LDL. “I Want to Live… Because He Still Needs Me”: Melodie Woods Faces Stage 4 Cancer Surgery While Caring for a Husband With a Progressive Brain Disease

The New Year is quickly approaching, and 67-year-old Melodie Woods says she’s trying to welcome 2026 with faith.

But she’s dreading it too.

Because in just weeks, Melodie will undergo a complex, life-altering surgery—one she hopes will save her life. And she isn’t hoping only for herself.

She’s hoping she lives long enough to keep helping her husband live, too.

At the Woods home in Peachtree City, Georgia, mornings have their own rhythm now—measured not by coffee cups and calendars, but by caregiving.

Melodie rolls her husband, Wesley, out of bed and guides him into a lift chair. Wesley’s mind is still there. He watches TV. He tries puzzles. He communicates in soft whispers. He struggles to swallow. He can’t walk. And according to his diagnosis, his body will continue to lose what it can do.

The disease is called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP)—a rare, devastating neurodegenerative disorder that affects balance, movement, speech, swallowing, and more. It can mimic Parkinson’s in early stages, but it progresses in its own relentless way.

Melodie has been Wesley’s caregiver for the past three and a half years, and she’s done it with the kind of steady devotion that people call “strong” without ever fully understanding what it costs.

For years, she would push away one fear that always hovered in the background:
What happens if I get sick?

She stayed upbeat. She stayed busy. She stayed focused. There was too much to do to stop and worry.

Until this past August.

She felt a lump beneath her ear—small at first, easy to dismiss when your life already revolves around someone else’s medical needs. But it didn’t go away.

In October 2025, Melodie went in for testing at Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The results changed everything.

Doctors found a tumor at the base of her tongue, she said—measuring 3.1 x 3.4 x 1.9 centimeters.

Then came the confirmation: on November 12, 2025, Melodie received the diagnosis she never saw coming while she was busy holding up everyone else.

She says doctors told her it was stage 4 cancer, and that surgery would be the primary path forward. In Melodie’s words, the operation may involve removing much of the tongue and reconstructing it using tissue taken from her arm or leg.

“My surgery will be complex,” Melodie explained, describing a long road ahead—swelling, tubes, a permanent feeding tube, and months before she can speak normally again.

And that’s where her fear becomes something deeper than fear.

Because Melodie isn’t only preparing to lose her voice for a while.

She’s preparing to recover from a massive surgery while her husband—already unable to walk and increasingly dependent—still needs full-time care.

And Medicare, she says, does not provide in-home care in Wesley’s situation.

That reality is the part that keeps Melodie awake.

When she received the diagnosis, her biggest questions weren’t about her own pain or her own prognosis.

They were about Wesley.

“Who is going to take care of him after my surgery?” she wondered.

In the midst of her own life-or-death countdown, Melodie has been making calls—insurance representatives, social workers, attorneys—trying to find a plan. Trying to find help. Trying to make sure Wesley will be safe while she’s in the hospital and in recovery.

But she says she has hit dead ends.

In the immediate future, she has a few stepping stones of support. Melodie says close friends, Ron and Jody Toth, will stay at the house for the first few weeks after her surgery while she’s hospitalized.

But after that, the question returns—louder than ever.

“What then?”

Melodie has even pushed her surgery date back to January 13, 2026, so she can be beside Wesley as he undergoes a minor surgery scheduled for January 5, 2026. And according to her timeline, she’s expected to have a feeding tube procedure around January 3, 2026.

Everything is scheduled. Everything is urgent.

And everything is layered with a kind of emotional pressure most people cannot imagine: preparing for a 10-hour surgery while also arranging a year of caregiving for the person you’ve already been protecting for years.

“One year of care for Wesley will cost $120,000 out of pocket,” Melodie said. Numbers like that don’t just scare people—they trap them. Because you can’t simply “work harder” or “figure it out” when the need is constant and the cost is crushing.

The coming year, Melodie says, will “roar in with a vengeance.”

Doctors will reportedly make an incision under her chin from ear to ear to begin the surgery. She says without surgery, doctors have given her a limited timeframe. With surgery, she says the odds improve—but nothing feels guaranteed.

“I’m terrified,” she admitted, “but it has to be done.”

And then, in a quiet voice that carries the weight of every caregiver’s nightmare, Melodie said the words that reveal what she’s truly facing:

“I feel like a freight train is headed toward me and I can’t stop it.”

She’s scared for herself—but she’s more worried about her husband.

Because even if she survives the surgery, recovery will change everything inside that house. Communication will become harder. Physical tasks will become harder. And Wesley’s disease is progressive—meaning his needs will not lessen while she heals.

So Melodie is doing what caregivers always do, even when they’re the one in crisis now:

She’s pouring her heart out, trying to make sure someone she loves won’t be left behind.

If you’re reading this, please keep Melodie and Wesley in your prayers—for protection, for provision, for steady hands and kind hearts to step in, and for strength that lasts beyond surgery day.

And if there’s a way to help, the family has asked that support links be shared in the comments.

Because sometimes the most terrifying part of illness isn’t only the diagnosis.

It’s the question that comes after it:

Who will take care of the one I love… if I can’t?