New York:
When Johana Calvache's husband received a cancer diagnosis, she did not panic. Even though her daughter had lost her eyesight to the disease at age 4, she did not descend into self-pity. Her first instinct was to fight.
"Everything happens for a purpose, and I was thankful to be by his side," Ms. Calvache, 30, said, adding that without her, "he would have been alone, and he is a sensitive soul."
Cancer is what united them. In 2002, Edgar Calvache, who is originally from a small town in Ecuador, was training to be a radiation technician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when he met Johana and her daughter, Angela Villota, who had been dealing with retinoblastoma, an ocular cancer, since she was 14 months old. They had come to New York from Colombia for medical treatment and did not speak English.
Mr. Calvache was asked to translate for Angela's oncologists.
"I was translating these horrible things, and I was thinking, 'How can I say these things to her?' " Mr. Calvache, 40, recalled one afternoon as he sat with his family in the living room of their colorful three-bedroom apartment in Woodside, Queens. Though only 22 at the time, he said, "she was very calm."
She was also alone in New York, estranged from Angela's father and eager for a friend. Mr. Calvache took her around the city, and the two fell in love.
Angela, who was undergoing radiation, "didn't like it at first," Mr. Calvache said, laughing.
"She was trying to be the Grinch who stole Christmas," he continued.
Mr. Calvache eventually won the little girl over with his cheerful manner and easy smile, and he and Johana married.
"Johana didn't have the emotional support, and she found that in me," Mr. Calvache said. "Good news, bad news, we were together."
Angela, now 12, lost her eyesight, but the cancer went into remission. The Calvaches had a daughter, Melanie, in 2004, adding to a family that includes Ms. Calvache's son, Angel Villota, 14.
But cancer was not through with them. In September 2009, nausea and stomachaches sent Mr. Calvache to the emergency room. Doctors found a 10-centimeter mass in his large intestine.
"It's located in the worst place possible: between my pancreas and my liver," he said. Doctors removed the head of his pancreas, his gall bladder, two pieces of his intestine and parts of his colon and appendix. He underwent a dozen rounds of chemotherapy.
The doctors thought they had removed it all, and Mr. Calvache returned to work three months later. But the cancer recurred. A second operation was performed, more chemotherapy endured. But a five-centimeter tumor, this time in the psoas muscle, is too close to a kidney to operate.
Doctors placed stents into one of Mr. Calvache's kidneys to alleviate pressure caused by the tumor. "That's the reason I can't work," he said. He has been receiving disability benefits since August, but "it's a decimal of what I was making," he said.
As a radiation technician, most recently at Elmhurst Hospital Center, he made between $3,000 and $4,500 a month and has health insurance through work. When he started, he did not want to work with cancer patients.
"I felt sorry for them, what they were going through," he said. "Now I know what the patients are feeling."
Ms. Calvache works at a DNA testing clinic, cleaning for $500 a week. Her salary and her husband's disability benefits are not enough to support their family. Three months behind on their mortgage of $2,694 a month, the couple have staved off foreclosure and are having their loan modified. But they needed help paying their electric bill.
Ms. Calvache found Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven beneficiary agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, through the American Cancer Society. She was granted $417 to pay her utility bills.
Mr. Calvache describes his situation as "temporary," and is eager to return to work soon. "I will take control of the whole situation again," he said.
But for now, he said with a smile, "I'm feeling good to be alive."
"Everything happens for a purpose, and I was thankful to be by his side," Ms. Calvache, 30, said, adding that without her, "he would have been alone, and he is a sensitive soul."
Cancer is what united them. In 2002, Edgar Calvache, who is originally from a small town in Ecuador, was training to be a radiation technician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when he met Johana and her daughter, Angela Villota, who had been dealing with retinoblastoma, an ocular cancer, since she was 14 months old. They had come to New York from Colombia for medical treatment and did not speak English.
Mr. Calvache was asked to translate for Angela's oncologists.
"I was translating these horrible things, and I was thinking, 'How can I say these things to her?' " Mr. Calvache, 40, recalled one afternoon as he sat with his family in the living room of their colorful three-bedroom apartment in Woodside, Queens. Though only 22 at the time, he said, "she was very calm."
She was also alone in New York, estranged from Angela's father and eager for a friend. Mr. Calvache took her around the city, and the two fell in love.
Angela, who was undergoing radiation, "didn't like it at first," Mr. Calvache said, laughing.
"She was trying to be the Grinch who stole Christmas," he continued.
Mr. Calvache eventually won the little girl over with his cheerful manner and easy smile, and he and Johana married.
"Johana didn't have the emotional support, and she found that in me," Mr. Calvache said. "Good news, bad news, we were together."
Angela, now 12, lost her eyesight, but the cancer went into remission. The Calvaches had a daughter, Melanie, in 2004, adding to a family that includes Ms. Calvache's son, Angel Villota, 14.
But cancer was not through with them. In September 2009, nausea and stomachaches sent Mr. Calvache to the emergency room. Doctors found a 10-centimeter mass in his large intestine.
"It's located in the worst place possible: between my pancreas and my liver," he said. Doctors removed the head of his pancreas, his gall bladder, two pieces of his intestine and parts of his colon and appendix. He underwent a dozen rounds of chemotherapy.
The doctors thought they had removed it all, and Mr. Calvache returned to work three months later. But the cancer recurred. A second operation was performed, more chemotherapy endured. But a five-centimeter tumor, this time in the psoas muscle, is too close to a kidney to operate.
Doctors placed stents into one of Mr. Calvache's kidneys to alleviate pressure caused by the tumor. "That's the reason I can't work," he said. He has been receiving disability benefits since August, but "it's a decimal of what I was making," he said.
As a radiation technician, most recently at Elmhurst Hospital Center, he made between $3,000 and $4,500 a month and has health insurance through work. When he started, he did not want to work with cancer patients.
"I felt sorry for them, what they were going through," he said. "Now I know what the patients are feeling."
Ms. Calvache works at a DNA testing clinic, cleaning for $500 a week. Her salary and her husband's disability benefits are not enough to support their family. Three months behind on their mortgage of $2,694 a month, the couple have staved off foreclosure and are having their loan modified. But they needed help paying their electric bill.
Ms. Calvache found Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the seven beneficiary agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, through the American Cancer Society. She was granted $417 to pay her utility bills.
Mr. Calvache describes his situation as "temporary," and is eager to return to work soon. "I will take control of the whole situation again," he said.
But for now, he said with a smile, "I'm feeling good to be alive."
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