Losing a Spouse to Cancer
- Michael Allio, 37, was a contestant on season 17 of The Bachelorette, and he lost his wife to breast cancer in 2019.
- There is now chatter that a romance is blossoming between Allio and TV personality Amanda Kloots. Kloots also lost her spouse who died of complications from COVID-19 in 2020.
- Losing a spouse to cancer can cause immeasurable pain, but it's important to try to have uncomfortable conversations with your loved one if they're open to it during their cancer battle.
Allio, 37, met his late wife, Lara, in college in 2003. They married in 2012 and had their son, James, together in 2016. But seven months after Lara gave birth, she was met with a breast cancer diagnosis. She passed in 2019, and Allio has been navigating a journey of grief ever since. He openly shared that devastating part of his past when he went on The Bachelorette in 2021, but he never found love on the reality show.
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“Finally met this guy in person after being Instagram friends for a year!! Lots of fried food, drinks, great chats and laughs!” she wrote in her caption.
And while we don’t know if the hearsay is true, it would also make for quite a lovely story of finding love after the loss of a spouse. Especially because Kloots also lost her spouse, Nick Cordero. He passed in July 2020 due to complications from coronavirus. The couple shared a son, Elvis, who is now 2.
Understanding Breast Cancer
Breast cancer is a common cancer that has been the subject of much research. Many women develop breast cancer every year, but men can develop this cancer too though it is more rare, in part, due to the simple fact that they have less breast tissue.
There are many treatment options for people with this disease, but treatment depends greatly on the specifics of each case. Identifying these specifics means looking into whether the cancerous cells have certain receptors. These receptors the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and the HER2 receptor can help identify the unique features of the cancer and help personalize treatment.
"These receptors, I like to imagine them like little hands on the outside of the cell, they can grab hold of what we call ligands, and these ligands are essentially the hormones that may be circulating in the bloodstream that can then be pulled into this cancer cell and used as a fertilizer, as growth support for the cells," Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, previously told SurvivorNet.
The Unique Features of Breast Cancer: Deciding the Right Course of Treatment
One example of a type of ligand that can stimulate a cancer cell is the hormone estrogen, hence why an estrogen receptor positive breast cancer will grow when stimulated by estrogen. For these cases, your doctor may offer treatment that specifically targets the estrogen receptor. But for HER2 positive breast cancers, therapies that uniquely target the HER2 receptor may be the most beneficial.
Losing a Spouse to Cancer
Losing a loved one to cancer can cause immeasurable pain as Allio can surely attest to. In an Instagram post from Sept. 1, 2021, Allio took the time to honor his anniversary with his late wife and open up about the grief he’s lived with since her passing.
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“Happy Anniversary darling. I miss you so much that I’m actually at a loss for words, imagine that,” he wrote in his caption. “Keep smiling down on us as you always have and I’ll keep trying my hardest to make you proud. So much has changed and yet my love for you remains the same. I will continue to carry you with me… on a journey that was meant to be ours. And while your body is not near me… your spirit remains alive in our hearts. I love you to the moon and back pumpkin. Thanks for all the love, laughter, and memories that I’ll soon never forget.”
It's incredibly difficult to imagine life without someone like your significant other, but it can be important to have hard conversations with your loved one if both parties are willing to talk when cancer is a part of the equation. No one knows this better than John Duberstein who lost his wife, writer Nina Riggs, to metastatic triple negative breast cancer. He previously told SurvivorNet that all he wished for while she was suffering was for things to go back to the way they were but Nina had already accepted her new normal.
The Toughest Conversations: Losing a Spouse to Cancer
"I really wanted things to go back to normal, whatever that meant," John said. "She was not for that. She wanted to embrace the existence that she had, even before she knew she was going to die imminently. I did not want to talk about what was going to happen with me after Nina died. Nina is the one that really brought it up, she brought it up a number of times. She wanted to make sure that I knew that it was OK … she really wanted me to have another relationship after she was gone."
John said that even with the pain of losing Nina, and even though he didn't want to talk about it at the time, he's so glad that his wife started those seemingly uncomfortable conversations.
"In retrospect, I can't even explain how glad I am that I had that," John said. "And I think, across the board, the people who have had those conversations who I know who have lost a spouse are immeasurably glad that they did."
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