High School Senior With Terminal Cancer And Months To Live Marries Girlfriend

After finding out he has just 3-5 months to live due to a rare cancer, this high school senior decided to get married

After receiving a heartbreaking prognosis of just a few months to live, a high school senior decided to live the rest of his life on his terms and marry his girlfriend.

Chase Smith and Sadie Mills tied the knot last month, just a few days after he was told by doctors that he had just three to five months to live. Smith has been battling Ewing’s sarcoma since he was just 12 years old. The couple, who has been together for six months, had their wedding in Mills’ parents’ driveway in Indiana — it was the spot where the pair shared their first kiss.

“Overall, it was the best day of my life,” Mills tells the Indy Star. “I’ve always wanted an outdoor wedding and the fact that Chase came up with the idea to have the altar right where we went on our first date, where we had our first kiss, that meant a lot to me.”

Both Smith and Mills are 18 years old, but the wedding was something they had dreamed about for quite a while, due in part to Smith’s diagnosis. They had initially planned to graduate high school and attend college together and get married once they graduated from college.

But after a doctors’ visit in March ended in Smith learning his cancer had returned, their plans changed. According to PEOPLE, he had tumors all over his body, including in his skull, brain fluid, his shoulder, lung, and hip. Doctors told him his prognosis was bleak, regardless of whether he sought treatment. He and Mills decided to speed up their future plans and make the most of their time left together.

“We definitely were thinking about getting married in the future and we knew we wanted to,” Smith tells PEOPLE. “A lot of people do say, ‘Oh they’re getting married because he has a potential to pass away soon,’ and that’s not at all why we decided to get married. It was more of just a wake-up call that, ‘Hey, God wants you two together.'”

The couple’s parents agreed with their decision and helped plan and organize the wedding in Mills’ front yard.

If you’re not already tearing up from the bittersweetness of it all, Smith’s description of seeing his first love walk down the aisle will have you reaching for the Kleenex box. “I was so excited to see her ’cause I hadn’t seen her all day,” Smith says. “It was the pure reaction of being able to see her… It was like a hit in the chest of emotion.”

There is currently a GoFundMe set up to help Smith and his family with his expenses. Though the length of their future together remains unknown, the couple is determined to make the most of it.

“With God, I always know I have a shot. As long as he’s by my side, I always have the strength to do whatever,” Smith says. He says his new wife is a great emotional support for him, too. “She calms my fears… when I’m having rough times with my diagnosis or I’m in pain or in high anxiety times, she’s the one person that I can go to and she can get my heart rate down, get me to relax, get me to think of something else.”