Surviving Ovarian Cancer, Only to Face Her Husband's Devastating Cancer Diagnosis Jodi Smith Shares Her Ovarian Cancer Story

"He would forget things all the time," she says. "I also noticed he would get angry a little more quickly, which was very unlike him because he always had a very happy disposition. I just thought, 'Oh, it's just the stress of everything that's going on in the family right now.'”

Another Cancer in the Family

Jodi finished her cancer treatments on May 18. Just a little over a month later, Casey, who had always been healthy and active, had two grand mal seizuresa very intense type of seizure caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. His doctors diagnosed him with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive and hard-to-treat form of brain cancer. The average survival time with this cancer is just 12 to 18 months after diagnosis.

Jodi and Casey had to explain to their kids that a second parent now had cancer, and that it was serious. "We've tried to always be honest, but not scary," Jodi says. "When my husband was diagnosed, we told them, 'This is terminal. It won't get better, but dad's going to do treatments to try to stay alive as long as he can.'"

Dream Vacation

Jodi had always wanted to take her children to Kauai, where she and Casey had honeymooned. But with medical bills from both of their cancer treatments piling up, it seemed like traveling would be an impossible dream. Then, a friend stepped in and got the entire trip donated.

"So we got to take our kids to Kauai and show them all around," Jodi says. "And we had about 12 days that we were just together as a family. It was so great."

Moving Forward

Today, Jodi and her children are having to deal with life without their husband and father. "It's hard not having him here, not having his big, fun personality in the house," she says. "It's different, but we still feel very close to him. We feel like he's close to us."

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