You never think it will happen to you. The cancer, with no cure. The retirement dreams out the window. This happens to other people. Ideally people you don’t know. Or love. But it’s happening to us.

My husband, Jason Peacock, has had horrible back pain all year, getting worse and worse. The emergency room doctors we saw said “it’s just back pain, follow up with your family doctor.” Even “what do you want me to do about it?” The radiologist who read his MRI missed something months ago.

By the time he was diagnosed with a blood cancer that is eating away at his bones, he had several fractures, and more came in the short time after diagnosis. We spent two weeks of the three weeks following, in hospital. Our two jobs put on the back burner, becoming one job to survive each day.

Along the way, we've thought 'at least we have solid jobs and we don’t have to worry about that.’ But even solid jobs don’t pay you to look after loved ones who are sick. And both of us have a new full time job of keeping our heads above water, and holding on to the hope that remission will come. We know this cancer (Multiple Myeloma) will come back, but there is hope for remission and great years before that reality.

Because of the delay in diagnosis, the oncologists and spine surgeons had to decide which to do first, start his 16 weeks of chemo, or reconstruct his back. In the end, they decided that his back won’t hold for 16 weeks. It will collapse. So next week he will have 5 vertebrae fused together. Two weeks later, the chemo will start, followed by a stem cell transplant and another two weeks in hospital. We are only at the beginning of our fight.

As his wife, here’s the part that scares me. I have Functional Neurological Disorder. A disorder that mimics Multiple Sclerosis, but affects the software of the brain instead of the hardware. Also not curable. I’m supposed to keep my stress levels low to avoid brain to body breakdowns. Sometimes, I can’t walk, and sometimes I get crippling pain. If I can’t function, then I can’t take care of Jason through this. As a past Police Officer myself, the idea of not being able to hold it together to protect someone else is particularly awful. So I’m recognizing that I need to take some things off my plate to be a pillar. I might have to take time off work. I don’t want to, but it’s not about want right now.

Jason needs to see his son grow up. John (aka: ‘the sweetest kid ever’), needs his dad. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable it is for both of us to put out a Go Fund Me page. This whole process has been so humbling. Accepting help, let alone ASKING for it? I didn’t think we were capable of it. But here we are. Please help us take this one big thing off our plates so we can focus on surviving.

Celine and Jason Peacock