SITTING in a private room just three days after marrying his childhood sweetheart, Taylor Odlozil wanted answers to a heartbreaking question.
“She’s going to die, isn’t she?” he asked, bracing himself for the reply which he knew could change his life with Haley in an instant.
Haley’s son Weston was just four years old when the devoted mum passed away[/caption]
His new wife was battling ovarian cancer and the doctor had devastating news: “She’s got six months,” she replied, and Taylor, 31, broke down.
But in an endearing act of love, Taylor made the decision to keep the bleak prognosis from his new wife so she could enjoy their honeymoon.
He says: “I just lost it. The doctor was comforting me and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that.
“I had to gather myself, go out into the waiting room, look at Haley in the face, knowing that she’s dying.”
In December 2015, Haley was 22 when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer, just two months before their wedding.
She’d found a lump in her stomach which doctors had initially thought was a cyst.
With gruelling treatment looming and the day of the wedding getting closer, Haley made a selfless suggestion.
Taylor recalls: “She looked at me and said, ‘I need to tell you something, if you want to call off the wedding and you can marry someone else, that’s okay with me. There’s no telling what my future holds, but it’s full of doctor’s appointments, and heartache and sadness.
If you would like to move on, that’s ok with me.’
“It just broke my heart, I said ‘are you kidding?’ I’m not going anywhere, we’re riding this to the end together’”, he says, on the MD podcast.
Haley started chemo and after losing all of her hair, she had to use glue to attach a wig on her wedding day.
But the treatment didn’t work and that was when Taylor asked to see the doctor alone.
Reeling from the news, Taylor went to see his dad for support.
“I was banging on the door and my dad open’s it and I literally collapsed in his arms, screaming, sobbing,” he recalls.
“My dad started crying – you know we don’t see our dads crying often – but we were just laying in the doorway sobbing. I realised she’s dying, this is really going to happen.”
Taylor stuck to his plan and kept the news hidden until after their trip.
When they returned, Haley had surgery to remove her ovaries which put her into menopause at 23 – robbing her of the chance to have children.
“She was in mourning, she was born to be a mum,” Taylor adds.
A selfless sacrifice
In 2019, a friend offered to be a surrogate for the couple, although they knew Haley’s time as a mum might only be brief.
Taylor adds: “I knew Haley wanted to be a mum, but I also had reservations and knew that I was probably going to be a single dad at some point.
“She always wanted a girl, I always wanted a boy.”
The healthiest embryo was in fact female but knowing how much Taylor wanted a son, Haley made a sacrifice.
“She looked at me and said ‘I can’t give you children but I can give you a boy’,” Taylor explains in the Unplanned podcast.
Their son Weston was born in 2019, but just a few months after his birth, Haley’s health began to deteriorate.
a few hours later, I realised I needed to explain to my son for the last time, ‘mummy is going to heaven, this is it.
Taylor Odlozil
She continued her fight for the next few years until July 2023 when she passed away, aged 30.
Taylor recalls what life was like for the family during the mum’s final hours.
“Everybody was looking at her, she’s surrounded by everybody. She’s like ‘this is it isn’t it? This is the end?’,” he explains.
“And then a few hours later, I realised I needed to explain to my son for the last time, ‘mummy is going to heaven, this is it’.
“He said ‘yes I know’. We were both holding Haley’s hand and she was asleep.”
Poignantly, sensing her husband and four-year-old son were by her side, it was Haley who had the last words.
“She came to and out of nowhere looked at Weston,” says Taylor.
“He said ‘I love you mommy’ and she said ‘I love you too Weston’ and that’s the last thing she said.”
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