Heartbreaking:

How Patrick Swayze reacted to his death sentence

Patrick Swayze

(Bild: Fryderyk Gabowicz / dpa Picture Alliance / picturedesk.com)

He became world-famous with roles in cult films such as "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost - Message from Sam". In September 2009, Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer at the age of just 57. After 15 years, his widow Lisa Niemi Swayze is now speaking for the first time about the darkest day of her life, when her husband received the terrible diagnosis.

In the "Amy and TJ" podcast, she revealed Patrick's first, heartbreaking reaction: "He turned to me and said: 'I'm a dead man!"

Love at first sight
The Swayzes' love story is reminiscent of the love story in "Dirty Dancing". Lisa was 15 when she met the then 19-year-old Patrick at his mother's ballet school in Texas. It was love at first sight, as Swayze revealed to People magazine in 1984: "She was unlike any girl I'd ever met. She was like a rare flower, but she quickly drove my macho attitude out of me." After the wedding in 1975, the marriage was one of the happiest in Hollywood. For Swayze, Lisa was not only the perfect creative partner, "she also helped me to break my self-destructive tendencies - without her I would be dead."

Lisa was only 15 years old when she met Swayze.

(Bild: www.photopress.at)

Incurable tumor
But even Lisa's deep love was no match for the incurable tumor. She knew about the fatal diagnosis before Patrick in January 2008 because he had not yet woken up from the general anesthetic after his endoscopy. The attending doctor then gave the star the bad news and did not give him much hope of survival. Niemi: "He said that we would fight the cancer as aggressively as possible, but that they should take care of everything important in their lives sooner rather than later. It's hard to hear something like that!"

A nightmarish 21 months
The couple then tried everything - from various treatment methods to an experimental clinical trial with a test drug - to force a cure. To no avail.

According to Niemi, the 21 months leading up to her husband's death in September 2009 became a never-ending nightmare: "We tried to be optimists. We always hoped for a miracle after all the setbacks."

Only cried in front of him once
She tried to be strong for the love of her life, but she didn't always succeed. To this day, one particularly traumatic moment remains etched in her soul. A few weeks before Patrick's death, she took him for a walk across the grounds of their ranch in New Mexico: "It was a beautiful day and he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said: 'I want to live'. Then it burst out of me and I really scared him. It was the first and last time I cried in front of him."