Tying the knot

Daniel Ellis never really worried about his chest pains.

Maybe they were from sports or study stress, he said. After all, at the time in 2015, he was a student at the University of Florida, and sometimes the workload weighed heavy on the then- 21-year-old.

But, Ellis caved and went to the school infirmary. As it turned out, it wasn’t any of the diagnoses he had given himself. Instead, there it sat — a mass in his chest.

Ellis would soon discover he had stage III Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer that starts in the lymphatic system, is generally seen in patients between the ages of 15 and 35. It can be highly curable if caught in its early stages and responds well to chemotherapy treatment.

Ellis, his family and Gabi, his girlfriend at the time, started making trips to Jacksonville for chemotherapy treatment at Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center with medical oncologist Robert Zaiden, MD — just four days after Ellis graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

A few days after his first session on Dec. 30, 2015, he proposed marriage to Gabi. The proposal set the tone for the remainder of Ellis’ 12 rounds of chemo.

“We would go to his chemo treatments every other week and I would always be wedding planning during that time,” Gabi said. “The nurses saw our wedding planning process and were very familiar with our story.”

That’s all it took. Really, it started as a joke: oh, there needs to be a wedding here so the cancer center staff could attend.

Then, there had to be props acquired and dates planned — much like any other wedding.

Final chemo celebration with mock wedding, dancing, & hospital props. from Cultivating a Home on Vimeo.

“The nurses inspired it,” Daniel Ellis said. “Our Baptist MD Anderson wedding was near the end of my treatment, sort of like a celebration. It was a nice distraction. We knew we were finishing up and looking forward to our marriage and good health in the future.”

Just months after his final chemotherapy session on May 25, 2015, Daniel and Gabi married on Oct. 22, tying the knot at St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville.

By then, the cancer was mostly memories.

Today, Ellis, now 25, is living an active life as a cancer survivor and playing soccer several times a week in an adult league. He and his wife enjoy traveling and he has become involved in cancer support organizations, such as Live for Today.

“Daniel was the person I wanted to marry, and with his diagnosis it was like our whole future was just hanging there in front of us,” Gabi Ellis said. “When you’re young, you think you’re untouchable. Any type of disease is kind of out of your mind. It really was a wake-up call for me and Daniel, too, to look at life in a different way. Ask those tough questions, go deeper with people you care about, and enjoy every single second you’re given because you never know when life can change.”