They met as teenagers in the cancer ward. Now, they are getting married
ANAHEIM, Calif. — She had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He had leukemia. They fell in love.
Lauren Aslanian was a 15-year-old sophomore at Sonora High — a strong soccer player — when she felt the lump on her throat. Nick Meza was 17, a senior at Fullerton High — a visual artist — when he noticed his swollen neck.
About 10 years ago, cancer diagnoses derailed their adolescent lives. But the darkest of times led them to each other. As they overcame blood cancers, their bodies, and their feelings for one another, strengthened.
Today, their cancers are in remission and their lives are intertwined.
The Thursday before Christmas, Meza, now 28, proposed to Aslanian, 26, in room 539 of the Children’s Hospital of Orange County — in the same cancer ward where they met as teenagers.
“I wanted to do the proposal where our journey started,” Meza said. “This is where we met.”
But, CHOC isn’t where they fell in love.
“It was two years from the first time we met until the time we got in a relationship,” Meza said. “We were just sick. We weren’t exactly focused on finding love.”
Except that was only half true.
They met around June 2014. The film, “The Fault In Our Stars,” had just come out. In it, a 16-year-old girl with cancer meets her 17-year-old crush in a support group.
Aslanian and other teenage girls at CHOC were infatuated with the movie for obvious reasons.
After watching the movie, her friend Christine, another cancer patient, said she had fallen in love with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy down the hall on the fifth floor. They went looking for his room.
“I’m 15, and she was 14,” Aslanian said. “We’re doing teenage girl things, like walking around and knocking on all the doors in the unit looking for this boy.”
A nurse directed...