“13 years ago today at 2.45am my wonderful, lovable, kind and crazy husband, Stan Zemanek lost his fight with brain cancer.
My first thought was how do you say goodbye to someone you have spent the last amazing, adventurous and fun 30 years with?
In May 2006, Stan was diagnosed with a GBM Grade 4 brain tumour. He was told that he would probably only survive 6 weeks and to go home and enjoy what time we had left. This wasn’t good enough for us, and fortunately we were able to ...see my hero Dr. Charlie Teo, who operated on Stan and extended his life by 15 months.
During that time, we celebrated a wonderful family holiday, his 60th Birthday and then the birth of our beautiful granddaughter Chloe. Our grandson Hamish was 4 years old, and during those last weeks he never left Stan’s side, he would lie next to him and talk to him as he had always done. As I sat in our living room looking out over the city on that morning, I realised that 4 years ago at 2.45 a.m. our grandson came into the world, and then 4 months ago on March 12th our granddaughter was born.
The last words Stan said to Charlie Teo, were “what can I do to help you?” and that is why for the last 13 years I have been involved in raising awareness and funds for brain cancer.
Some people never have 30 minutes of happiness, how lucky was I to have 30 wonderful years?” - Marcella Zemanek.
Like Marcella, you can share your brain cancer story with us on the Support Us page of our website.