“I can’t believe we got married,” my husband says to me over lunch. This wasn’t the parting comment in a bitter separation – but a gentle chat between newlyweds. Ben can’t believe we got married, because he also can’t believe he’s alive.
Getting married has never featured on my list of life goals. After having two kids we agreed that we’d get round to it when they were old enough to walk our dog, Roast, down the aisle. I always secretly hoped we would elope. All I’ve ever wanted is a baby, a pug and someone nice to share them with. White dresses, tearful vows and the icky connotation that I will be transferred as property has never felt like my dream. But when Ben suddenly fell ill with a life threatening illness, a declaration of love and unity started to feel like a radical act.
When I met my now husband, Ben, things moved fast. It was during Covid and we were both living in Mallorca, where we hardly knew anyone. He was a Drum & Bass MC whose work had evaporated during lockdown. I was finishing writing a memoir about my time as parody wellness blogger, Deliciously Stella. We were in each other’s pockets first as friends and then as lovers, moving in together after just a few months. After a little over a year together and a move to London for Ben’s career, I fell pregnant with my eldest daughter. Seven months after she was born I was pregnant with my second. Unbeknownst to me, the universe had reason to be in a rush.
When my youngest daughter was only 5 months-old, Ben started sweating in the night. He was violently sick and we used our health insurance to send him to hospital in Palma. They ran some tests before sending him home with antibiotics and no clear diagnosis. Later that evening they e-mailed him and told him to go to A and E. His infection markers were so high they were concurrent with sepsis. After days of inconclusive tests Ben went to the public hospital where they performed an X-Ray. There was a giant mass in his lung.
Or a ‘Til Death do us Part-y’, if you will.
“Best case scenario, it's TB,” we were told. Then they put him into isolation to wait out the weekend. By Monday they had identified a gram-negative bacteria called pseudonomas aeruginosa. It was quite rare for someone fit and healthy to be affected. They put him on a course of intravenous antibiotics and said he’d be home in a few weeks. It didn’t feel serious. The hospital food was awful but he seemed to be getting better. I became a single mother to two under two overnight, and a part of me resented him for getting to have a rest.
Just as we were preparing for him to come home, Ben started coughing up blood. He was rushed to another hospital for cauterisation in his lung. For hours I had no idea where he was. I’d changed my phone number when he was in hospital and they didn’t have my updated details. When I finally decided to call the ward, having thought he’d been sleeping all day, they told me he was in the ICU in a medically-induced coma.
The coma was supposed to last a couple of days, but the bacteria was antibiotic resistant. It was mutating so quickly they couldn’t find a drug to tackle it. The doctors were working with an international team to get ahead of its next move. He was put on a ventilator. My mother-in-law moved in with me and we took it in turns to visit him while the other one looked after my baby. I breastfed in meetings with doctors while they told us that he may need dialysis, that he had arrhythmia and sepsis, that the bacteria had eaten over three quarters of his right lung. They told us that when he was well enough, they would lie him on his back again. Every day I saw him lying on his front I lost hope.
One day they told us that it looked like the end of the road. Ben’s hands and feet had turned purple. He had sepsis and multiple organ failure. If this antibiotic didn’t start to work, we would have to say our goodbyes. I took all his clothes out of the cupboard and sat there clutching them and sobbing. My mother-in-law frantically researched alternative cures. We would be allowed to administer one on compassionate grounds if the doctors conceded all else had failed. We found a microbiologist in Georgia who could make as a bacteriophage, a virus that might be able to penetrate the bacteria.
“I’ll just fly to Georgia,” I said. “I’ll strap the baby to my front and go.”
“No, it makes more sense for me to go,” said my mother-in-law, at age 74.
Just as I was about to send my Russian-speaking sister-in-law to Georgia, Ben’s condition started to improve. He responded to the antibiotics, his fever dissipated, they very slowly woke him up. Recovery has been far from straight forward. The first time they tried to move Ben out of the ICU he had a heart attack. They later discovered he had acute myeloid leukaemia – the reason for the infection’s severity. In the last 10 months Ben has suffered recurrent pneumonia, had to learn to walk again and had an 11 centimetre abscess surgically removed from his throat. His vocal cords are paralysed and he may never perform again. Just a few months ago, an infection in his spinal fluid landed him in palliative care. He was in agony, hallucinating and unable to eat. His family flew out and we talked about wishes and ashes.
“Is there any music you think he’d like played at his funeral?” His brother asked. The only song that entered my head was the Bee Gees' More Than a Woman. It was a song I thought we’d play at our wedding.
“If you get through this”, I said to him, “I think we should get married.”
It's more common than ovarian or skin cancer, yet women are still fighting for proper diagnoses.
He agreed. And once again, he rallied. He was fed through a tube for six weeks and his weight dropped to 50 kilos. The doctors told us there would be an extended break from chemo. They wanted him to come home and spend some time with his family. “Medicine is only one part of healing,” they said. “He also needs love.”
The town hall gave us a date for the wedding. My aunt and uncle would be our witnesses and our daughters the only guests. He had two weeks to get strong enough to climb the stairs. Ben trained like Rocky while I plied him with protein shakes and pasta. I texted my family and close friends: “No obligation to come, but I’m getting married on the 14th, just so you know.”
My sister replied, “This is the weirdest message you’ve ever sent. Do you not want us there?”
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to put pressure on Ben to do any more than a 15-minute ceremony. I also didn’t want to put any pressure on myself, to feel joy when I felt so flat, to throw a good party when I was used to being in the company of only my kids. I was also scared that Ben might end up back in hospital and we’d have to cancel.
“It’s unacceptable for you to get married without us,” my brother in law said. And so we had ourselves a little party.
My mum insisted that I would not have to do anything. She was in charge of food, while my aunt and uncle set up trestle tables and shade in our little garden. My mother-in-law arranged flowers from the market and made me a bouquet. Our friend Ollie brought his camera so we would have professional photos and my closest girlfriends took me out for lunch.
In the lead up, I was anxious. I called my mum in a state and told her that I wished we’d eloped. I wanted to be married, but I wasn’t sure I wanted a wedding.
“I think I’m just going to wear some jeans and a T-shirt,” I said. “I can’t put on a stupid dress and carry stupid flowers and pretend my life’s not falling a-f*cking-part.”
“If you want, we can all stand outside the town hall,” she said. “It can just be you and Ben. We don’t even have to come in.”
But it isn’t just me and Ben. It’s been our mums, and our daughters. It’s been our Nanny Angie and all our friends. It’s been Kat, who helped me move house, and Archie and Liv who flew out to make me laugh. It’s been Jho and Sarah who took Ben endless chicken soup in hospital. It’s been my aunt and uncle who gave us somewhere to live – and my cousin Isla who’s become my daughters’ favourite person in the world. Without these people I wouldn’t have grown into the wife and mother I needed to be to get through it. Without the support of every single person who came to our wedding, we would not be there to love and be loved at all.
In the end I managed to put on a white top and skirt and carry my bouquet. I wore a plastic pug-shaped clip in my hair in honour of the dog we left at home. Ben made it up the stairs and to the party and he’s still at home getting stronger every day. I’m so proud to call him my husband.
That day, we looked fear in the face and said “f*ck you”. Prioritising love in a time of darkness felt like holding up a torch. That day we let the light in, and I’m so glad we did.
This is what I want everyone to know.
