A couple have had their new-found happiness shattered by cancer after finding each other, falling in love and having a baby - after discovering they were dating the same man. The Mirror reports Leeanne Davies-Grassnick discovered she had stage four bowel cancer just four months after having son Casper.
Leanne, 38, is on her second course of chemotherapy and faces an uncertain future, but with Casper, now eight months, and wife Emma supporting her, she says: "I will not give up hope.”
In 2018 the couple met after setting up a WhatsApp group with other women who had dated the same serial cheat. Leeanne said: “We talked for six hours over two bottles of prosecco. I’d only dated men. At the end of the night, I don’t know how it happened, somehow we kissed."
Emma, 33, who had dated women and men, popped the question 10 months later, on Leeanne’s birthday. The pair, from Clapham, South London, wanted children and both began IVF treatment.
The pair wed in London in October 2021 and Casper was born on Boxing Day. “Emma helped deliver the baby,” says Leeanne. “It was an incredible moment. She passed him to me and we both felt this indescribable love."
Tragically, the happiness was to be short-lived. In April this year, after months of exhaustion which she put down to being a new mum, as well as post-natal infections, and a nagging pain under her ribs while on holiday in Corfu, she decided to get checked out.
Emma insisted on examining her when they got home and discovered her liver was enlarged. Leeanne was rushed to hospital and, days later, they were given a devastating diagnosis at King’s College Hospital, South London.
Leeanne said: "Our lives came crumbling down when they said my tumour markers indicated colon cancer and it had spread to the liver, with one tumour measuring 15cm. It was stage four." After being referred to the Royal Marsden Hospital, Leanne began a powerful, three-drug course of chemotherapy and treatment on May 20.
She had six rounds of chemo in 12 weeks and says: “My first round was painful, the tumours in my liver were really reacting and I found the pain harder than labour and childbirth. It was excruciating. I would dig my nails into my arm, just to concentrate the pain and to try to get through it."
Although her cancer markers have improved and the tumours in her colon have shrunk, her liver tumours remain too big to be operable. She said: “It felt like being diagnosed all over again. If the tumours in my liver don’t shrink, we can’t operate."
Emma says: “It feels unfair, but we remain hopeful. Casper is the glue that holds us all together. I think, ‘Am I going to be a widow at 34 or 35 and have to raise a child alone?’ But at the same time, he makes us continue and fight. He brings so much joy.”
More information at bowelcanceruk.org.uk.
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