Hats off for Jason's big surprise
Sunday 19th April 2009
Ever felt as though your bloke's keeping something from you? That's exactly how I felt about my fiancé, Jason Klepacki, 37, when he started acting strangely four years ago. There was no nice way of saying it, his behaviour was odd. First, there were the endless hours he spent in the bathroom. Perhaps he's just being vain, I'd thought at first. But then there were the hats. I've nothing against hats. But wearing them all the time, even with a business suit, isn't a good look! And a cowboy hat, need I say more? I tried to ignore it, but as the months passed, it really got to me. 'Can't you take that hat off indoors?' I'd ask, over and over. 'Leave me alone,' Jason would snarl, then stomp off. What was he hiding? An affair? He didn't have time. Drugs? He barely even drank. I finally found out what was going on when I barged into the bathroom and found what looked like a crime scene.
'What the hell…?' I gasped, my voice trailing off as I took in the blood splattered up the walls and seeping into my best white towels. There were chunks of flesh in the sink, and Jason was standing in the middle of it all, blood pouring down his face. 'What on earth are you doing?' I asked, horrified. 'It's this spot,' he muttered in reply. 'I was trying to get rid of it.' So that's what he'd been hiding. A spot! I looked at the golf ball-sized lump sticking out of his scalp, which he'd hacked at with a razor. 'It might have started off as a spot, but it's more than that now,' I winced. 'You need to see a doctor.' 'No way,' he snapped. 'Stop fussing, Lindsay. It'll go down.' And that had been that. End of discussion. As the months went by, Jason bought a roomier 10-gallon hat, the biggest Stetson on the market. He only took it off at bedtime, when he covered the lump with gauze. On the one occasion I saw him without the gauze, I'd been shocked. Forget golf balls. The lump was like a grapefruit now. But he still refused to talk about it. Worried, I confided in Jason's mum, Rosalind Klepacki, 65, and my mum, Kathy Varela, 53, as well as Jason's sisters, Carolyn Saints, 42, and Andrea Farren, 40. I even secretly rang our doctor to ask for advice. 'It's probably a cyst,' he assured me. 'It'll go of its own accord.'
But now, it was February 2006, and Jason's 'cyst' was still there. 'Why's Daddy locked in the bathroom again?' our son, Jonathan, 5, asked me one day. 'He's been in there for hours,' added our daughter, Hailey, 6. Good point. Until now, I'd let him get on with it. I'd turned a blind eye when he'd gone to bed early every night with an ice pack pressed to his head, and started running his car parts business from home because he was too tired to go into work. But now, five months pregnant with our third child, I couldn't take any more. 'Enough's enough, Jason!' I yelled, banging on the bathroom door. 'Let me in!' Eventually, the lock clicked and the door slowly opened to reveal a familiar, bloody scene. 'You've operated on yourself again, haven't you?' I cried. 'You're killing yourself!' 'Leave me alone,' he whispered. As I looked around the bathroom, trying not to focus on the blood-filled sink, I saw fear in Jason's eyes and I stopped shouting. The poor guy was terrified. But I couldn't physically drag him to the hospital, so I had no choice but to carry on as normal.
Four months later, I went into labour at Christiana Hospital, Newark, Delaware. 'Why isn't your partner here?' the midwife asked, looking around the labour ward. 'He's not very well,' I replied. Talk about an understatement. By now, no amount of bandaging or silly hats could disguise Jason's severely misshapen head. He refused to go out or have visitors and, when I took our new daughter, Emily, home two days later, he could hardly muster the energy to cuddle her. Three months later, I came downstairs from giving Emily her mid-morning feed, and Jason shuffled into the kitchen. 'It's time to go to hospital,' he whispered. Part of me felt like jumping for joy. But another part was terrified. What would the doctors find? Neither of us spoke a word on the way to Christiana Hospital. But once there, I screamed in horror as a nurse unwrapped Jason's bandages. For the first time, my eyes focused on the hideous mass sticking out of his head. It looked as though his brain had burst out of his skull. Small bubbles of pus oozed out of it. 'I had to keep buying bigger hats to cover it up,' he admitted. 'I didn't want to worry you.' All I could do was watch in shock as Jason was led away for tests. And as we sat in the consultant's office the next day, one look at his face told me it was bad news. 'You have a severe type of cancer,' he told Jason. 'We don't know what, if anything, we can do for you. The tumour's created its own blood supply, tapping into the main artery in your scalp. I need to find a surgeon who can remove it.' I squeezed Jason's hand. 'I've tried to cut it off four times,' he admitted. 'Last time, the blood sprayed up the walls every time my heart beat.' My stomach lurched. This wasn't a tumour. It was a monster.
The consultant explained we'd have to go home and wait for a date for the operation. We tried desperately to keep it together for the children. 'Daddy's got a bump on his head,' I told them. 'The hospital is going to take it off and make him better.' Please God let that be true. We didn't admit how scared we were to each other, but I could see the terror in Jason's eyes. What if they can't help him? When we climbed into bed one night, Jason broke down. 'I want to marry you,' he sobbed. We'd been engaged for eight years, and were saving for a posh do. But that seemed pointless now. So, on 20 September 2006, a priest married us in our living room with just our parents as guests. 'In sickness and in health,' I said, my voice trembling. 'Til death us do part,' Jason croaked, slumping into a chair, too weak to carry on standing.
Three weeks later, Jason was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. 'We've never done anything like this,' the surgeon warned. 'You're unlikely to make it.' Even if he did survive, Jason risked losing an eye, an ear, a cheek and his nose. I tried not to think about that as he was wheeled down to theatre. I didn't stop crying for 16 hours. That was how long it took a team of 15 surgeons to remove the growth that had latched onto Jason's nose, eyebrows and left eyelid, as well as his forehead and entire scalp. They grafted skin from his forearm and thigh onto his skull to rebuild his face, using his ear to make a new eyelid. It was nothing short of a miracle. And, even more miraculous, he survived. Walking into intensive care, my legs went weak as I saw Jason surrounded by machines and covered in tubes. But just two days later, I got a wonderful surprise. 'Your head's round again,' I gasped. 'You've got a forehead.' He just blinked, too weak to talk. I stayed by Jason's bedside for six days, when he finally came home with the best news ever. 'The consultant told me they got all the cancer,' he smiled. 'There's no need for chemo or radiotherapy.' Amazing. Now, two years on, Jason's tumour hasn't reared its ugly head again. He's still too weak to work and wears a protective helmet to cushion his fragile skull. But thankfully, he's ditched the Stetson, and stopped spending hours in the bathroom. And as for his bad moods? He's like a different person. Better still, he doesn't hide anything from me any more.
Jason says: 'At first, I just ignored the bump but, eventually, the pain was unbearable. I risked my life trying to cut it off, but I'd have done anything to relieve the pain. 'Towards the end, it exploded like a mushroom off my head. My biggest regret is missing Emily's birth, but I feel truly blessed to still be here. I'm the luckiest man alive.'