For some of us, Mother’s Days can be bittersweet. Some of us have lost mothers, or lost babies, or had tragedies entangle their lives, which makes celebrating a day such as Mother’s Day hard.
Last year, Max Joice completely ignored it, pretending it didn’t exist, but this year he is leading the annual Mom’s Walk to raise awareness for the disease that look the love of his life and the mother of his child away.
After years of battling a deadly tumour disease called sarcoma, and winning twice, doctors and specialists had told Max’s wife, Liz, that because of the extensive chemotherapy she had undergone, she was infertile.
So, when Liz fell pregnant with their first child, Max and Liz were overjoyed.
But their joy was immediately spoilt when, just a month into her pregnancy, Liz felt a small lump on her back, exactly where her last tumour had been. The couple attempted to dismiss it, hoping that it was just a false alarm.
“I think we both kind of knew right then, but we convinced ourselves that it was something else,” said Max told today.com.
Max and Liz.
A biopsy, however, confirmed that the cancer that Liz spent so much time and energy battling was back.
Max and Liz were no strangers to cancer marring important moments of their life. On the day that Liz was first diagnosed with sarcoma, Max immediately went into the kitchen and fashioned an engagement ring out of aluminium foil and the two married a month later.
But this was different. Because of Liz’s pregnancy and her subsequent inability to have MRIs or therapies, the doctors had no idea how bad the cancer was, and couldn’t find out without damaging the baby.
The doctors informed Liz that she could determine the extent of her cancer if she consented to X-Rays and MRIs, but Liz refused.
“We knew the risks we were taking, but Liz had this incredible optimism and strength. The big fear we had was, what if we terminated this pregnancy, or do something to damage the fetus, and then find out the cancer wasn’t anywhere else? That it was this small, localized tumor that could be removed surgically?” said Max, “If that happened, Liz loses the chance to bring a child to this world and I think that loss would be too great for her.”
Liz underwent an operation to remove the lump on her back, but chose not to undergo any further surgeries or treatments, including radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She resigned herself to just having to wait to find out if the cancer was localised – or deadly.
A few weeks before Liz’s due date in 2014, the decision was neatly taken from their hands. Liz had trouble breathing, and was displaying worrying signs and after undergoing a shielded chest X-Ray, the doctors confirmed the worst case scenario.
The cancer that Liz and Max had been hoping was harmless had spread to most of her internal organs, including the entirety of one of her lungs.
Liz holding baby Lily.
The doctors then scheduled a C-Section and on January 23, 2014, Liz gave birth to their daughter, Lily.
During her surgery, the doctors discovered that the cancer was all over her uterus, ovaries, stomach and other internal organs. So, Max took little Lily home, while Liz stayed at the hospital to undergo the few options she had left.
“It was so bizarre to be at both extremes of the peaks and valleys,” said Max,”I would go home and I would spend time with Lily, and it was the happiest moments of my life. We brought this beautiful creature into the world, and it was amazing. And then I’d go to the hospital to be with Liz, and it was like my world was ending. I felt guilty in both places.”
Liz eventually did come home, for a little while. The new mother spent almost three weeks in her house with Max and Lily, before it ultimately became too much.
After just three weeks, just a blink of the eye, Liz pulled her husband aside and told him she couldn’t do it. Max took her back to the hospital, where she died six days later.
Lily Anne Joice.
Chronicling their incredible journey, Max and Liz made a documentary about their life entitled 40 Weeks, which was partly to immortalise their own story and partly to have something for their daughter to remember her mother by.
“They gave us a chance to back out when Liz was diagnosed with cancer, but we thought, no, because if it does turn out bad, we have this incredible documentation of what our life was like when we were getting ready to bring Lily into the world,” Joice said. “On a really selfish level, I just love that Lily is going to get to see her mom exactly how I did when she gets older.”
This year, on the eve of Max’s second Mother’s Day, he will participate in the charity walk that was named for his beloved wife, where each runner is given a single white Lily to honour a mother’s sacrifice and the baby she died to protect.
