Missing your wedding day is worse than a headache – but for this groom, the migraine that ruined the reception turned out to be much more serious.
Nathan Vaughan had no choice but to miss his wedding ceremony after marrying his wife Katie Vaughan, whose birth name is Glass, in May because he suffered from a “painful” migraine, and spent the entire evening “passing out” in his Cambridgeshire hotel room rather than celebrating his wedding.
Though she initially ignored the headache as pre-wedding jitters, it continued for three days and resulted in a visit to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which required surgery.
“I took painkillers, migraine pills and thought it was just wedding day jitters, feeling a bit stressed. But it didn't go away and gradually got worse over the day,” Nathan, 30, told Kennedy News. He added that until 2 a.m. on the morning of his wedding he was “fine.”
,[For it to be] The wedding day of all days, it's crazy.”
Even the photographer noticed that the groom looked “a bit weird,” and Nathan eventually had to stay bedridden and suffer “the worst headache of his life.”
“I was thinking, ‘I’ll never forget this,’” he recalled.
“My first thought was ‘My wife is alone on our wedding day.’ I was lying upstairs, surrounded by guilt that I had left her alone.”
But Katie, 26, “performed brilliantly” and “carried on through the reception alone”, despite being “saddened” that her new husband was ill on their wedding night.
“I said to the kitchen 'you might as well cut the cake' and I'll just do my thing,” she recalled. “My dad danced with me at the end of the night, God bless him.”
But three days later the pain continued and Katie rushed Nathan to hospital where doctors diagnosed him with a benign tumour of the pituitary gland, which was the size of two thumb nails.
“Blood oozed out in the morning [of my wedding] So I was bleeding in my brain,” he said, adding that it required four hours of surgery to remove it as it was pressing on his optic nerve and affecting his vision.
“I don't think Katie realized how quickly she would be taking care of me after saying 'in sickness and in health.' It's a long recovery process.”
While the couple are grateful that things could have been worse but didn't, they have issued a warning about little-known symptoms of a brain tumour, which can easily mimic a migraine.
“I can imagine that a lot of people would think it's just a headache and not think about getting it checked out,” Nathan said. He added that many people have this condition throughout their lives and don't even know it.
“If it had happened the day before, the wedding would not have taken place and if it had happened the next day, I would have assumed it was due to a hangover from drinking and probably would not have gotten it checked.”
Fortunately, the couple didn't have any immediate honeymoon plans, or the tumour would have disrupted that as well. Instead, they're heading to Kos, Greece, next year, where they'll find “blue skies, beaches and hopefully no migraines.”
“It was a weird time,” Katie said, recalling her big day. “I love looking at the photos, but at the same time it was a really weird day. It wasn't exactly what I had imagined my wedding day would be.”
While Nathan is “grateful” to have seen his “wife walk down the aisle,” the couple is redoing their reception for their one-year wedding anniversary and inviting all of their guests to celebrate once again.
“In a year we'll have our first dance and give our speeches and cut the cake,” Nathan said. “Better late than never.”
