Diagnosed with cancer, this Hamilton man didn't expect to live past 55. The solar eclipse will mark his 60th

On the day of the total solar eclipse, Eric Seidlitz will not only experience the celestial event of a lifetime, but also a birthday he thought he'd never live to see.

A former cancer researcher-turned-teaching professor at Hamilton's McMaster University, Seidlitz, who turns 60 on Monday, said he received a grim diagnosis in the fall of 2019. 

A tumour was growing in his neck and spreading quickly, doctors told him and his wife Wendy. Rare and lethal, the Stage 4B anaplastic thyroid cancer was expected to kill Seidlitz within months, even after he underwent surgery and a round of treatment.

"If you get this kind of diagnosis, you're dangling and you don't know what to do," Seidlitz said, sitting across from Wendy, a registered nurse, in their Hamilton living room last month. 

Seidlitz — self-described as practical, calm and "a little weird" — began planning his own death. 

He selected the hospice where he'd spend his final days, made a playlist for his funeral and found meaningful ways to say goodbye to family, including his two sons, friends, students and colleagues. 

He and Wendy cried together and celebrated life together. They travelled to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in February 2020 — weeks before the pandemic triggered global lockdowns.

They began the process of setting up a scholarship at McMaster in Seidlitz's name. His elderly parents flew in from Manitoba for a final goodbye.

Then, they waited for the end. And waited.

But by April 2020, to his doctors' amazement, the single round of chemotherapy and radiation he received had destroyed the cancer, Seidlitz said. He was inexplicably in remission.

"I call him my unicorn," said Wendy fondly.

They're throwing a party to mark his milestone 60th birthday on Monday — the same day as the total solar eclipse.

"All birthdays are good because I wasn't supposed to see 56, nevermind 60," he said. "The fact it coincides with the eclipse? I cannot pass that up." 

As the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, they'll watch from their front lawn, alongside many of the same friends and family who Seidlitz said goodbye to in 2020.