Caregivers reflect on how staying active, maintaining a sense of humor, and supporting one another helped them navigate life after a prostate cancer diagnosis. They encourage couples to continue enjoying life, lean on their faith and each other, and recognize the importance of balancing caregiving with self-care.

Judy LaBella:

He still cuts grass. We have a little cottage in Gulfport and we get together out there and we work. We're constantly physical. Until you get to the point where you absolutely cannot do anything else, then okay, but let's get up, let's go and walk, let's go and shop, let's go and just do something. So that's what we do. We keep busy. Every morning, I wake up with my cup of coffee and walk outside and thank God for today. Find your faith. Talk to it every day. I do.

I talk to it every day and I say, "Thank you. We're blessed. Thank you for today. Give us tomorrow. We'd like to have tomorrow too." When the Big C comes to town, it changes a lot. We had been together for 50-plus years, but the relationship changed. You didn't take each other for granted so much. It was okay. And we laugh. We belly laugh at a lot. We keep our humor. We belly laugh at a lot of things and that's a blessing right there because some people can go into a deep depression and we haven't allowed that to happen. We make jokes about certain things.

Kerrie Slaton:

The journey was it's gotten us, here we are, 69 years old. We're together, we're doing things. Has it impacted some few things? We once took a trip right afterwards and we probably should have waited a little bit longer. I don't think he was quite recuperated from it, but come on, we knew that.

And that's when he encouraged me, "Please go enjoy parts with it. I'm not going to." And finally, I had to go out and say, "I'm going to do something by myself." Because I'm a person. Let's hold hands. We're walking every step of the way. So I've learned better to do that. Please go and do something that you're going to enjoy. Don't say you didn't do it because you wanted to be by me. That's what he didn't want.