by Leann Zotis

Created on: April 21, 2009   Last Updated: February 20, 2010

Death comes as a shock to most people in the first few decades of life. It can sneak up unannounced and totally unexpected. No one expects to confront their own mortality early in life. We are invincible in our youthful, physically fit bodies. Death is for old people. This was the thought process for Bruce and me as we enjoyed the early years of our marriage. Although I was 29 and he was 30 when we married, we had already shared our lives, our dreams and our worlds for eight years. As he would often say when I would teasingly chide him for not remembering our anniversary date, "That day was just the party. We were already married for a long time by then."

The next seven years were good ones. Not having children allowed us the freedom to pursue our own interests with gusto, to take a couple of good vacations each year and to concoct wild dreams and schemes about the successful, happy future we were sure was in store for us.

The winter he fell ill started out with the sameness that one comes to accept with the passing of one season into the next. I thought little of it when my birthday dinner had to be postponed because he couldn't keep food down. A dose of antibiotics from the family doctor seemed to cure whatever was ailing him. A month later, a kidney infection knocked the wind out of him. Again, antibiotics restored Bruce to what seemed to be the picture of health.  Christmas brought with it lethargy and a spike in temperature that wouldn't go away.

Finally the doctor began to look deeper. Initial blood work showed nothing. More involved levels of testing, including one where both of us were tested for the Aids virus, provided no clues. If was an icy cold day in February when the call came from the doctor's office. We were to pick up a sealed packet of medical tests from the doctor's office and report immediately to the emergency room of our local hospital. I enlisted the aid of my sister for moral support and reported to the emergency room as instructed, still in the dark about the contents of the envelope.

Six hours of doctors poking, questioning and revealing nothing in the emergency room left us exhausted, vulnerable and shaken as the clock struck midnight. It was then that a doctor I hadn't seen before approached me and told me Bruce was being admitted that night. This doctor, a renowned oncologist in Pittsburgh, a city whose medical research facilities are acclaimed on a global level, informed me that, to the best of his medical

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