PORTLAND, Maine — Kathy Eliscu and Ted White met at work in southern Maine. She was a nurse, he was a doctor. They became pals, and their friendship, Eliscu says, was "based on humor. … and [shared] disillusionment with the current way medicine was being driven by the insurance industry."
Not long after, they started dating, fell in love, and got married. They were happy.
Then Ted was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. What followed was an unending array of medical appointments, tests, scans, hospital stays, and on and on.
The story is told in the new memoir, "Brain Tumor: A Love Story," co-written by White and Eliscu. It does not have a happy ending: Ted lost his battle with brain cancer in 2014, leaving Kathy awash in grief. The journals he kept during his illness constitute his part of the book.
"When someone you love dies, the relationship does not end," Kathy writes. "Life’s distractions do soften the edge of pain after a while, but the love remains, the longing, the dull ache, the frustration of not being able to touch, feel, to hold or be held by that person. Or simply to ask them a question."
One of the reasons Kathy Eliscu wrote the book—which brought back painful memories and feelings of profound loss—was to share her journey with others, especially people serving as caregivers for loved ones with a terminal disease.
"We hope that in some small way," she says to those folks, "[our story] has comforted or enlightened you."