In the United States, a dad-to-be died of devastating cancer three weeks after his first visit to the doctor. He was 30 years old.
He was going to become a dad, but he won’t have the chance to meet his daughter. On June 6 in New York, Matthew Robertson, 30, died of cancer “extraordinarily rare“Three weeks after his first visit to the doctor. It all started in May. Healthy until then, Matthew began to feel tired and suffer from back pain. But since he was busy preparing for the baby’s arrival, the young man and his wife, Graziella, did not worry about anything. “We were walking back and forth a lot, and he was building things for the baby“, says Gracie in the columns of People. It’s normal to be tired and have back pain.”
At first, Matthew consulted his attending physician, who had him do an initial blood test. This revealed a high level of white blood cells and liver enzymes, but nothing alarming enough to warrant hospitalization. Unfortunately, Matthew’s condition quickly deteriorated, forcing the couple to go to the emergency room. At the scene, a CAT scan and abdominal ultrasound revealed damage to Matthew’s liver, spleen and back. “The doctors told us, ‘We think it’s cancer, and you have to do something’.”
He suffered from epithelioid angiosarcoma
While awaiting a diagnosis, Gracie and Matthew decided to find out the sex of their future baby. “He was very depressed so I said, ‘You know what? Let’s go get some good news and ask the sex of the baby’says Gracie. We both discovered that it was a little girl. He was delighted because every time someone asked him the question, he said ‘I want a 60% girl, a 40% boy’. But secretly, he was telling me that he really, really wanted a girl. He was very excited to become the Dad of a little girl.”
On May 31, Matthew’s condition worsened again. “He got better, then worse – he really was a rollercoaster. The doctors didn’t even think he would make it through the first night. But he did. He fought a lot.” After a biopsy, doctors diagnosed Matthew with epithelioid angiosarcoma, a cancer of the blood vessels “extremely rare” and lightningaccording to Dr. Forscher, director of the sarcoma program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “I was next to him in bed when he took his last breath. I said, ‘Thank you for fighting so hard. All the doctors are very impressed. You fought well. You can relax now’. I hope that comforted him.”
Thanks to the GoFundMe platform, Gracie’s family raised the sum of $135,000 to help her raise her little girl on her own. But if Matthew will not be there to rock the latter, Gracie has every intention of doing everything so that his memory endures. “We’re going to make sure she knows all about her dad.she says. He was truly amazing.”