his life. Due to Covid, John had been alone those last few days, so we decided to wait outside his ambulance to see him in person for just a moment as they loaded him up. There were many tears from all four of us as we blew kisses and squeezed in as many "I love you-s" as possible. Then the ambulance doors closed, and we embarked down a new path towards a different, totally unknown future.

The following week, John started chemo. Since we couldn't be with him, the girls and I made a huge sign expressing our support which we held up outside his hospital window. From six floors up, John saw his daughters playing in the grass and blowing kisses. We FaceTimed and told him how much we love him. He took his chemo that day and the next like an absolute champion, but on Thursday, his blood pressure dropped, and he was moved to the ICU. I went to bed that night with unwarranted ease; it surprises me still that I could sleep at all that night. I was still so new to our crisis, I had no idea how bad things truly were for my strong husband. There is that naivety again and my privileged life, shielding me from how bad it really was. My phone startled me from that blissfully ignorant slumber at 3:30am. On the other end of the line was my husband telling me that his spleen has exploded. They needed to perform an emergency splenectomy to save his life. That all sounds scary enough for a healthy person, but John had almost nonexistent platelets which are essential to stop bleeding. He had no neutrophils, which are needed to ward off infections and heal injuries. A week prior, he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, which had spread to his bone marrow and packed it so full of lymphoma he could not make platelets, white blood cells, or red blood cells. He was already dying without the added physiological trauma of a ruptured spleen. I did the only things I could, I told him I loved him, I thanked him for the beautiful life we created together and I said goodbye. Then I prayed for a miracle.

My parents and sister converged on our house in the pre-dawn darkness. Those were Covid-19 times, the very beginning of it, nobody in our family had seen anyone in nearly 2 months, not even each other. That morning was dark, in every sense of the word. And as the sun rose, my father drove me around San Diego aimlessly, we found ourselves in a cloudy Del Mar. We happened by places that were meaningful to John and I. The Del Mar Fairgrounds where we first discovered our mutual desire to start a relationship. Then passed Sbicca, where we had our first date on the rooftop overlooking L'Auberge. Wavecrest, where we spent time together as our relationship grew. I answered three phone calls from the hospital in those five hours, and each took my breath away. I steadied myself, closed my eyes, and accepted the call. The first two were updates, letting me know he was still in surgery and informing me that I still couldn't be there; I couldn't even sit in a waiting room somewhere. My dad and I continued driving. It reminded me of so many times in high school and college, driving around with my dad after a break-up or a fight with my best friend and him just comforting me like a good dad does. The third call I got was the hardest to answer; I knew it would be the call that answered the fearful questions slamming around my mind all morning. The voice on the other side greeted me with positivity because, by the grace of God and a team of highly skilled surgeons, my husband was in recovery. I'd be able to go visit him once he was back in the ICU. That day, Friday, May 8, would be the first time I would hold my husband's hand since driving him to the ER in April.

That Sunday was Mother's Day, and by then, he was back on the 6th floor, where the Bone Marrow Transplant unit is located. I alone had been granted permission for regular visits, thanks to the kindness of someone in risk management. My parents stepped in to help with our daughters, and I spent the day with John. We laughed and cried; we held hands, watched shows about beautiful San Diego on PBS, and told silly jokes. John had a lot to overcome and had only days to rebound from surgery so that he could continue his first round of chemo without any delay. He rose from his hospital bed like a champion and started taking walks around the unit, knowing he needed to move his body so that he could carry on fighting his lymphoma.

The following month we began navigating our new lives, figuring out hospital life, cancer life, pandemic life. In June, on our youngest daughter's 2nd birthday, John was told he had achieved complete remission. It was joyous despite him spending the day and following weeks in the hospital for more chemo. We got to have him home for the 4th of July, which we spent at home as a family together and thankful. The next day, he was back in-patient for round 4, his last round before the Bone Marrow Transplant preparation.

On August 17, after apheresis and BEAM protocol, John had his transplant, a day considered to be your "new birthday." With John still in remission and having completed the transplant, we headed into September with hope and feelings of progress. Things felt a touch normal under our roof, but it was short-lived. By late September, John was in the ICU fighting sinusitis and subsequent sepsis and hypercalcemia. Once again, my big strong husband was fighting for his life in a hospital bed. Then, on October 1, we received the devastating news that his Cancer had relapsed, and just like that, we were back in the fight. Remission had lasted only three months; it felt unbearably cruel.

The team's next line of attack was CAR T immunotherapy. John spent much of October at 6 BMT trying to stay healthy enough to receive his immunotherapy on November 5. He was home to celebrate our oldest daughter's 5th birthday and was back in the hospital again. After the infusion of his modified T Cells, things got pretty dicey. He came home for a few days but then went into Cytokine Release Syndrome, a dangerous side effect of the CAR T. He spent another week in the hospital fighting CRS. He even had a short spell of neurotoxicity, another fun side effect. More tears, more fear, more uncertainty, more life-altering scary moments. But, as he had so many times during his battle, John fought back and came home to his family.

We spent Thanksgiving at home, together, all 4 of us. It was a lovely day, and as we moved into December, John's labs were starting to look better. They watched him like a hawk, blood work every day, which meant two drives to La Jolla daily with our daughters in tow. We did it happily as we had hope that the CAR T would work long enough to get John to an even better trial that might give him even more time. We knew we were approaching Hail Mary territory, and it was terrifying. Unfortunately, his blood work took a turn for the worse. On my 41st birthday, I was negotiating the task of my husband being placed on hospice care. We were told he had two weeks to live. Family and friends descended on our house to say goodbye. It was heartbreaking and heartwarming all at the same time.

We stumbled through the holidays; it was such a blur. We did our best to welcome a new year with hope; John was feeling pretty good for a man on hospice. After three weeks, we decided to check blood work; perhaps the CAR T had started working? Maybe his Cancer had slowed, and we could bridge him to a trial? In late January, John came off hospice and went in-patient for one last chance at life. He received a rescue dose of chemo and another trial-level immunotherapy. We hoped that we could get him into a trial at Stanford if he could just make it a little bit longer. After a couple weeks at 6 BMT, John suffered some heart complications and while he recovered, the Stanford trial closed. We were out of options. John came home just before Valentine's Day and was put back on hospice. We spent 9 very scary days trying to keep him comfortable, and at 4:05 pm on Saturday, February 20, 2021, John William Hicks passed away peacefully at our home.

For 300 days, John fought like hell to stay alive; he fought until the last twenty-four hours of his life. For 300 days, I was a caregiver, a mother, and an isolated cancer wife. For 300 days, our friends and family did everything they could to support our family through Cancer during a pandemic. It was impossibly hard, but we were blessed with support and stability. It was never lost on me that it could be so much worse, and for so many, it is. How do people navigate this level of loss while also having to focus on keeping bills paid and a roof over their families' heads? How do they heal after their loss if there is no stability? For some, the loss of a spouse means all facets of life are at risk of falling apart at the seams. This is how The Honu Family Foundation was born. This is why I work tirelessly to help families like mine. This is why you are here, reading this story, and why we hope you will want to help make a difference.