The picture that means so much a
Angela Fletcher put her wedding on hold for 14 years. But why?
sk any bride, and she’ll tell you the walk down the aisle was one of the most special parts of her wedding day. months of meticulous planning all leading up to that one moment – and mine was even more poignant than most.
Back in March 2002, I was the manager of a bar in Benidorm when David joined us as a kitchen porter. He was tall, handsome and made me laugh, doing funny impressions and teaching me silly phrases in Spanish.
David’s family ran a pub back in the UK, so he was on hand to help with staffing issues and supply orders, and I came to rely on him, not just as a colleague but as a friend too. I told David all about my little girl, Amy, then two, from a previous relationship, and how I’d come to Spain after my parents had moved there a few years earlier to make a better life for us both. And David was open with me too, confiding that he’d been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma when he was just 20, after finding a lump the size of an egg on his neck.
staying positive
He’d been in remission for three years, but as he explained all the treatment he’d been through – gruelling rounds of chemo and radiotherapy – I was in awe of how he’d coped. He had clearly been determined to stay positive, and it was impossible not to admire him for that.
Secretly, I hoped for something more than friendship, but as his boss I was reluctant to make the first move. I was
delighted when he asked me on a date and after a few more, we made our relationship official.
From then on, David and I were inseparable and he was as wonderful a stepdad as he was a partner. Even after a long day at work, David would take Amy to the beach, playing on the climbing frame and teaching her to ride her bike. She adored him.
Eighteen months later, in February 2004, David surprised me with a beautiful diamond ring and asked me to marry him. But before we could start planning, a house we liked nearby went up for sale and we agreed it made sense
to invest our wedding savings in a home instead. In June 2005, less than a year after we’d moved in, our son Lee was born. David started a maintenance company and I got a new waitressing job in a bar closer to our house.
While we carried on putting money into our wedding fund, our focus was on our little family. But, in January 2009, David started suffering what he thought was indigestion. The pain persisted until, one day, he staggered in from work doubled over in agony and collapsed on the sofa.
Terrified, I called an ambulance and then my parents, who came to look
‘our focus was on the family’
after the children. At hospital, the next few hours brought a barage of blood tests and scans. Then a doctor came in with a translator – my basic grasp of Spanish didn’t stretch to all the complex medical terms. But eventually we learnt David had an 11cm germ cell tumour wrapped around his kidneys. It was pressing on vital arteries to David’s heart, making surgery impossible. The only hope was chemotherapy.
Preparing for the worst
We bombarded the consultant with questions but the answer was to prepare ourselves for the worst. David was sedated to relieve his pain and, refusing to believe what was happening, I spent the rest of the day on the phone calling David’s parents and arranging flights for them. It was only when they arrived, and his distraught mum said we’d have to make the most of whatever time David had left, that it really hit me. I was going to lose the man I loved.
‘Please keep fighting,’ I said, as I sat by David’s bed that evening. Of course he told me he would – he had no intention of going anywhere. ‘I can beat it again,’ he said.
Although we had insurance to pay for David’s treatment – two rounds of chemotherapy and an operation to remove the tumour – without his income, it was a struggle to keep up mortgage payments. Each month, I’d dip into our wedding savings to cover the cost of our bills. But I didn’t care about the depleting fund, I just wanted David to be OK.
Yet every time we thought he’d be strong enough to continue his recovery at home, he’d pick up another infection.
I told the children that David was poorly, but I didn’t take them to visit often. ‘I don’t want the kids to spend any more time in this place,’ David told me, firmly. Instead, I shared hospital visiting duties with David’s mum and dad while my parents looked after the children. Finally, after nine months, David was cancerfree and a year later we moved back to the UK to be nearer to family and friends.
But just as things were back to normal, in October 2013, tests showed that a mole on David’s cheek was cancerous. He had it removed and didn’t need further treatment, but it felt as if we’d had another lucky escape.
Change of focus
We decided to focus on what we wanted in life. I started retraining as a teaching assistant and, with David back working, we were able to start saving again for our wedding. Amy, then 14, and Lee, eight, were so excited and told their friends about the huge party we were going to have but, just 18 months later, David found a
lump. When doctors diagnosed him with testicular cancer, it took all my strength not to collapse.
He had surgery to remove the tumour, and made a good recovery. But I could never quite relax, it felt like cancer was stalking us. And, in February 2016, a routine blood test showed inconsistencies in David’s cells. Scans confirmed the germ cell cancer had returned. More chemo and another operation followed, and for the fifth time in his life, David was given the all-clear. And so, one year later, in August 2017, as David finally slipped the ring on my finger, with Amy, 18, as my maid of honour and Lee, 12, as David’s best man, I was giddy with happiness.
As we posed for photographs outside the venue, my cheeks hurt from smiling. It was a day I sometimes doubted would ever come – but we’d made it.
I’d be lying if I said I’m not still terrified the cancer will come back, but we beat it before, and if we have to we’ll beat it again – this time as husband and wife.
‘I Could never quite relax’