Woman dumps fiancé after his brain cancer diagnosis: 'I can't see a way I can be happy with you any more'

A woman has written a piece in which she said that she broke up with her fiancé after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Danielle Epstein explained that she and Jelle Fresen met through a dating app and eventually started living together.

"I always think that a great way of telling if you have a good relationship is if you feel like you're a better person when you're with your partner. I felt that with Jelle. He challenged me to be kinder, more aware of what is going on in the world, more curious. I was so happy and felt so lucky to have met this amazing man," Epstein wrote.

But she explained that eventually, Fresen began suffering from dizziness, nausea, and vomiting. An MRI revealed a tumor, Epstein said.

Epstein said she decided to propose to Fresen.

"We had planned to get engaged and I knew Jelle was going to propose in the summer when we were on holiday," Epstein recalled. "But we had to cancel the holiday, so I thought: 'I'm going to propose to him instead. This isn't going to get in the way of our future.'"

But weeks later, the couple learned that that tumor "was a rare type of cancer of the central nervous system called medulloblastoma," Epstein wrote.

"But I knew then I could not stay with him. Watching helplessly as he got sicker and sicker over the preceding three months had been bad enough, but the uncertainty the diagnosis brought was just too much for me. I spent many sleepless nights researching, trying to find a miracle cure or a story with a good outcome but all I could find was uncertainty and bleak statistics. Not only was there a significant chance of the cancer returning in the future but there was the possibility of long-term and sometimes delayed side-effects from the radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment on his brain," she wrote.

"I felt like the man I loved was slipping away from me. I had been so close to having everything I wanted and then, all of a sudden, it had been snatched away. I couldn’t eat or sleep, I was suffering from panic attacks and taking all kinds of medication to help me function, to little effect," Epstein explained.

She officially broke things off after Fresen underwent surgery.

"We had had a brief conversation about our future before his surgery and I'd admitted I was struggling. 'But there is a chance it can be cured,' he protested. I ended our relationship about two weeks later. He was still recovering in hospital and I sat and faced him on a chair and told him I couldn’t stay with him. 'I can't see a way I can be happy with you any more,' I said, devastated," Epstein wrote. "I knew I would be no good for him because I couldn’t even function myself, due to the uncertainty of it all and the thought of him suffering more in the future. He needed strength and optimism and I could not provide that."

Epstein said that she and Fresen are still friends and that she will be running in the London Marathon in his honor.

"But I'm doing it for him, and for Brain Tumour Research. Treatments for brain cancer have barely changed in the last 30 years and there is a concerning lack of funding from the Government into brain-cancer research. We really need to find more effective treatments with fewer side effects so that, in the future, others in Jelle’s situation will not need to go through all he has," she said.

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