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Kevin's headaches started the day before our wedding. He woke up that morning feverish, his head throbbing. Thankfully, the pain subsided and he felt much better on our wedding day. We enjoyed a wonderful honeymoon in the Caribbean, but soon after we returned home the headaches came back.

At first, I joked that my new husband was allergic to me. But as the frequency and intensity of Kevin's headaches brought on fatigue and depression, I worried that getting married had somehow upset his equilibrium. Kevin is a born athlete—a tremendous runner, an avid tennis player and a fierce competitor on the basketball court. But when the pain consumed him and he said he didn't have energy for anything else, I feared he was making excuses. Maybe in reality he wasn't happy in our marriage.

Then December came and I wanted to get ready for our first Christmas. When I suggested we go out to find a tree, Kevin said he didn't want to bother getting one. What on earth would keep a young couple from hunting for their first Christmas tree? Although we did eventually get one, I wondered what my husband's headaches would do to our marriage.

And it wasn't just our marriage that was affected. One day Kevin came home and told me about an incident at work. While sitting at his computer, he was practically paralyzed by the intense pain in his head. When he checked with his doctor, he got a prescription for painkillers. Later, when the medication didn't diminish the intensity or frequency of the headaches, the doctor lectured Kevin about his posture while sitting at the computer.

A few months passed, and we celebrated our first Easter as a married couple. But before the day was over, we found ourselves in the emergency room. Kevin had awakened early that morning to go for his usual five-mile run. Later in the day, after church and then dinner with my family, Kevin said he wanted to go home. By the time we got there, he could hardly move. I called the doctor, with Kevin in the background ready to explode from the pain. "I'm going to rip the phone right out of the wall if he tells me it's from working at the computer," he shouted.

We rushed to the emergency room, where I had to hold back the panic that rose up every time I thought of what might happen to my husband. Finally, after hours of waiting for test results and X-rays to be studied, the doctor came in. He got right to the point. "The bad news is you have a brain tumor," he told Kevin. "The good news is that it's very treatable."

The doctor seemed optimistic, which gave us hope that my husband's headaches weren't life-threatening. Still, I couldn't fight off the numbness that washed over me as I tried to make out what our future would hold.

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