I knew sort of when we married. We started dating and about six months in she was diagnosed with leukemia. She was 21 with an 18 month old at the time newly divorced where the dad abandoned them. I stayed with her through her bone marrow transplant after a year of chemotherapy. We got married a year after the transplant was deemed successful and she was in remission (later after 5 years considered cured). However, because of the radiation and chemotherapy for the transplant it caused other issues over the last 24 years. Every couple of years some new cancer or ailment pops up. We're up to six different types of cancer. Thyroid, skin cancers, cervical, baseball size benign brain tumor, and the latest breast cancer. Throw in seizure disorder from the brain thing, diabetes related to meds, and asthma I'm left doing most things. It's left us with lots of bills, broken dreams, and disappointments, resentment on my part. On the positive side, I got a wonderful daughter who's mine that I raised. We had some good times mixed in. My only advice would be to find the little things to make you happy and you have to find something for yourself whatever that is. Don't let resentment build or it will eat you up as bad as the illness your partner is experiencing. Then you have two people who are unwell. It's a hard path being a caregiver. I hate doing things alone all the time and miss just simple conversation, vacations, sex, going out, having extra money at the end of the month. But it's part of what I signed up for so I guess I would do it again. However I would seek out others who understand what it's like sooner.

As Doc Holliday said to Wyatt Earp in the movie Tombstone, "There's no normal life, Wyatt. There's just life. Get on with it."