A week after meeting Dawn, Lance Boudoin looked at her and asked a question: “Will you marry me?”
Dawn tried to change the subject, but the next day Lance insisted. “I’m serious,” he said. “I want to marry you.” Dawn told him to buy an engagement ring, and she’d give him an answer. Two months later, they were engaged.
They’ve been together for 23 years.
Lance and Dawn are longtime residents of Luling, where they raised their four kids and kept busy. Dawn worked as a restaurant manager and Lance as a boilermaker foreman. They are both avid pool players, playing on various teams at Dat Bar and Pitstop Saloon. They converted their garage into a game room so they could shoot pool together at home.
But now, they spend much of their time at the Gayle and Tom Benson Cancer Center in New Orleans where Lance is undergoing treatment for stage 2 brain cancer.
Dawn and Lance described the diagnosis as shocking and overwhelming. It was unexpected because Lance always felt he was in good health.
“I’m 53 years old and my whole life I have never been to the hospital,” Lance said.
When Lance started to feel unwell in May, he chalked it up to the flu or a sinus infection. But then he got a headache that wouldn’t go away. Dawn asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital. Dawn was relieved when he finally agreed.
“I said ‘thank God,’” she said. “We can finally just get antibiotics and get this knocked out.”
They went to St. Charles Parish Hospital where Lance had a CT scan. He came back from the scan in a wheelchair.
“He looked at me and said, ‘something’s wrong,’” Dawn remembered.
Within 30 minutes of getting the scan, Lance was in an ambulance on his way to Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. He was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit there.
Doctors told him he had a tumor on his brain. Dawn called it a whirlwind.
“It was a shocker to go from a headache to thinking he had a sinus infection to them coming back and saying it’s cancer – it’s stage 2 brain cancer,” she said.
Lance and Dawn thought about Lance’s father, who passed away just two months after his lung cancer diagnosis.
“That was what scared us the most,” Dawn said. “Is it going to be that quick? How much time do we have left?”
Doctors at Ochsner told Lance he had nine months to live if he did not have surgery. Dawn said hearing this news changed her perspective on life and what matters.
“It’s kind of like the whole world disappears,” she said. “And you are just worried about each other. I was just worried about him and nothing else mattered. The little things – like when you worry about what people think about you or the stress of bills. All of that goes away. You’re just focused on this moment right now because this might be our last day.”
Lance was in the hospital for a week. The Boudoin children brought Dawn clothes to the hospital so she wouldn’t have to leave Lance’s side. Dawn slept by Lance in the hospital bed.
After brain surgery and other tests, including an MRI, doctors told the Boudoins that they hope with treatment – radiation and chemotherapy – Lance has 10 years to live.
“They’re trying to extend his life as much as they can,” Dawn said.
Dawn said the care Lance has received at the Benson Cancer Center is the best he could have gotten.
“He’s got the best doctors,” Dawn said. “They are the best of the best. He’s in very good hands. He’s got the best chances with the doctors he has.”
Dawn said her advice to others is to keep up with their health and get regular medical checkups.
“Maybe they could have found [the cancer] a couple of years ago,” she said. “We don’t know. I would just let people know that if they’re not feeling well just to go to the doctors and get the tests done because you never know.”
Lance said it’s tough to think about his diagnosis.
“I picture my life to my 80s, you know?” he said. “With them giving me 10 years that only puts me in my 60s. I try not to think about it. I don’t want to go at 60.”
For Lance, the hardest part is not being able to do the things he used to do. His work as a boilermaker is now out of the question. They have used their savings to help pay bills.
“We never had a thought of what will happen if we need help,” he said.
Dawn and Lance said they are usually the ones offering help to others, giving people a place to stay or helping people out financially. But Lance said he realized he couldn’t fight two battles at once – the cancer on one hand, and keeping ownership of his home and cars on the other.
“It came to a point where I had to ask for help,” Lance said.
They started a page on GoFundMe, a donation site where anyone can give money to a cause or someone in need. It was not something either of them wanted to do.
“The only reason we did the GoFundMe is because everyone was asking why we didn’t have one,” Dawn said. “We didn’t want to ask anybody for anything.”
Dawn is looking for a job with flexible hours so that she can be there for Lance’s treatments.
But for now, her focus is on Lance.
Since surgery, Lance has had issues with his memory and speech. When he has trouble finding the words, he turns to Dawn.
“We’ve been together so long,” Dawn said. “I know what he’s trying to say.”
