A husband has been left shattered after his wife – and mother to their two children – died at the age of 38 from breast cancer.
Jess Blees passed away just after midnight on August 8 after a brief and brutal second bout of stage four triple negative breast cancer spread to her brain.
Her husband, Cameron Edwards, said her rapid deterioration was ‘one of the scariest times of my life’.
Ms Blees, a nurse, was originally diagnosed in August last year while 22 weeks pregnant with her youngest daughter Mila.
Ms Blees gave birth to her ‘double miracle’ child in November in between rounds of chemotherapy which had ‘melted’ the tumours away by March.
Almost a year after her first diagnosis, she started experiencing intense migraines and blurred vision.
An MRI in July revealed the breast cancer had spread with four tumours found on Ms Blees’ brain and one on her optic nerve.
She was dealt another devastating blow when the cancer spread to her cerebrospinal fluid – leading to a terminal diagnosis.
Melbourne mother-of-two, Jess Blees (pictured with daughter Mira), tragically passed earlier this month after a second bout with a rare cancer
While knowing she wouldn’t live a full life, Ms Blees hoped to see her two daughters Evie, 3, and nine-month-old Mila – who were both conceived through IVF – reach primary school.
Mr Edwards said he struggled to watch his wife’s condition deteriorate so quickly while trying to prepare their daughters for the reality of her death.
‘The hardest part for me is the challenge of telling a three-year-old when, just that night, Jess was passing away,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Taking her into hospital to see her mum in a situation where, at that point, she was struggling to breathe and and she was effectively in a coma.
‘And then Evie, you know, leant over and gave her mum a kiss.’
Mr Edwards added that he is trying to remain strong for his two girls despite having ‘lost the love of my life’.
‘The thing that really gets me and still gets me now is my girls aren’t going to grow up and know their mum,’ he said.
‘Jess loved them so much.’
Ms Blees is survived by her husband, Cameron Edwards and two daughters, 3-year-old Evie (bottom left) and 9-month-old Mila (bottom right)
While the news of new tumours was disconcerting, Ms Blees remained confident that new treatment methods would help.
Highly accurate gamma knife treatment targeting the tumours helped alleviate some of the pain from the migraines for a day before they returned.
Mr Edwards said doctors were dumbfounded by the almost immediate return of debilitating migraines which couldn’t be blamed on the radiaton.
They continued to monitor and attempt to treat the tumours before finding them in the fluid that provides nutrients to her brain, known as leptomeningeal cancer.
Those with the disease are usually given as long as four months to live if treated, but would lead to Ms Blees’ death just three days later.
The widowed husband said he’s devastated by his wife’s blighted luck at every turn of her devastating battle with cancer.
‘I’m just keeping myself busy, so I don’t fall in a heap,’ Mr Edwards said.
‘But I think the hardest part is at night time when they go to bed, you’re sitting there and you kind of like, “What now?”‘
The young mother’s second bout with stage four triple negative breast cancer only lasted several weeks after it aggressively spread to her brain
About 300 people attended Ms Blees’ funeral, which Mr Edwards said was a reflection of how positive and beloved she was.
‘Everywhere she went, she just lit up the room. She was respected and everyone loved her,’ he said.
‘Just to see someone that positive and upbeat who never let anything get to her just to, unfortunately, be dealt that set of cards that she just suffered.
‘Fortunately she didn’t suffer for months, but she suffered long enough in that short amount of time.’
A GoFundMe was recently reopened by Ms Blees’ sister, Amanda, with the hopes of helping support Mr Edwards and his two daughters after their tragic loss.
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