May 25th, 2017 | Updated on February 28th, 2024
Knowing her time in this life was going to be limited after a devastating diagnosis and ongoing cancer battle, all Ronda Bivens wanted was to get married to the love of her life, Matt Mager.
On her 28th birthday this year, her wish got fulfilled when Biven’s best friend, arranged for a small wedding, who also gave away her wedding dress for her friend. In an intimate ceremony performed from her hospital bed, Ronda Bivens said ‘I do’ to her long-time partner Matt Mager in hospice, surrounded by loved ones, Madisonville, Tennessee. Ronda’s wedding day came after more than a year of chemotherapy, radiation and the amputation of her right leg, with Matt all the while by her side.
Doctors in February 2016 diagnosed a lump on Ronda’s ankle as epithelioid sarcoma, a rare type of cancer that affects only 1 in 2.5 million people. Unfortunately, doctors years earlier had misdiagnosed the lump first as tendinitis and then as a torn tendon, Matt said. Ronda’s doctors amputated her leg in May 2016, but by then the cancer had spread to her lungs.
Matt said, “They told me she had only a few days to live. She wanted to come home, so we’re home now. I hold her hand every day and am trying to focus on the time we have. She’s on a morphine pump to soothe her pain, so she’s in and out of it. But when she comes in, she’s still the same fighter. I can’t even tell you how strong she is.”
The couple, who have known each other since childhood, have been together since they were teenagers. They have two children, a 6-year-old son, who just graduated first grade, and a 4 -year-old daughter. Matt said the couple’s daughter is too young to understand what’s going on, but their son is heartbroken.
“I told him his mother is going to heaven soon,” Matt tells. “I’ve sat there and talked with him and cried with him. I had to tell him it ain’t going to be same. It’s hard no six-year-old should have to hear that.”
Ronda, who was unable to participate in this story, recently shared her thoughts on Facebook:
“I’ve seen better days, but I’ve also seen worse. I don’t have everything that I want, but I do have all I need. I woke up with some aches and pains, but I woke up. My life may not be perfect, but I am Blessed.”
Source: huffingtonpost.com.au, nowtolove.com.au,
