Daniel Montalvo

I lost my best friend, my husband, Daniel Montalvo on March 22, 2019.  He was first diagnosed with synovial sarcoma a few months after we got married and had his right foot amputated in 2015 with hopes that the cancer would not spread.  There was always a tiny 3mm spot on his lungs but the doctors assured us they would monitor it and that there really wasn’t anything that could be sampled because it was so small.  We lived our lives with little fear after scans came back negative.  We traveled with our kids, bought a house, we were living our best normal.  We talked about our future and how we were going to retire, move to Florida or Washington and how we were going to have a Frenchie farm because we loved the breed so much.  We spent every day together just loving the life we had created together.  It wasn’t until January of 2018 that our lives would never be the same.  Dan just had a negative CT and PET in December of 2017, but he got really sick in January 2018, so sick he went to the doctor and they couldn’t find anything.  It wasn’t until February 24, 2018, two days after he turned 42 that he was still so sick he went to the ER and they told us his cancer was back.  Both of our hearts just dropped to the ground.  How this could be happening to us, it was like we were in a fog.  We had to admit him and it wasn’t until maybe two weeks later we met with a cancer team that we were told the cancer came back, metastasized to his lungs and that my best friend, the love of my life had only 12 to 24 months to live.  The pain I felt was so unbearable along with the anger.  Those months following my husband did everything to fight, grueling rounds of chemo, radiation but in the end cancer won.  My husband received his wings on March 22, 2019, at 2:10pm.  You think that you can prepare for something like this, in the back of your mind you say at least he or she isn’t suffering anymore but in reality you can’t or at least I couldn’t because the suffering hasn’t stopped, it just transferred its place.  I hated seeing him in so much pain, watching him die before my eyes, wishing I could trade places with him, hoping that he knew just how much I loved him and what an amazing husband, friend, father, son, brother he was.  It has now been one year, three months and 10 days and the pain hasn’t left.  I miss him as much as I did the day he died.  I’m not going to lie, life is hard, I struggle everyday to try and be happy without him and only time can really tell how the rest of my story will unfold.  I promised him though that I would try to live and be happy for the both of us.  Here is a few pictures of the love of my life, Daniel Montalvo.