He Thought it Was a Stomach Ache - Now My Husband is Dead

In this episode, I sit down with Nick Rogers and his wife, Cassie, two people whose lives were shattered by the unimaginable loss of their spouses to cancer.

Nick takes me through his wife Anna’s battle with aggressive breast cancer, the moment they thought she had beaten it, and the devastating reality of watching it return and spread. He also shares the impossible decisions he had to make as a father while trying to protect his two young daughters from losing their mom.

Cassie’s story is different, but equally heartbreaking. Her husband Cody went from seemingly healthy to being diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer, and just 66 days later, he was gone. Before he died, Cody told Cassie something incredible: he was already praying for the man who would one day love her and help raise their children.

In this episode:
• What it’s really like to lose a spouse to cancer
• The impossible decisions parents face while grieving
• How Nick and Cassie helped their children process loss
• The role faith played when life stopped making sense
• How they slowly found hope, healing, and love again

And somehow, through grief, faith, and circumstances that are almost impossible to explain, Nick and Cassie found each other.

This conversation is about losing the person you thought you’d grow old with, parenting through grief, trusting God when nothing makes sense, and slowly discovering that life, and even love, can exist after unimaginable loss.

Key Moments:
00:00 Two spouses lost to cancer, one unexpected love story
03:18 The cancer diagnosis that changed everything
07:04 Finding faith through aggressive cancer treatment
10:19 When chemotherapy made death feel real
13:17 Cancer remission and a new beginning
16:32 The symptoms that revealed a brain tumor
20:07 When cancer came back even more aggressively
24:03 Facing the reality that Anna could die
28:26 The final months of Anna’s cancer battle
34:44 She fell asleep and never woke up
38:09 Telling two young girls their mom was dying
41:40 66 days from pancreatic cancer diagnosis to death
45:00 The scan that revealed a death sentence
49:32 Cody’s final message of faith
51:21 Why Cody prayed for Cassie’s future husband
54:28 Finding love after losing a spouse
56:48 Anna’s message to Cassie before she died

Connect with Me:
Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/tyler.hall/⁠ (instagram.com/tyler.hall)
Connect with Nick & Cassie:
Instagram: ⁠instagram.com/rebuildingrogers/⁠ (instagram.com/rebuildingrogers)