Getting a cancer diagnosis after the love of your life has died from cancer

 I must admit to doing a reprieve of that last tear-jerking episode of Blackadder when they are ordered over the top for the 'Big Push'

"Permission for lower lip to wobble, sir?"

"Denied!"

You dance with who brung you, and now it was just me and myeloma, or so I thought. But that soon modified.

All the time that Cro was sick and dying she would occasionally say "I'm sorry that I've ruined your life like this. I'm sorry you have to do all this"

And I would say "Don't be silly. We do all this together (up to and including dying, as neither of us needed to say) and you would have done exactly the same for me, and you know it" And this was so true. She was a tiger paramour and would have spilled blood for me, her own and not just her own.

Once I took in a gobful of water at the swimming pool and started 'dry drowning' (laryngospasm - look it up). She was there straight past the rather confused lifeguards and gave me a Heimlich manoeuvre to restart things. So I know how she would have been with Myeloma.

And also, Cro had seen a few knocks through her life: brother dying, left with 3 children to raise mainly alone, carer responsibilities for years. She said that if I died she might not be able to come back from that. She celebrated greatly when I overtook my dad's early age of death at 59.

But now I am left feeling well loved and supported by friends and family, and knowing that Cro would have cared for me to my dying day as I cared for her. And arranged a damn good send-off too, as we did for her.

And she is spared the part where she sees me die. Win win.