KIRKLAND, Wash. -- It seemed like life could not throw any more obstacles in front of Jean Daguerre.
Shortly after meeting the love of her life seven years ago, Jean struggled to get pregnant. But she overcame that obstacle. With help from infertility treatments, she finally gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Lucas, in 2009.
Just ten months later -- without any infertility treatments at all -- she became pregnant again. To Jean, it was a miracle.
But six days after that, she learned something else was growing inside of her: a tumor. It was breast cancer.
"The first thought was, 'What about the baby?'" Jean said. "I didn't know that it was even possible to go through chemotherapy and be pregnant."
She quickly learned that she could do both. She finished chemo this April, then gave birth to 6-and-a-half-pound Gabriela two weeks later.
By September she was starting radiation, and doctors put her survival rate at 85 percent.
Cancer was losing.
If only cancer was her biggest enemy.
On September 29 her husband, Hernan, was killed in a single-car accident while rounding a curve just a mile from their Kirkland home. He was simply running an errand; making a quick trip to the grocery store to buy cat food.
"He just gets up from the couch and goes to the door, and the last words I said to him were, 'Be careful,'" Jean said.
She got a call three hours later from Harborview Medical Center where her husband was in the operating room. She got in the car and started driving to the hospital.
"I just remember saying to my niece in the car, 'I hope this is not the longest ride I ever take,'" Jean said. "I kind-of knew it was going to be."
Hernan died at the age of 38.
Jean met him seven years ago through an online personals website. Even though Jean lived in Indiana, she followed the advice of her friend -- who just had a hunch that Jean's soul mate was actually overseas in Europe. So Jean signed up for the U.K Yahoo personals.
"I said I was from the U.K. and I really wasn't," Jean said. "He was like, 'Oh, you live right across the bridge from me.'"
The truth quickly came out. But the distance did not keep them from meeting or from falling in love or from getting married in Hernan's home country of Argentina.
"It was like a fairy tale," Jean said with a smile on her face. "Completely a fairy tale."
After the wedding, the Daguerres moved to America, living in Indiana, then Miami, then Portland. Jean always trusted that Hernan would take care of them, even after losing his job in Oregon. Just a month before losing their health insurance, after Jean had been diagnosed with cancer, Hernan landed a job in the corporate communications department at T-Mobile. They moved to the Seattle area within the past year.
"Hernan created the life he wanted to live," Reid Walker, Hernan's boss at T-Mobile, said during Hernan's funeral. "He lived with a passion that was unbounded."
Hernan enjoyed playing music for their oldest son, Lucas. Shortly before his death, Jean captured a precious moment on video: Hernan playing the guitar while he and Lucas sang one of their favorite songs, "Wake Me Up When September Ends." It is a Green Day song about a son who loses his father in September.
"Little did I know how special that was going to end up being," Jean said.
The video played at Hernan's funeral, bringing to tears to the eyes of nearly every person who was paying their respects.
Despite the overwhelming heartbreak, Jean's battle with cancer, including her five weekly radiation treatments, could not be put on hold. She missed only two radiation treatments following Hernan's death.
"To be frank, this never gets any easier being a cancer doctor," said Dr. Michael Hunter, one of Jean's doctors at Evergreen Medical Center. "And yet, in 20 years, I've never seen such tragedy all in the space of a year.
"I think we're really seeing the true measure of a woman," Dr. Hunter added. "We're seeing her character, we're seeing her courage, we're seeing her really become strong in the face of adversity."
Jean knows she must keep fighting for her kids.
"I never would've thought that I would be the only parents, but here we are," she said while kissing 5-month-old Gabriela. "They're what keeps me going."
If Hernan taught her anything, it is to keep on living because their story is far from done.
"I'll just go through the rest of my life thinking, 'What would he want me to do?" Jean said. "What would he do?"
With her radiation treatments now complete, Jean and her kids plan to move home to Indiana to be closer to family.
The family has set up an education fund for Hernan's two kids. Donations can be made to the "Hernan Daguerre Memorial Education Fund for Lucas and Gabriela Daguerre" at any Bank of America branch.
The family has also set up an account through PayPal by clicking here.
