NEW YORK, NY -- When they got married, Jessica May Walker and Tommy Walker promised to love each other in sickness and in health.
For the young couple, sickness would strike much earlier than expected.
Jessica and Tommy met while attending the University of Alabama for theater.
They were best friends for years until Tommy suggested they be something more.
“He surprised me and was like, ‘I think we should date,’” Jessica recalls.
The two fell fast and hard. They graduated from Alabama and eventually got engaged. As they were in the midst of wedding planning, Tommy started experiencing some unusual symptoms, but he was too busy to do anything about them.
“January of 2017 he started having trouble swallowing. He kept saying food was getting stuck,” Jessica said.
When Tommy’s condition worsened, he made a doctor’s appointment. But there was no availability until after the wedding.
“I’m kind of glad I didn’t go to the doctor before the wedding,” Tommy said. “It would have been ‘A Walk to Remember’ wedding – that would have totally changed the atmosphere of everything.”
When he finally made it to the doctor, Tommy underwent a procedure called an endoscopy to evaluate his swallowing. During the endoscopy, a doctor approached Jessica with some shocking news—Tommy’s condition was serious.
Stage-3-cancer-of-the-esophagus serious.
“When he said we had a problem, it really hit me in the chest,” Jessica said. “I was talking to Tommy and he was like, ‘How’d it go? What’s the deal?’ And I was just… I didn’t even know what to say to him.”
Even more surprising was how unusual Tommy’s condition was.
“It’s an insane situation to be in. His cancer specifically is one that 70-year-olds get. It’s very rare for someone his age,” Jessica said.
Suddenly, their dreams for the future were turned upside down.
“It’s a scary thing to think you’re going to lose the person you just started your life with,” Jessica said.
“In the back of my mind I was like, ‘I don’t want to leave you, we just got started.’ I didn’t want to leave anybody,” Tommy said.
The two knew the diagnosis meant there was a long, difficult road ahead. So, Jessica made a choice – to do anything in her power to ensure a life with her husband.
“We’ve been a team since the beginning. In the emergency room that night, he was like, ‘I think you’re going to save my life.’ And I was like, ‘I am. I’m going to,’” Jessica said.
From that moment, Jessica was unstoppable. As Tommy fought with chemo and surgeries, his wife was alongside him every step of the way.
Jessica rarely missed any of Tommy’s hundreds of appointments. But the constant onslaught of new information was overwhelming.
“Every time you go to an appointment they give you a stack of information or they tell you a million things and you’re scribbling things down and it was chaotic. That was when I started having the idea for making a planner that could help with that,” Jessica said.
That's why she created The Better Book, a planner for Tommy. It had a journal, a place to keep track of symptoms, store contact information and track questions. It even had a support section for thank you notes.
“I was in a lot of waiting rooms, I was in a lot of hospital rooms with a lot of down time so I would always be bouncing ideas off Tommy like, ‘Do you think this would be helpful for you? Is this something you’d actually use?’” Jessica said.
“I used it so much and it was great,” Tommy said. “It helped us articulate questions for the doctor and give them feedback and it just helped form those thoughts and help us keep track of everything.”
When friends, family and fellow patients saw the book, they would ask for their own, so Jessica decided to print and sell a small batch.
“My mom helped me purchase the first 100 copies and I sold them in less than a couple weeks,” Jessica said. “The reception was just nothing like I ever thought… people are so amazing with their feedback.”
To Jessica's surprise, The Better Book was even helping people with other illnesses.
“People have messaged and are like, ‘I know this book was intended for cancer patients’ but they’re like ‘I use it to track my depression’ or ‘I’ve been using it to help with my dad’s Alzheimer’s.’ Stuff that I never had the idea for,” Jessica said.
Today Jessica has launched Better + Co. The company sells The Better Book and light-hearted cards designed by Jessica, all to help people get better.
“I can’t imagine having the tables turned, I don’t know what I would do in a situation but there’s no way I could’ve handled it as well as she did. She’s just a superstar,” Tommy said.
“A cancer diagnosis is so scary and so hard that if there’s any sort of relief or help that comes your way you just grasp onto it and just knowing that I could potentially be that little bit of relief or like little bit of some of the weight off,” Jessica said tearing up. “I’m so grateful that I can provide that in this way.”
Yet Jessica refuses to take full credit for The Better Book.
“He’s always like, ‘It’s your thing, it’s your thing.’ It’s our thing. He helped build the book. He thinks I did it but I asked him every single thing. His journey is what made the book so it really has been a team effort,” Jessica said.
In May, just two days before Jessica sat down with HeartThreads, Tommy was deemed cancer-free.
“We found out two days ago! He had his most recent pat-scan and we found out that he has a clean scan and he’s cancer free at this moment. It’s so exciting,” Jessica said. “Obviously this isn’t anyone’s dream newlywed year but the fact that we were able to become so grounded in each other and find strength through each other… it’s going to lay the groundwork for the rest of our marriage.”
