A love story stronger than fiction
The young couple garnered worldwide attention last year after Katie's fight to get a lung transplant.
They
were known as the real "Fault in Our Stars" couple, as their love story
bore a resemblance to the 2012 book and 2014 movie "The Fault in Our
Stars," in which teenage cancer patients fall in love.
Katie
and Dalton met on Facebook in 2009, when they were both 18. Katie
noticed that Dalton's mother had posted a photo of Dalton in the
hospital.
"If you ever need a friend to talk to, you can reach out to me," she wrote.
"Sorry, but do I know you?" he responded.
No, you don't, Katie wrote back and told Dalton a bit about herself.
"My
breathing is pretty crappy and I see you are in the hospital. I'm
sorry. I know it sucks!...But you just gotta stay strong," she wrote to
him.
Messages between the two flew
back and forth. They realized they were falling in love, but Katie's
doctor urged her not to meet with him in person, because Dalton had an
infection called Burkholderia cepacia, which can be deadly for people
with cystic fibrosis.
She defied
her doctor, and on August 28, 2009, Dalton and his mother drove more
than six hours from their home in St. Charles, Missouri, to
Flemingsburg, where they'd arranged to meet at the Dairy Queen.
At
7:10 p.m. -- they remember the time precisely -- Katie got out of her
car and saw Dalton leaning against a brick wall, looking cool and
handsome in his sunglasses.
"My
heart was racing, but I just went right up to him and hugged and kissed
him on the mouth without even saying hello," she remembered. "I'm
usually not that kind of girl, but it just felt so right."
For
their first date, the couple rode the roller coasters at Kings Island
amusement park a few hours away in Ohio. Dalton gave Katie a necklace
for her 19th birthday, which was two days before.
Katie caught Dalton's Burkholderia cepacia infection immediately, she said.
The couple wed less than two years later, and despite their infections, they were relatively healthy for the next few years.
They
bought a house in Flemingsburg and filled it with wedding photos and
board games, hosting regular game nights and cooking and traveling.
Those
years "were great," Katie told CNN days before she died. "We did stuff;
we had fun. It was like something out of a fairy tale."
Their fairy-tale ending
In
2014, the infection got the best of their lungs, and both Katie and
Dalton entered the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center together to
wait for new lungs. Dalton's came first, and on November 17, he had his
transplant. In July 2015, after a long fight with Medicare, Medicaid and
her hospital, Katie got her transplant, too.
But
their medical struggles continued. Dalton seemed to do well at first
after his transplant but then developed lymphoma. He overcame the cancer
but was recently hospitalized in Missouri with pneumonia and a viral
infection.
Katie's transplant
never worked well. She was in and out of the hospital, and earlier this
month, doctors told her there was nothing more they could do. She
entered hospice care at her home in Kentucky.
The
family had hoped to fly Dalton from Missouri to a hospital in Kentucky
so they could could be together again. Ultimately, Dalton was never
healthy enough to make the trip. He died in a St. Louis hospital, while
Katie spoke to him through FaceTime.
The
day before Dalton died, Katie told CNN she had no regrets about their
decision to meet in person. For all the time spent sick or in the
hospital, it's the time they spent together that stood out to her.
"It
gave me some of the best years of my life," she said. "I'd rather have
five years of being in love and just really completely happy than 20
years of not having anybody."
The
last time they saw each other was July 16, their fifth wedding
anniversary. Their love story was short, but she knew it brought joy and
inspiration to others.
"I think
that if we had gotten the chance to write a book that it would have been
a bestseller," Katie said days before she died.
She even knew how their fairy tale would end.
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