Dad-to-be's one last wish to see his baby

THE baby shower was a mash-up of imaginary worlds: the Mad Hatter's tea party, Neverland and Tatooine.

- 

Tanner Martin, the dad-to-be, sat off to the side, a sherpa blanket across his lap, a whip of plastic tubing around his face tethered to an oxygen tank. As he looked around the room filled with young parents and children, his greatest wish was that he would live long enough to meet his own daughter.

Tanner was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer in November 2020 at age 25, and since then, life has been a series of starts and stops. During a period of relative stability and hope last year, when a new treatment regimen appeared to be working, Tanner and his wife, Shay, decided to start a family. But the roughly 1700 days they have been in this fight, the more than 100 ER visits, 30-plus hospitalisations and five surgeries have taken a toll.

At the start of this year, Tanner's health took a sharp turn. The couple found themselves facing an unbearable duality: The joy of preparing for their daughter’s arrival and the grief of bracing for her father’s death.

Just days before the baby shower in April, the call came: the last-resort IV chemo regimen that had been keeping Tanner alive had failed. The baby was due in 57 days.

This year, more than 200000 people ages 15 to 49 will be newly diagnosed with cancer, joining more than 2.1 million Americans who were also diagnosed as young adults and are living with the disease. Researchers call them “Generation C,” or “Generation Cancer.” Young people of Native American descent like Tanner have the highest rate of colorectal cancer of any ethnic group, and the sharpest rate of recent increase.