Michelle Caudle rests her head on husband Bill’s shoulder after his graduation ceremony from Army basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., in December 2009. Caudle entered the military after being laid off to provide for his family and get health care for Michelle, who died Friday after a long battle with ovarian cancer. Credit: Michael Sears

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Michelle Caudle, a mother of three and ovarian cancer patient who became a reluctant symbol of the nation's fight over health care reform when her husband joined the Army to get coverage for her, died Friday. She was 42.

After receiving chemotherapy for 30 of the last 57 months, after brain surgery, after days when she couldn't stand the smell of the hospital or the click-click-click of the chemo pump, Michelle longed finally for relief.

"I just feel like I've fought all I can fight," she said from her hospital bed a few weeks ago. "I want to be peaceful."

Sitting at her bedside that day, gently combing her hair, was her husband of 23 years, Bill, who'd returned in late April from his base near Tacoma, Wash., to be with her. On a sofa in her hospital room, wrapped in a blanket, was the youngest of their three children, Chelsea, now 16 and a junior in high school.

In 2009, the Watertown family made international news when Bill Caudle, laid off from the plastics company where he'd worked for 20 years, and facing dramatic increases in the cost of health insurance, took the unusual step of signing up for a four-year stint in the Army. His decision meant that in order to get coverage for Michelle, he would have to leave her side for the first time in her then three-year battle with cancer.

Bill had been interested in the Army for years, but it was not a decision he made lightly. Michelle needed the coverage, and his efforts to find a new job with benefits had gone nowhere. He knew the decision would have consequences. He would be on his way to a base in another state, while Michelle chose to remain in Wisconsin with her doctors, family and friends. To pay for her care, Bill would be trading away their time together. He would be accepting the risk of deployment to the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.

He signed the papers on May 13, 2009, his 39th birthday, feeling a mix of emotions, wondering: What did I do?

Michelle had her own reservations, doubts that surfaced from time to time.

"Yeah, I questioned it," she said recently. "But I've always trusted him to be the man he is and make his own decisions. You can't say there weren't days when you felt angry or frustrated, but he's taken care of us. Here we are. Something's right."

Warning signs

Like Bill, Michelle never sought attention for their dilemma. When approached by the Journal Sentinel, Michelle agreed to talk in the belief that her story might make other women more aware of ovarian cancer, a stealth disease that lacks breast cancer's self-exam and public awareness.

The warning signs that had led Michelle to the doctor's office back in the fall of 2006 seemed almost banal: a tenderness in the abdomen, constipation.

"If I could get just a few women to take the time out to go to the doctor. It doesn't hurt to check these things out. I kept saying, 'I've got time. I've got time. I've got time,' " she said, turning to the present. "Time is disappearing faster."

Her message reached a large audience. The family's story set a record for traffic on jsonline.com, with 1.7 million page views; it was linked on websites around the globe.

"She improved awareness of ovarian cancer, and of how difficult it is for some people to get health coverage," said her doctor, Peter Johnson at Aurora Women's Pavilion in West Allis. "She showed what it was like to be a cancer survivor and to live with grace and dignity."

Michelle was born in Fort Atkinson and grew up on a hog farm in Mauston. She went to high school in Mauston, then Lake Mills, where she met Bill through a mutual friend. He fell in love with her compassion, the way she insisted on bandaging the knee he hurt at a party.

They spent all of their time together. After a whirlwind courtship, Bill and Michelle married in early 1988. They had three children: Alysha, now 23; Bill, whom they sometimes call Little Bill, 20; and Chelsea, 16.

Michelle worked for a couple of years at a local Walmart and later at Culver's, but she had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. She and Bill had discussed their plans. They shared a vision for their life together.

"It was one of those things, I was in it for a relationship and not a friendship and he was too," Michelle said of their marriage. "Some men are just looking for someone to hang out with, not move forward."

Bill began working at the plastics company PolyOne in Sussex, 30 miles from their home in Watertown, eventually rising to the position of raw materials coordinator. He didn't care for the commute, but in the evenings on the drive home he would call Michelle and they would tell each other about their days. The distance - and it wasn't that much really - made them closer.

A terrible diagnosis

At the core of the relationship was communication. Bill and Michelle never shut down on each other. They talked about their difficulties, about money difficulties often.

"We struggled over the years," Michelle said. "You get angry that you don't have the money to do extra things in life. But the kids were important."

She was the kind of mother who had only to hear Little Bill say on Christmas Eve that he wanted a soda from Santa Claus; she was out the door to get it. When he was old enough to wrestle and play football, she attended every meet, every game.

But in late 2006, Michelle was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a large mass about 8 inches in diameter. From that point, her odds of surviving five years were less than 50-50.

She endured chemotherapy treatments, the fatigue and nausea leaving her curled up in a recliner. Bill took over the family meals, the laundry. They sat together through Michelle's doctor appointments and treatments. When she cried, he tried to be the strong one.

And when the cancer returned in 2008, they went through it all over again.

In March of the following year, PolyOne laid off Bill. Twenty years removed from the job market, he began sending résumés again. He found nothing.

At first, his severance package and assistance from the president's stimulus bill kept the cost of health coverage to just $136 a month. But in September, the cost would triple, then in January almost triple again to $1,370 a month. Faced with this prospect, Bill made his decision and signed the Army papers.

Two weeks after he signed, Michelle sat in her doctor's office. The cancer was back - again.

"I'd like to be a grandmother," she told Bill.

Late that summer of 2009 she prepared for a third round of chemotherapy; Bill prepared for basic training. Their youngest daughter, Chelsea, counted down the days until their separation.

On Oct. 6, they held each other as the van waited to take Bill from the recruiting station in Watertown. Tears streamed down Michelle's face. "I love you," Bill said before climbing inside. "I'll call."

A tremendous response

Their story appeared in the Journal Sentinel two weeks later.

Hundreds of readers from the United States and Canada sent cards and letters. The Michelle Caudle Benefit Trust was established, and more than $15,000 in donations poured in. Michelle paid off old medical bills. Two sisters from Portland, Ore., sent a quilt they'd sewn containing messages of hope from people she had never met. Strangers offered to fly her to Fort Knox, Ky., for Bill's graduation from basic training.

She was surprised and grateful.

Although partisans in the health care debate sought to keep the Caudles in the spotlight with invitations to appear on talk shows, Bill and Michelle resisted. They were quiet people with no fondness for politics and no agenda for health care beyond their own situation.

Bill focused on his training, and the difficult adjustment to sore feet and orders that came from younger men. Michelle went to her cancer treatments and became more involved in the effort to educate women about the threat of ovarian cancer. She was particularly fond of an ovarian cancer bracelet that read, "It whispers, so listen." Still, she missed the core of her support system, her husband.

"That's got to have been pure hell for the family," said Kelli Zembruski, president of the Wisconsin Ovarian Cancer Alliance. "Your spouse is your tower of strength, the person you lean on. She lost hers. She had to do a lot of fighting on her own."

Bill and Michelle were reunited at his Fort Knox, Ky., graduation in mid-December. She wrapped him in her arms, and they left the theater hand in hand. They spent Christmas together, and then he was off to Fort Gordon in Georgia to learn his job as a signal support specialist, a soldier who works with communications equipment. The long-distance calls zipped back and forth, Watertown to Fort Gordon.

In May 2010, Bill graduated and returned to Watertown for another too short visit. His new base, his third, would be near Tacoma, Wash. Before he left, Michelle learned the cancer was back - again. Still, she and Chelsea flew to Washington to help Bill find an apartment near his new base. A few months later, back in Watertown, Michelle served as honorary survivor for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

And in September, she got her wish: a grandson, Trevor, born to their oldest daughter, Alysha.

'We're each other's rock'

Bill was home for Christmas and then went back to his base. The time between the comings and goings of Michelle's cancer grew shorter. Her ovarian cancer, epithelial, is the most common kind, said Johnson, her doctor. "One out of five women who have it will have the same course that she had. The chemotherapy won't have a long-lasting effect. It may work for a short while, but in less than a year the cancer comes back."

Michelle did her best to stay upbeat, Johnson said. "She was a real fighter."

In April, the Army gave Bill a compassionate reassignment. He came home to Watertown to work in the recruitment office and be with Michelle. He was at her side for much of her final illness.

She had brain surgery after tumors were discovered. Yet the cancer kept advancing.

The Caudles had meetings to talk about power of attorney. Michelle planned her funeral and picked her casket. She went to the hospital, then home for a few days.

Little Bill brought Popsicles to her, one of the few things she could eat. Chelsea woke in the middle of the night to bring soda or ice chips. Alysha visited, bringing Trevor with her, the grandchild Michelle had wanted so badly.

Bill learned to administer his wife's medications. He changed her clothes and washed her hair. He shopped for a monument and chose one that would allow them to be together - two black headstones with a vase between them.

Michelle was transferred to Rainbow Hospice Care in Johnson Creek. She slept much of the time. She began to experience confusion, uncertainty whether it was 6 in the morning or 6 at night, the sensation that Chelsea was on the bed when she wasn't. Sometimes she made long-term plans to fix up a room in their house; sometimes she said, "The end is coming."

In the mornings, Michelle said she liked being able to hear the birds singing outside.

Bill struggled.

"Sometimes people think I'm the strong one, but without her I wouldn't be," he said. "That's the part I trouble myself with. When you have somebody who's strong, it makes you stronger. We're each other's rock."

Often he had questioned his decision to go into the Army, all those times he could not be there for Michelle. But the Army's health coverage paid for everything; it was better than the plan he'd had at the plastics company. In the military, he found support and understanding.

Ultimately, he would look back to his enlistment and conclude, "I don't think I could have made any other decision."

Another decision looms.

Bill said he can apply for a hardship withdrawal from the Army, but he is not optimistic about finding a job in Wisconsin. He can return to his base in Washington, but Chelsea still has her junior and senior years of high school left and may want to spend them in Watertown.

"There's a lot to think about," he said.

The family said funeral arrangements have not been finalized.

Besides her husband and children, Michelle is survived by her parents, Sharon and Gary Hutchins of Lyndon Station; two sisters, Donna (Rich) Morris, Mauston, and Jaime Reals, Watertown; and a brother, Gary Hutchins, Lyndon Station.

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Memorials

The Caudle family has asked that memorials in Michelle Caudle's name be sent to the Wisconsin Ovarian Cancer Alliance, 13825 W. National Ave., Suite 103, New Berlin, WI 53151.

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Warning signs of ovarian cancer

Bloating and gas.

Pelvic or abdominal pain.

Difficulty eating; feeling full quickly.

Urinary symptoms, either urgency or frequency.