A young widow has spoken about the heartbreak of losing her husband to a brain tumour less than a year after their wedding and the birth of their first child.
Emma Cotillard, now 34, from Jersey, was on honeymoon with her 29-year-old husband Justin when he began to experience symptoms including memory loss and confusion so severe that he did not recognise his new wife.
"He woke up one morning and started screaming at me to get out of his room," Emma recalled. "He thought I was a stranger. He didn't remember that I was seven months pregnant with our first baby."
Justin was given weeks to live, but he survived seven months and was able to spend some precious time with the couple's baby daughter Mia, who was born prematurely after the stress of the diagnosis sent Emma into early labour.
Emma said it was clear in hindsight that Justin's tumour was growing before the couple's wedding.
"His behaviour had started to become a bit erratic. He would go off and walk around in circles on his own and sometimes his speech was a bit slurry.
"We all assumed it was pre-wedding anxiety - we never thought for a second that he might have a brain tumour.
"But everyone in the congregation on our wedding day noticed that he wasn't quite right.
"Looking at the wedding photos now, you can see that the right side of his face is droopy."
After Justin's outburst on honeymoon, the couple
cut short their trip to France and returned to the UK, where an MRI scan revealed that Justin - until then a super-fit amateur boxer and keen footballer - was suffering from the deadliest form of brain tumour in adults, known as a glioblastoma.
There was no cure but doctors said that with surgery followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy, he might live for two years.
The stress of Justin's diagnosis caused Emma to go into labour five weeks early with their daughter, Mia.
Within four hours of Mia's arrival in the early hours of August 17, 2015, Justin flew from Jersey to Southampton for his first radiotherapy session.
At the same time, Emma fell dangerously ill with pre-eclampsia - a pregnancy-related condition that causes high blood pressure.
"We had a new baby, I was sedated for three days and Justin was miles away undergoing radiotherapy," Emma said.
"For a month, Justin was only able to come home at weekends. Those days we all had together were so precious.
"By the time of his last radiotherapy session, I was well enough to fly over to Southampton with Mia to be with him. It felt like a positive milestone."
Four months later in October 2015, however, a scan showed the tumour had regrown and was spreading quickly.
"We were told it was the most aggressive cancer they had seen in any patient in Jersey in ten years," Emma recalled.
"They gave me two weeks to take my husband home before he died."
Trust manager Emma, who met Justin when the pair worked together in their early 20s, cared for her husband at the couple's home in St Helier with the help of his mother and his older brothers.
"We converted the dining room into a bedroom for him. As he grew weaker I was lifting him in and out of bed, washing him, feeding him.
"Six weeks before he died he turned to me and said: 'I don't want you to have to do this any more'."
Justin moved into a hospice, where Emma and Mia spent every day with him. Every night Emma's mother would take Mia home while Emma stayed with her husband.
"Towards the very end, when Justin wasn't conscious, the nurses kept telling me: 'This is it'," Emma said. "But he was hanging on for something and none of us could work out what it was.
"The only thing I could think of was that he hadn't seen Mia for two days as she'd had chicken pox and wasn't allowed into the hospice."
Staff at the hospice decided to waive the rule so that Justin could see his daughter one last time.
"I went back into his room, lay down next to him on the bed and told him that Mia was on her way. That was when he let go. He died knowing that she was OK."
Justin had defied the odds and survived for a further seven months to see his 30th birthday and then Christmas.
Emma talks often to Mia, now 18 months, about Justin and how much he loved her.
"She knows that Daddy was poorly and had to go away, and that now he's a star in the sky.
"Every night before she goes to bed we go out into the garden and she looks up at him.
"I truly believe Mia was sent to me to give me a reason to carry on. I miss Justin every single day but I know he would be so proud of her."
Since Justin's death, Emma has thrown herself into fundraising and volunteering and hopes to set up Jersey's first support group for young widows.
