‘My ordeal made me a better woman’

Tracey Ferrin’s partner, Nick, vowed to stick with her in illness and in health. 

But in September 2001, soon after a 12 months of relationship, the then-18-calendar year-previous was identified with osteosarcoma — an very uncommon bone cancer — in her appropriate leg. And he strike the road. 

“The working day he remaining me, I was in my bed room, and I experienced just thrown up from the chemo,” Ferrin instructed The Post.

Now 38, Ferrin, a fitness teacher, sees her non-public tale mirrored in the headlines. On Monday, St. Louis Cardinals player Albert Pujols, 42, introduced his forthcoming divorce from spouse of two many years Deidre — who underwent mind surgery to get rid of a tumor Saturday.

“I’ve been asked a large amount of thoughts around the past few times pertaining to what is been likely on at residence and regrettably, just after 22 several years of marriage, I have built the selection to file for divorce from my wife, Deidre,” mentioned the athlete in a statement. He and Deidre share 5 small children. 

“As a devout Christian, this is an consequence that I hardly ever wished to see take place,” ongoing Pujols, who also acknowledged that his breakup coincides with baseball season’s opening working day, April 7. “For quite a few prolonged days and nights, I prayed, inquiring the Lord for His assistance.” (Deidre did not reply to The Post’s ask for for comment.)

For Ferrin, the MLB player’s announcement brought back again reminiscences of her husband’s abandonment.

It was just times after the 9/11 terrorist assaults, when her illness grew to become more than Nick, then 20, could bear. “I think viewing me throw up is what brought on him,” recalled Ferrin, who life in Houston, Texas. She chose not to disclose Nick’s previous name for privateness reasons.

“I don’t keep in mind accurately what he explained to me,” she admitted of her ex, who died by suicide in 2016, “but he called a pal to arrive and choose him up, packed a bag and still left.“

And to make matters even worse, at the time of her analysis and Nick’s abrupt departure, she was 6 months pregnant with their 2nd daughter. Their initially kid, Elly, was only 10 months old. 

“I was thoroughly heartbroken, crying and I begged him to keep, but he didn’t,” mentioned Ferrin, who, for the duration of her 3rd trimester, commenced treatment at the University of Texas MD Anderson Most cancers Center. 

“While I was going through chemo, health professionals informed me that it’s substantially a lot more frequent for gentlemen to go away when a woman is ill than it is for a female leaving when her spouse gets unwell,” she claimed. 

Further than the Pujolses, there are other large-profile examples: Previous senator and presidential prospect John Edwards, 68, from North Carolina, notoriously confessed to engaging in an extramarital affair although his given that-deceased wife, Elizabeth Edwards, grappled with breast cancer, before she died in 2010. They ended up married for 33 a long time.

Then there is songs magnate David Foster, 72, whose previous wife and ex-“The Genuine Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Yolanda Hadid, 58, struggled with a Lyme disorder prognosis. In her 2015 memoir, “Believe Me: My Battle With the Invisibility of Lyme Condition,” the veteran supermodel explained how the sleeplessness, joint soreness and exhaustion introduced on by her dysfunction rendered Foster — who later on married “American Idol” alum Katharine McPhee, 38, in 2019 — “unhappy” in their union.

But, “if he did not go away the marriage I would not be in which I am now,” she wrote.

Ferrin — who eventually gave beginning to a healthy newborn girl, Fayth, now 20, and whose cancer has been in remission for the past two many years — reported the identical is legitimate for her.

“I generally say, ‘If a man just cannot handle you at your worst, he does not [deserve to] get you at your ideal,’ ” mentioned Ferrin, incorporating that she holds no ill will towards her late ex. “And if cancer [wasn’t the thing that caused Nick to leave], some thing else would have drove him away.”

Right after divorcing Nick in 2003, she went on to marry her latest spouse, Ryan, with whom she shares sons Bubba, 17, and Noah, 13. And she authored her self-enable tome “Up Struggle: Embrace the Wrestle, Grow to be Stronger, Live Happier,” in 2020. 

“My experiences have manufactured me more powerful. I’ve acquired empathy and compassion for other individuals,” Ferrin told The Submit. “I’m not grateful for cancer, but I’m grateful for the existence lessons it taught me, and how the ordeal made me a much better lady.”