By John Bach

513-556-5224

Dec. 8, 2017

Tori Thomas has known since October that her fight with cancer is finished.

“The battle is over, and I have lost,” the 24-year-old recently blogged. “This is me telling all of you that I’m dying. I can’t tell you what it’s like to know that this Christmas will be the last one you ever have with your family, because those kinds of feelings don’t have words.”

She is one of 2,321 new University of Cincinnati graduates who qualified to walk in fall commencement ceremonies, but the geology major wouldn't be in her cap and gown at BB&T arena with her classmates. Instead, she and her husband of six months were spending quality time in Disneyland. Call it the honeymoon she never was able to enjoy.

She and husband Nelson, who she met just 18 months ago, were set to get married in November, but after doctors informed them in May that her cancer — pericardial synovial sarcoma, an extremely rare disease — had returned for a third time, they moved things along drastically. In fact, they were on a plane to Vegas that very night.

“By 8 p.m., we were on a flight to Nevada,” she says. “I want this life with Nelson, and I want it to be as long as possible.”

The cruel irony of Tori’s story is that she spent most of her short life indifferent about living, and now that she may be reaching the end of it, all she really cares about is embracing every moment she has left.

“How do you go through an entire 24 years of life just not caring, and some of the time even wishing you were dead or not caring either way?” she asks through tears. “Then suddenly you have this really fulfilling life. My family is everything to me, and I have this amazing husband who I love. Then it all gets ripped away from you, and you don’t have a choice anymore. You never cared about it before, but now that it’s actually something that you are willing to fight for, you can’t have it.”