MIRRORED LOVE

We met up with Mike and Demy West at their church home, The Church at Rancho Bernardo, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They approached us in the parking lot with their 9-year-old son, Kai, and smiles that were different from each other’s, but comparable in the comfort they brought to those greeted by them. We entered through one of the pairs of double doors and exchanged the lowdown of each of our busy weeks as we found our way to a seating area with two chairs across from a couch. Everyone found a seat, got comfortable, and as Kai got set up with his entertainment for the hour, we sat down to chat.

Mike started off our introductions. “I’m Mike West. I, oh my God, I was about to say my age and I don’t know, but let’s skip the age.” We all chuckled, and then Mike continued, “I’m an attorney. I’ve been an attorney for 29 years, and I specialize in trials. I defend skilled nursing facilities and residential care facilities, so I deal a lot with elder abuse, wrongful death, claims like that.”

Every word that came from Mike’s mouth was concise, yet thorough as he walked us through the details of his life. He shared with us that he has a daughter from a previous relationship named Brianna, and explained that she was 14 years old when Mike and Demy married. Brianna has lived in North Carolina for the past year and works as a registered nurse for ICU general surgical patients.

Mike shifted the focus to talk about how he found himself in California. “I grew up in Atlanta, and I came out to California to go to Pepperdine Law School and eventually got stuck here. It was beautiful. After growing up in Atlanta, I wouldn’t really travel that much either. So, when I came out to California and was living in Malibu for three years like that, it was kind of a dream, you know?”

We agreed that Southern California wasn’t such a bad place to get stuck in.

Mike continued, “Then I thought, ‘Okay, well I’ll just take the California Bar,’ but I always intended to go home and then, you know, life intervenes. And before I knew it, I was settled out here, practicing law.”

After thoughtfully wrapping up his introduction, Mike passed it off to Demy.

“I’m Demy West. I’m a twin, and I come from a blended family. My mom’s Japanese, and my dad’s Filipino. My dad was in the military, so it was a lot of moving. I mentioned my twin right away because my siblings became my best friends. Because every three years we would move and it was very hard, especially when you meet close friends or you have a crush on a boy, you’re like, ‘I don’t wanna leave. Why do we have to move again??’”

We all shared a healthy dose of laughter at Demy’s reenactment of her childhood years.

Demy dove deeper into the details of her home life and life as a twin, “Her (Demy’s twin sister) name is Emily. We’re fraternal twins, but our mannerisms and our voice are exactly alike. So people were like, are you Demy or Emily or Demily?” As she explained the dynamic between her and her sister, Emily, (who is 10 minutes older, by the way) it was made clear that the two were always balancing each other out with opposite personalities in different seasons.

Demy continued to talk about her family and home environment through her teenage years. She shared how when she and Emily were in junior high, their parents got divorced, and Demy became like a mom in the household of six; which included herself, her father, and her four siblings.

Demy then introduced a shift in perspective, “But it was good. We’re really close because of my parent’s divorce and my dad met my stepmom really quickly. She’s Filipino and I think it was a good fit for him. You know, culturally, they were able to understand each other better.”

From her father remarrying, Demy gained three siblings, two half-sisters and one stepsister, all of whom she has only ever viewed as full siblings. This is a perfect example of Demy’s welcoming and care-taking personality.

Demy expressed her love of fitness and how she believes her military father played a role in this active lifestyle of hers. “My dad, every weekend, I think it was just a military sort of lifestyle, he was like, ‘Okay, we’re waking up. We’re gonna go play tennis, we’re gonna work out.’ And I was like, ‘No, I wanna go outside and play. He said, ‘Nope, wake up early, do your sit-ups.’ And I was like, ‘Sit-ups?? I’m not in the military!’” Laughs erupted from all four of us.

Once again, Demy explained a shifted perspective of what seemed like a lessthan-perfect situation. “I also appreciated that it helped me instill the discipline that I needed to take me through school. I have a degree in public health, and I work with the American Cancer Society. My heart is really helping people in the community, especially underserved communities, people that need us.” Demy has worked for the American Cancer Society (ACS) since 2003 with patient programs and expresses that walking alongside Mike throughout his cancer journey opened her eyes to the necessity of support for the families of cancer patients.

Demy stopped herself and lightheartedly refocused. “But before I get into that, more about me!”

From participating in fitness competitions to powerlifting regularly, Demy has tried every form of fitness she can get her hands on, especially in the season of Mike going through cancer treatment. During that time, working out had become her outlet. Over the years, Demy has found that balance in her lifestyle was most important for her. While she is still in love with fitness and works out just about every day, she also sees the value in viewing life with less rigidity.

“I think it all should have a balance. I’m like, ‘I want to eat my birthday cake!’”

Mike hopped back into the conversation to share how fitness is a major connection point for them both. “We strength train together. When I came out of cancer, I had lost 75 pounds. I couldn’t do anything. I mean my body just wasted away ‘cause I was on a feeding tube for months.”

Mike continued to talk about how he got reintegrated into the world of working out after the completion of his cancer treatment. “When she was really training religiously, we met a guy named Chase and we took some of his HIIT classes and stuff like that. And I didn’t realize he went to church here.” Mike says as he gestured to the building we were sitting inside of. “It was like one of my first or second Sundays back. I felt terrible. I just didn’t want to really be around people and I was kind of hiding out in the front, waiting for her to come out. And he came up to me because I was really public with my cancer journey, through Facebook. And he said, ‘Hey, great to see you. I’ve worked with people who have had cancer before. If you wanna come to the gym, I believe I can help you.’ So, long story short, I thought, ‘No way, I’m not gonna do that.’ But, thankfully, I did. And that’s kind of how it started; he rebuilt my body.” Mike later transitioned to his trainer, Carl, who has continued to help him improved over the past couple of years.

Now, Mike and Demy spend their lunches together powerlifting every Tuesday and Friday. Demy adds the side note that when Mike was undergoing treatment and lost all that weight, he couldn’t even lift five to ten pounds. Today, Mike has rebuilt his strength to be able to lift 450 pounds.

The couple met in April of 2012, five years before Mike’s cancer journey began, at a mock trial in San Diego where Mike was standing in for his friend as the prosecutor and Demy was a mock juror. She was sitting in front of Mike in the midst of fifty to seventy-five people, and Mike recalled that day like it was yesterday.

“I’ll never forget what she was wearing. She had a pink jacket on and the funniest thing is she was freezing. We laugh about this now because back then I tended to run kind of warm. So I told the guy, ‘Man, I’m gonna get warm. Can you turn the AC down?’ He’s like, ‘I gotcha, I gotcha.’ And the whole time she was freezing.”

Demy interjects, “It was like a freezer, Sammy!”

The next day, Demy arrived with long, thick socks, Mike stated it was like she was ready for a flash dance in the eighties. And while they weren’t supposed to talk, Mike explained that they kind of bumped into each other going up and down the stairs.

“You were stalking me.” Demy said matter of factly.

“I was stalking you.” Mike responded. “Well, she’s so beautiful! I just, you know, you meet her, you notice her, right? And she was so warm and friendly, but it kind of changed when she went behind the two-way mirror and we were listening to them (all the jurors giving feedback on the trial).

Of course, I found her room. She just annihilated my case! She hated every argument that I made and said my client’s case was terrible. And the first thing she debated was, and you tell me how you’d take this…” he directed toward us, as he led into Demy’s big question from 11 years ago, “...Were those guys actually attorneys or are they actors?”

Through the hard-to-hear criticism, Mike took a leap of faith post-mock trial, introduced himself to Demy, and ended up getting her business card. This was out of the norm behavior for Mike, but he said he without a doubt felt the hand of God giving him a nudge and telling him that this was it. He wasn’t sure what “it” was, but he knew he needed to talk to her.

The two began emailing back and forth as Mike was living in LA and Demy in San Diego. After a few dinner dates and a Father’s Day weekend together with Mike’s daughter, Brianna, just a few exits from where they live now, they decided to give it a shot.

Mike and Demy got married a mere seven months after they met, on November 5th of 2012, but due to not wanting to move Brianna out of her school at the age of fourteen, Mike lived in LA half of the time, alternating to come be with Demy, and eventually Kai, a week at a time.

Mike described those first three years of back and forth, “Those beginning years were, they were rocky. We had some tough moments. Yeah. You know, because when you get married, you’re supposed to be together all the time.” Mike summarized with assurance, “I mean, it was worth it. We fought through it and made it happen.”

As the two processed through that season in front of our eyes, Demy expressed that knowing that situation wasn’t going to be permanent was half of the hope that she was holding on to in that season. The other half was the fact that, in those first few years, she still had some independence that she may not have had if they had lived together 24/7 at the time. She explained that it was a season that helped her transition into married life living with each other all the time. Once Mike moved full-time to San Diego, though, there was an adjustment period.

Demy reminisced on when she discovered the confidence she had that Mike was the one for her. “When we met, I had kissed a lot of frogs, and finally met my prince, you know?”

Mike added, “Honestly, we met when God wanted us to meet.” Demy nodded in agreement, and Mike continued, “I think that’s what really helped us connect so quickly, and we knew it was different.”

We asked the two what attributes in the other balance them out, and Mike took the first step in explaining.

Mike was diagnosed with stage IV

Oropharyngeal Cancer caused by HPV in August of 2017. He underwent surgery in September of the same year, and then had chemo and radiation treatment every day from October to December. He found out he was in remission in March of the following year, and just this past December, on the 6th, Mike switched from remission to cured.

“I don’t think you can fairly tell our story without talking about that. It’s interesting, that was halfway through our marriage. We’ve been married a little over 10 years, you know, last year. And that diagnosis was the fifth year we’d been together. And it was really interesting because it was kind of a course correction for us. We were kind of fighting around that time and starting to have some issues. There wasn’t anything huge, but we definitely were not connecting.”

He walked us through the different situations that were interrupting a spirit of unity in their life together, and eventually summarized, “It was just life, you know? Then you get that call and you have cancer and it just changed everything.”

While he’ll never say he was thankful he had cancer, Mike expressed that he is thankful that he had that challenge in his life that God intervened in to meet him in that moment.

With emotion in his voice, Mike let us into that process for him and the realizations that came along the way. “He [God] helped me see the things I needed to change and become the man that he intended for me to be. And seeing Demy, really, for the first time. Because when you go through chemo and radiation and you don’t know if you’re going to live-”

Mike took a breath and acknowledged that telling his story, while he shares it all the time, felt harder than normal, having Demy sitting next to him and recounting that time of his life.

He picked up where he left off,

“The chemo and the radiation is going through you and it’s killing you to make you better, which is irony. So your body is going through the active process of dying and you see it. And it took me so low, because I had stage four cancer and it had spread to my lymph nodes. When I got out of the hospital, it was right around the lowest moment and you have that chance to go light or dark, you know?”

Mike chose light.

“No matter how terrible I felt, no matter how bad, I just could not envision ever feeling good and how my life was going to look like, but I had life. And I had that chance. So, I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to do everything I can to make it happen.’”

Mike recalled a time when his cancer brought him to a level of love and care for Demy he hadn’t experienced before. “I remember Demy came home, I fell on my knees. I cried and I hugged her. I said, ‘I’m so sorry. There’s times where I didn’t really see. Because you’ve always been there, and I knew I loved you. I knew you were the answer to my prayer, but I never saw you in the way that I needed to see you. And I promise you, for the rest of your life, I’m going to make sure that every day you know I do see you, I do love you, and I do appreciate the answer you’ve been to so many prayers in my life.’”

He sums it up with gratitude, “Seeing her there with me through all of that and the way I think we both changed, the appreciation that came out of that journey, I never would have found. There’s no way that I could have found this on my own. That’s the part I’m gonna talk about when I say I’m thankful that God intervened in that challenge, because without that challenge, I know I wouldn’t have had this appreciation, this beautiful appreciation I have every single day that I wake up and I see her, I see him,” Mike gestured across the room to Kai. “It was through that journey where I really realized just how amazing she is and what she means to me.”

Demy brought her perspective into the conversation, “Just to piggyback off of all of that, Mike has always been that person to do whatever it takes to be there for his family, and it really shows through his work ethic. There’s only a handful of people I would say, I could count on my hands, that are the hardest working people I know. Day in, day out, whether it be being there for their family, reflecting that in their day job, and Mike is one of those.”

She continued on to share about how Mike has been an inspiration to her in her own job. “I feel like when I’ve seen Mike work so hard for our family and when he went through his cancer, I wanted to be a better person in my job. If someone says, ‘I have cancer,’ and I see a caregiver, I’m that much more compassionate. Not to say it was never compassionate before, but it opened my eyes to be like, ‘Shoot, this is so hard.’”

Demy concluded her thought, “So I think that our journey and seeing how he wanted to live for Kai and Brianna and live for me, made me a stronger person.”

With Mike’s cancer journey and Demy’s career at the American Cancer Society, these two make quite the pair.

“That’s true.” Demy said, and Mike completed the thought, “It’s one of the reasons we do the support group here at the church and things like that. It is a unique combination, isn’t it? She brings all the resources of ACS and her Master’s of Public Health, and I bring the, ‘Okay, I’ve been there,’ kind of thing. We think it’s what God wanted us to do.”

Mike thought he would be someone who never talked about their cancer journey again once it was over, but there were definitely other plans for him. Through their cancer care group they lead at the church, leading a marriage small group, and participating in speaking engagements to share their story, the Wests have set the example of a life of service through vulnerability and care, not only the two of them, but also in the way they include Kai in all the different areas of their world.

Follow Mike & Demy

Mike’s Instagram | @_mike.west_

Demy’s Instagram | @demywest

America Cancer Society’s Website | www.cancer.org