At 28 years old, Sarah Rhodes was living a great life. She and her 32-year-old husband Joel lived in Norman, Oklahoma, where they enjoyed spending as much time together as possible. After all, the two of them were madly in love.

They thought they had their entire lives to spend together.

As two young and vibrant people, they looked forward to each day’s adventure. Joel, an avid runner, just finished a half-marathon when doctors gave him horrible news. He had kidney cancer. Both Sarah and Joel felt blindsided.

After getting the news, Sarah wrote, “The only indication of anything wrong was the blood he had noticed in his urine – kidney stones, we had assumed.” Sadly, their assumption was wrong. Instead of spending time at the gym together working out, they found themselves flying back and forth between Oklahoma and Houston for Joel’s treatments.

Joel’s cancer finally went into remission.

Roughly a year later, the doctors told the couple that Joel’s cancer was in remission. Hopeful, they decided to start a family, something they’ve wanted for years. As Sarah explained, “The 5 years before Joel’s illness had been filled with trips to doctors, tests, medicines, anything and everything we could do to get pregnant.” But nothing worked. That’s when the doctors offered them in-vitro fertilization or IVF.

Coming up with a plan.

Since chemotherapy can affect sperm, even making a male sterile, Sarah and Joel decided to freeze his sperm before he started his first round of chemo. Soon, they received fantastic news – Sarah was carrying twins. But the two were hit with more devastating news, only one of them survived, a baby boy.

Days before she was due to deliver, the doctors found a suspicious spot on Joel’s lungs. “They wanted to test out the spot immediately to see what it could be. We knew. We didn’t want to know. But we knew.” Sarah said. Only two days after they learned the spot was in fact cancer, the two had something to celebrate, the birth of a beautiful, healthy boy named Milo.

Joel lost his battle to cancer at just 35 years old.

Although Joel started chemotherapy immediately after Milo’s birth, the doctors also removed a portion of his lungs. Even with that, he had repeated strokes. Then at the age of 35, he finally lost his battle to cancer. As imagined, Sarah was beyond devastated.

There was one more frozen embryo. Should she use it or not. Remembering that Joel wanted more than one child, Sarah decided to go for it. What makes this so uncanny is that before his passing, Joel told Sarah, “You and I are going to have another baby. It will be a girl…you know what to name her.” The name – Ellis.

The IVF procedure was a huge success.

One and a half years after Joel’s passing, Sarah gave birth to Ellis. Everything seemed fine at first but then at two weeks old, she developed both sepsis and bacterial meningitis. Fighting hard for her tiny life, Ellis pulled through. But the baby had irreversible brain damage incompatible with life. Shattered, Sarah had her daughter taken off life support.

Sarah wrote, “As I rocked her back and forth, skin-to-skin- she suddenly began to breathe on her own, after not breathing on her vent in a week.” Quickly, Ellis’ vital signs stabilized. She even went home the very next day, leaving doctors and nurses speechless.

Today, Milo and Ellis are thriving.

While Ellis does have therapy regularly, Sarah shared that of everyone in the family, she’s by far the sassiest.

But that’s not the end of the story. Sarah went on to marry her high school sweetheart. Along with their five combined children, the two share a child.

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Source: Shareably