Joel and Lindsey met in 1993, when they were just two children trying to survive in the pediatric oncology ward of a hospital in the United States. He was battling osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that ended up costing him an arm, and she was facing leukemia. In a place where the days were filled with tests, treatments, and fear, they found something that helped them keep going: a friendship.
They spent hours together in the hospital playroom, talking, keeping each other company, and trying to live as normal a childhood as possible under circumstances that were far from normal. While other children met at school or in the park, they met while sharing a battle that neither of them should have had to face at such a young age.
Over time, both managed to overcome cancer. They grew up, went to college, and followed different paths. As often happens, they lost touch, and for years each built their own life without imagining that they still had a story left to write together.
Then something unexpected happened. In 2003, without planning it, they ran into each other again working at the same hospital where they had met as children. The place that had once been the setting for needles, treatments, and long waits brought them together again, but this time under completely different circumstances.
First, their old friendship returned. Then, when both were single, they began to see each other differently. What had been born among treatments and hospital rooms ended up turning into love.
And in 2018 they decided to close the circle in the most symbolic way possible: they got married in that same hospital. The place where they had fought to live, where they met when they were sick children, and where they reunited years later, also ended up becoming the place where they officially began a new life together.