Man Documents Late Wife's Decline from Cancer in Heart-Wrenching Photos: 'She Aged in Fast Forward' (Exclusive)
- - Man Documents Late Wife's Decline from Cancer in Heart-Wrenching Photos: 'She Aged in Fast Forward' (Exclusive)
Cara Lynn ShultzFebruary 2, 2026 at 5:00 AM
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Paige Burkholder in 2022 (left); Two weeks before she died in 2025
Courtesy Mark Burkholder
Mark Burkholder photographed the health decline of his wife Paige, who was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer at 32
Burkholder tells PEOPLE the couple wanted to document the "more raw and honest parts" of cancer's progression rather than the common narrative of it as a "heroic struggle"
He is now encouraging other caregivers to share "radical honesty about the disease"
A widower is opening up about losing his wife to cancer, and why he chose to photograph her health decline over three years.
Mark Burkholder's wife Paige was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer in 2022, months after the couple moved to the San Juan Islands, a small archipelago off the coast of Washington State. A history teacher, Paige had gotten a job offer there.
“The plan in moving here was to reconnect,” Burkholder, a writer and marketer, tells PEOPLE of the 2021 relocation. “After we moved here, she started having the stuff that you just don't really think about too much — some stomach pain, a little bit of back pain, and then that started getting bad.”
The pain got worse over time, and she went to the doctor for a scan.
Mark Burkholder with late wife Paige and their dog, Olive.
Courtesy Mark Burkholder
On the day she learned the results of her scan, she met Mark at a local coffee shop. “I remember looking out the window and seeing her face," he says. "I just instantly knew that it was something bad.”
The scans identified a mass on her liver — something the doctor said was “a tumor the size of a softball … almost certainly cancer.”
“It was fast and it was aggressive,” Burkholder tells PEOPLE. In September 2022, Paige was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the liver's bile ducts. By the time she began treatment that December, the tumor was the size of a football.
Mark and Paige Burkholder on their wedding day in TK YEAR
Courtesy Mark Burkholder
Paige’s first chemotherapy treatment was around Christmas Day. “We drove through a blizzard, whiteout conditions.” Burkholder says he remembers watching the snow fall while his wife was calling people and “spinning it a little bit, telling them, ‘It's a cancer I'll live with.’ “
“After the first call or two, I sat next to her and I was like, ‘You know what's going on — that this is terminal, right?’ ” he says. “She was creating hope for herself and for them. The way I look at it, my role as her caregiver was to live in reality.”
That's when Burkholder began to think about sharing an honest look at cancer. “So much of the stuff that we see about cancer, it's just like, the one pose, like ‘Warrior!’ ” he says. “But when you're home alone, and you're curled up in a ball on the sofa, suffering and crying and then you see online someone who's just cherry-picked the one day they felt good, God, it’s really isolating to see what people are sharing, and the narrative they're attaching to it that that gets put around cancer."
"It's sort of portrayed as this heroic struggle — but I think it's really more like a trench warfare in World War One: You're in a trench for months and you can never sleep because there's bombs going off. There's gunfire all the time.”
Mark Burkholder photographed his wife Paige's treatment.
Courtesy Mark Burkholder
Burkholder began to photograph and film their shared journey: Paige with terminal cancer, and he as a caregiver — but they didn’t post anything online.
“The parts that we really wanted to share were the more raw and honest parts, and sharing it during the journey was hard. When we were feeling well enough to be thinking about recording something, we didn't want to then use that time to plunge right back into the misery we'd just been through a month earlier.”
“[Posting] didn't end up happening basically until she passed," he said.
He posted his first TikTok on Dec. 13, three days after Paige, 35, died in the night, at home.
Mark and Paige Burkholder wanted to share a realistic look at cancer treatment.
Courtesy Mark Burkholder
That first post was viewed nearly 250,000 times. In another TikTok, where Burkholder shared how he managed her death with their dog Olive, was viewed 1.2 million times. And when he described her cancer as "aging in fast forward," that TikTok was viewed nearly 2 million times. As Burkholder sorted through the reactions from others who’d lost loved ones to cancer, he realized the story he wanted to tell was one about caregiving.
“A lot of the time caregiving is just sitting on the couch for 24 hours a day because Paige would be passed out, or she'd be or pain. When she was conscious, I would want to be with her and when she needed something, I needed to be there,” he says.
"The hard part of caregiving is being present for 24 hours a day and just being on call always. And for me, the focus on caregiving is just because we talk so much about cancer and supporting people with cancer, and I just had not seen that much about the realities of caregiving, specifically the mental and physical toll of the 24-hour nature of it.”
“Every cancer journey is so unique,” he says. “I don't think I could give any advice on battling cholangiocarcinoma. I don't actually know that much about cholangiocarcinoma. What I do know and what I can give support on is presence.” He shares he wants to also offer functional advice, like, how to write the doctor “an email that'll punch through and is clear and isn't just going to have the doctor respond with another question that delays things three days.”
He wants to share a “field manual” of how to take people up on their offer to help: “Hundreds of people are going to message you and say, ‘If there's anything I can do, let me know.’ Well, you know what you should do then: Make a website with five links on it to a meal train, a GoFundMe, and an Amazon wishlist and whatever else.”
As he explains, “We needed the support and if everyone in your life is willing to offer support, but doesn't know how, all that support just disappears, which I think is what happens 99% of the time.”
Mark Burkholder photographed his wife Paige, two weeks before her death.
Courtesy Mark Burkholder
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But, as Burkholder tells PEOPLE, his overall message is one of “radical honesty about the disease."
“In a weird way, if you present too much of the valiant warrior, you cost yourself a lot,” he says. “Everyone's like, ‘Well, they're just a badass strong cancer warrior. They don't need help and support.’ But if you're willing to be honest about how horrible this process is, then people actually can help you and understand that you need the help. This is my mission.”
The response from people who've lost loved ones has been immense: "Everything Paige and I thought was true," he says. "People are out there suffering, and everyone's lost ... that's sort of the great heartbreak for me in all of this."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
