A Wedding at Wilton's Relay for Life

has survived a serious bout with leukemia which, for some time, rendered her comatose, half blind and mute nine years ago. It was, in all ways, the thing that changed her life—it brought her closer to death, and conversely, it pushed her to fall in love. Today, May 13, she will be married at Wilton’s at 8 p.m.

It is, in her words, “a love story that revolves around cancer.”

Waring, now 32, was just 21 when she found a gash on her back that wouldn’t go away. Doctors repeatedly told her that it was just an infected cut, until it eventually caused her so much pain that she went to the emergency room of Stamford Hospital. Once there, she collapsed, and doctors medically induced her into a coma after they figured it was more than just a gash.

 She woke up to her first lucid day six weeks later, and was engulfed in a cacophony of ringing phones and frantic voices. Unable to speak due to a tracheotomy, she witnessed the Twin Towers crumble from her hospital room’s television set. Noticing that she was cognizant and motioning towards the TV, the doctors switched their decision to switch off the television.

Although the feed of the Twin Tower’s view was haunting, and although she was “freaking out” because of the tracheotomy, Waring was able to ground herself. She knew that there was New York City, and that she was in . She remembers being worried that if the hospital were to evacuate, where would she go?

“A lot of things happened while I was asleep,” she said.

 She had lost her hair and undergone chemo, but the induced coma slowed down the cancer and allowed her body to fight it while she slept. Waring was also afflicted with a stroke which rendered her vision distorted, and she still has slight memory problems. She learned that the doctors had given her six hours to live when she had first come in, had she not sought treatment that day.

Throughout those six weeks, Paulo Bernado, now 33, was then just someone Waring knew passively from classes at ; both grew up in Greenwich and went to school together. Bernardo saw her name on a bulletin board while he was working at the hospital as an EMT; in high school, he had had a schoolboy crush on Waring, so he went to visit her in her hospital room. However, Waring was unconscious, and Berarndo went back to work.

Then on December 21, 2001, Waring was released from the hospital. She bumped into Paulo in the lobby and they exchanged pleasantries.

“He said ‘aww you look so good’….It was awkward,” Waring said. She was happy, though, and found him “cute.”

For a long while, the two didn’t see or hear from each other. Waring struggled with achieving her dream of being a high school English teacher; now with vision and memory problems, her future ideals seemed grim.

But then three years later, serendipity struck again. Bernardo and Waring were out with friends, having drinks, when Waring spotted Bernardo. She tapped him on the shoulder—she was afraid he wouldn’t turn around, she said—and the two hit it off.

“Guys would see me, and come up to talk to me because they were intrigued,” said Waring. “But when they found out why I had short [spiky] hair, they were gone.”

Bernardo’s father had succumbed to cancer just a few weeks before that night, and so he was sensitive to Waring’s condition.

“Paulo was different, he saw through all that and though that I was beautiful. And he told me that, and he always makes me feel beautiful,” she said.

“I think it’s really important [to feel beautiful]. You lose your hair…you don’t feel sexy, you don’t feel pretty. He kisses my scars and tells me that’s what makes me strong, [he] made me believe that I was strong,” Waring said.

As time passed, the two moved into an apartment in Stamford together and fell further into love. On Valentine’s Day of 2009, Bernardo and Waring were strolling past the restaurant where they had first kissed. The store now closed, Waring peered through the darkened windows and pressed a finger to the glass.

“Remember that wall right there? That’s where we first kissed!” she said to Bernardo, who dropped his cell phone. When she turned from the window, he was on one knee, ring in hand.

“I’m pretty sure I kind of collapsed on the ground right with him,” Waring said. She said yes.

Two years after the proposal, Waring was watching a recruitment video at a Relay for Life preliminary event in early February, 2011. The video, which was made to inspire participants to volunteer and raise donations, sent a ripple of emotion through her, gave her gooseflesh. Also at the event were some of her ninth-grade students, whom she had inspired to come. She looked over at one of them and was overcome with feeling, and she knew that she should be married at the 2011 Relay for Life—something which a friend and volunteer had suggested her to do before, but she had written off as “theatrical” and “crazy.” 

She went to check with Bernardo that night and he agreed to it. And now, three-and-a-half months later, they are set to be married at 8 p.m. amid .

“It came full circle,” said Waring. “[The Relay] symbolizes our entire connection and our relationship.” 

Now, Waring estimates that she brings in $20,000 a year to the Relay for Life through fundraising efforts. She has made such an impact on some of her students that a few of them come back to do late-night improv comedy during the Relay.

It will be a busy day for Waring, and Bernardo, but Waring isn’t daunted by all the media attention.

“I’m proud to share my story, I want to share my story,” she said.

“I was given this story as a second chance. If this is what my calling is, this is what it is,” said Waring.

The Relay for Life extends from Friday at 3 p.m. through Saturday. Visit their website to donate.