She’s going for the gold. He’s fighting for his life.
And now U.S. water polo star Maddie Musselman and her ailing husband, Patrick Woepse, are drawing strength from each other at the Paris Olympics.
“We’re not sharing our story for people to feel sorry for us or feel bad for what we’re going through,” Musselman, 26, told NBC News as the Games got underway. “If anything, it’s for inspiration and that you can get to the other side of things with the people that are right next to you. We hope for that.”
Woepse, 30, who has Stage 4 lung cancer, said being in Paris and being able to cheer his wife on as she goes for the gold has done them both a world of good.
“For me to be here and support her in her Olympic journey is really special,” Woepse said in a separate interview with TODAY. “It’s really special for Maddie. It gives me a lot of strength watching her play and I think having me in the stands gives her a little extra energy.”
Already a two-time Olympic gold medalist, Musselman met her future husband in college at UCLA where they both played water polo. They got engaged in June 2023.
Then, while he was training last year to swim the English Channel, Woepse said he developed a “nagging cough that didn’t go away.”
“I didn’t really think much of it other than it didn’t seem any different” from any cough he had before, Woepse told TODAY.
It also didn’t stop him from completing the 21-mile swim.
“All of them have been shocked,” Woepse said of the doctors. “My lung was 98% blocked so I really did it with one lung, which is pretty remarkable. It made it harder on myself than I anticipated. But I was in good shape and totally I was where I needed to be to get it done.”
So Woepse said he was floored when he got the cancer diagnosis from his doctor and was told he had as little as four months left to live.
“I never smoked,” he said. “We have a pretty healthy lifestyle. Hearing that news was a huge shock and obviously devastating.”
What Woepse has is called NUT carcinoma, which is a rare and rapidly spreading form of cancer that can grow anywhere on the body but is usually found in the head, neck or lungs.
“Not knowing the next steps on what we need to do to try and battle it, and also being unsure if that spread anywhere else in the body, was a pretty scary moment,” Woepse said.
Faced with so much uncertainty, Woepse and Musselman decided to get married right away.
“With Pat’s diagnosis, we decided we wanted to get married as soon as possible,” Musselman told People. “All the people that came together to make it happen within four days — it was pretty crazy. We had flowers. We had a church that welcomed us with open arms to marry us. It was just a perfect weekend.”
Woepse was dispatched to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the few facilities with expertise in combatting this kind of cancer, before being enrolled in a clinical trial by the cancer institute at the University of California.
Thus began a grueling treatment program that included dozens of rounds of chemotherapy followed by radiation to his lung, shoulders and back.
But it didn’t stop the cancer from spreading to his bones, Woepse said. And he also underwent eight bronchoscopies to clear his clogged airways.
“I’ve generally had a good response,” he said. “All of the treatment I received has stabilized growth with minimal spread. In my mind, I think treatment is going well.”
Musselman was with him every step of the way, Woepse added.
“Maddie’s unbelievable, incredible,” he said. “I don’t know anybody else that could have done it, but she’s helped me all the way through my treatment, every day. Then she would go out and do a double day practice and train for the Olympics and then come home and do it all over again.”
Musselman said at times she felt torn about practicing with her team while her husband was undergoing chemotherapy.
“There are times where I wanted to be with him, but he’s like, ‘No, you have to go to practice,’” she said. “Obviously I want him to know that I’m there, but yeah, it’s been hard.”
But 11 months after Woepse got his diagnosis, both he and Musselman are in Paris.
“We made it,” the couple posted last week on Instagram. “We made it to Paris.”
And if Musselman and her teammates continue to advance, they’ll be playing for the gold on Saturday, which is Woepse’s 31st birthday.
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