Woman explains why she left her partner after he was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer

A woman has opened up on the difficult decision she made to split up with her fiancé of two years after finding out he had stage four brain cancer.

Living with and looking after a seriously ill partner or family member can be a very difficult time for their loved ones, but most people wouldn't think twice about sticking by them through thick and thin.

Danielle Epstein was faced with the same choice when her partner Jelle Fresen was diagnosed with the malignant brain tumor at the age of 37 in September 2022.

She has now spoken out about why she decided to end their relationship when Jelle was told that he had a rare type of cancer of the central nervous system called medulloblastoma.

Danielle had met Jelle, a Dutch software engineer working for Google in London, on Bumble a few months after breaking up with her ex, and the pair hit it off straight away.

Having bonded over both being "quite nerdy science types", the school science teacher revealed that they both told each other "this is is" on their second date.

She was 30 at the time while Jelle was 34, and as they met during the pandemic, Danielle asked him to move in with her when the second lockdown was announced.

The pair's relationship progressed quickly as they spend all their time together as they both worked from home during lockdown and she felt "so happy and so lucky to have met this amazing man".

However, their romance was set to be thrown into a tailspin when Jelle woke up the day after his 37th birthday feeling extremely unwell, which the couple initially put down to being a hangover from the celebrations the night before.

The feelings of dizziness and nausea only ended up getting worse from there and within a month Jelle was vomiting "all the time" and the couple had to cancel several trips they had planned together.

Doctors had initially suspected he had vertigo and that it would improve over time, as tests of his balance and cognition did not immediately show that there was an issue with his brain. After his symptoms continued to worsen he eventually had an MRI scan which showed a mass on his brain.

The tumor was initially believed to be benign which led Danielle to "naively believe" that she and Jelle could get back to life as normal after it was removed.

Knowing Jelle had been planning to propose to her in the summer, Danielle then chose to propose to him instead, believing that his health issues could be fixed, however just a few weeks later the tumor was discovered to be malignant.

He was told that the chances of him getting the rare cancer - which is more common in children than adults - was one in four million, and his chances of surviving five years after diagnosis was 65 percent.

While Jelle was "strong and calm" about the cards he had been dealt, Danielle told Yahoo: "As soon as I heard these words delivered to my fiancé, I knew the future we had planned out was over. It had disappeared in a matter of seconds."

She explained: "But I knew then I could not stay with him. Watching helplessly as he got sicker and sicker over the preceding three months had been bad enough, but the uncertainty the diagnosis brought was just too much for me."

Danielle spent many sleepless nights researching whether a cure could exist but instead found "bleak statistics" and the possibility of long-term effects of the treatment and the cancer returning in future.

"I felt like the man I loved was slipping away from me. I had been so close to having everything I wanted and then, all of a sudden, it had been snatched away," she said. "I couldn’t eat or sleep, I was suffering from panic attacks and taking all kinds of medication to help me function, to little effect. I told my mother and his: 'I can’t do this, I can’t stay with him.'"

Her and Jelle's mother told Danielle not to tell him until after he had undergone the 17-hour operation he needed to remove the tumor, which ended up leaving him with "some quite severe brain damage" as well as double vision and paralysis on the right side of his face, and having to earn to write and walk again.

Danielle is running the marathon in Jelle's honor. Credit: JustGiving

Danielle had told Jelle she was struggling with the thought of their future together before his surgery but he had protested that there may be a chance it could be cured.

She ended up telling him it was over between them two weeks later as she visited him in hospital while he was still recovering from surgery, telling Jelle: "I can’t see a way I can be happy with you any more."

Danielle said she was "devastated" by her decision but could not provide the strength he would need during his lengthy battle with the disease.

She admitted: "I’m still trying to come to terms with my decision. At the time, I felt like the worst person in the world, and I know if I heard this story about someone else I would think they were selfish.

"That is partly why I wanted to write this article, because it’s very easy for society to make judgments, but in situations like this there aren’t clear-cut right and wrongs. Sometimes we need to remember we can’t judge someone when we are not in their shoes.

"Jelle understood, as did my friends and family, and he and I remain close friends."

Danielle is now running the London Marathon on Sunday in Jelle's honor and has raised over £11,500 ($14,300) of her £10,000 ($12,400) goal on JustGiving for the charity Brain Tumour Research.

Featured image credit: JG Photography / Alamy