It seemed like the message should have been going the other way over the Atlantic --an emergency communication saying that her soldier/fiance overseas might not have very long left to live.

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette
	Stacey Moskal asks her new husband, Dan Parsons, to "move closer to me, we're married now," as they get ready for their official wedding portrait.

But during a week when soldiers were killed in frightening numbers in Iraq, the communication went from Pittsburgh to the Middle East, sent by a would-be bride in the battle of her life.

It brought Dan Parsons, 21, of Monroeville, home for a two-week leave from the U.S. Army so that he could marry his fiancee, Stacey Moskal, a bubbly 22-year-old with terminal cancer.

And so on Sept. 11, when many people mourned an anniversary of another kind, the couple was married among family and friends at the New Hope Presbyterian Church in Monroeville.

The circumstances could hardly have been more telling: The groom, back from Iraq for two short weeks, getting married on the observance of the event that sent him overseas. The bride, a girl who has loved to style and shape hair her whole life, wearing a bandanna to cover her lack of it during her wedding. And a minister, urging the audience to trust in God, as his son the soldier stood before him to marry a woman who has battled Job-like circumstances and the wrath of an undiagnosable disease.

"Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds," said the Rev. Scott Parsons, the groom's father, a former pastor of New Hope who now lives with his family in Muncie, Ind., as he struggled to hold back his tears while reading from the book of James.

"In the days ahead ... you must believe and not doubt."

If ever a couple had reasons to doubt, or to be furiously angry or frustrated beyond words, Moskal and Parsons do.

Moskal, of Penn Hills, was first diagnosed with cancer in May 2001 at age 18. She had surgery to remove a baseball-sized tumor from her lung but was re-diagnosed in May 2002. After extensive chemotherapy, it seemed that the cancer was in remission.

But in March 2004, she found out that the cancer had once again returned. She has traveled to renowned cancer centers like the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas and sent scans of her lungs around the world, but doctors cannot determine what kind of cancer she has or how to battle it.

Throughout Moskal's struggles, she and Parsons have been apart while he served both in training and in Iraq. The couple had been friends for years and started dating in the summer of 2002, after Parsons surprised Moskal by visiting her on a break from training camp -- catching her without a bandanna to cover her head, or makeup to draw eyebrows on her face and hide the bags under her eyes.

Since then, they have faced terrifying obstacles, at times thousands of miles apart. But this time, with few treatments left to try and an experimental regimen at the Hillman Cancer Center beginning soon, Moskal wanted Parsons to be with her, helping to fight her elusive and threatening cancer rather than enemies overseas.

She wasn't sure how to bring him home until her social worker at Children's Hospital, Sue Makoroff, contacted the Red Cross of Southwestern Pennsylvania. The Red Cross used the Armed Forces Emergency Communications service to notify Parsons' commander that Moskal might not have more than 30 days left to live.

When they heard the news, soldiers in Parsons' Pittsburgh-based unit offered to volunteer their leaves and donate the time to him so that he could go home. His battalion commander gave Parsons permission to return to Pittsburgh permanently and take care of Moskal, but the brigade commander, who has the final word, would not allow it, probably, Parsons speculated, because the couple was not married.

Instead, Parsons was given two weeks leave to come home.

He called Moskal Sept. 4 to surprise her with the news, worried about the sobering message of the cable but excited to be with his fiancee. His phone call started a flurry of preparations as both families rushed to prepare for a wedding of a lifetime in one short week.

Parsons is a member of the 107th Field Artillery, a Pennsylvania National Guard unit that has seen its share of fire fights. He is now serving as a military policeman in Iraqi prisons. Two members of the 107th died on May 17 near Fallujah. Parsons has already been wounded, although he tries to hide the details from Moskal.

"We are both in life-threatening situations," he said on the phone while running last-minute errands before the wedding. And though it is difficult not knowing when and if they'll see each other again, Parsons said, "We lean on each other."

Moskal is thrilled to have her husband beside her just 10 days after learning that her most recent chemotherapy treatments weren't working.

"As long as I spend my last days with him, that's all that matters," she said, pulling her strapless white dress up onto her slender body to hide the scars from surgeries. "My emotional state is so much better when he's with me."

The newlyweds will head to Niagara Falls for a three-day honeymoon before Parsons returns to Iraq. Although he hopes to be reassigned to Pittsburgh and spend his first month as a husband helping his wife through her treatments, Parsons must first return to Iraq and apply for a compassionate reassignment. Yet the couple still feels lucky.

Moskal talks about how she feels sorry for children with cancer she sees at the hospital, who may never have the chance that she did to fall in love and get married. "I've got a good 22 years in," she said.

"Stacey's by far the greatest thing that's ever happened to him," said Parsons' older brother Mike, who served as the best man.

"These two have dealt with more than most people do in a lifetime," said Moskal's close friend and maid of honor Tiffany Casarcia, who, with her husband, is paying for the newlyweds' honeymoon.

As Moskal, radiant in white but exhausted from the day's emotions, stared happily into Parsons' eyes, Casarcia said: "People should take a look at their own lives and realize they don't have it so bad."