Images 22

Chapter 22

Taylor just stared at the doctor for a minute then at the porter who came with the wheelchair for him. He actually hung his head a bit with a sigh. He looked like he was heading to the gallows as he got up and moved from where he was to the wheelchair. I smile at him, Then look at Dr. Clark “Do you have a list of what he needs and where?”
The Doctor smiles. “Just give me a second Jenna.” He writes a note with where to go and what he’s getting and gives then to me along with a small stack of papers. I smile at the porter and lean over and kiss Taylor on the mouth kind of upside down. “Hey Winters its okay, I’ve got you.” There’s some more kissing. Then I kiss the top of his head on the way back up and hug him with my right arm. “I’m here Tay; I’m with you the entire way.”
I can feel the tension drop a little and I grab the handles of the wheelchair and head off for the first stop at the lab. I goof with the wheelchair a bit. I make some car sounds, and corner squealing sounds. Taylor leans his head back to stare at me. “That’s really bad you know, are you sure you used to be…you know.” I smile at him. “Yeah, well Jaimes was never really allowed to play with cars too much, because it was all about the sports baseball, hockey then football. Even then it was the money sports.” He looks at me smiling “Well I think it’s cool even if you’re doing this for me even if you’re doing it in a dorky kind of way…I love you for this Jen.”
“Dorky! Hey I was never a dork.”
“Yeah well you’re so bad at this; I guess you never were a boy.”
“Not really, thank you baby.” I lean over and kiss him again. “If we keep doing this we’re going to be late.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Taylor…”
“Okay, okay I give.” He raises his hands in surrender.

It takes a few more minutes to get there and a few more to get him registered as per the orders on the sheets we were given. Even with Taylor getting the tests for something serious we still have to wait awhile.

It’s actually okay as we make out. I sit on his lap and we spend a lot of time kissing and making out. Yeah we get a lot of stares and a few glares from people who don’t think we should be doing this in a public place like a hospital; even security comes over twice to ask us to stop. I beam at them and say. “We’re sorry it’s just we’ve just got married.”
When? Leads to “Yesterday.”
Why aren’t you on your honeymoon? Leads to “Oncology tests.”
You know, people can really not suck sometimes. Taylor’s pissy about people knowing our business but some kissing fixes that. And the people around us that now know become our sort of trouble-shooters because they’d better not bother that sweet young newly-wed couple fighting cancer. I know it sounds like I’m using the situation and I guess we are a bit but it’s just people actually trying to be decent.

The lab is a bit of a trial and they took twelve tubes of blood from him. It’s something he’s really afraid of. All of this stuff. He get’s this kind of scared sick look when they tied off the rubbed cord thing and he couldn’t look at the arm they were taking blood from. I hold and squeeze his other hand and stare into those upset blue-gray eyes of his.
“It’ll be okay Tay.”
“Yeah…I just hate this, I …”
I reach over and stroke his cheek with my hand. “I love you for this Taylor; you couldn’t have given me a better wedding present.”
“It’s nothing, Jen all of this might come out badly.”
“This isn’t nothing Tay, it’ll never be nothing because of how you feel about this place, about what you went through when your parents died, when you were here before. I’ve got my own PTSD stuff from my childhood Taylor and this, this is a huge stresser for you…But you are so amazing, that you came here for us…for me. Taylor Winters the Hope and love you’ve given me is something I’ll treasure forever and it’s the best present that I could ever get…”

I kiss him and there’s a few tears on my cheeks and there’s more than one misty lab tech in the room. There’s a sudden flash of relief on his face when the weepy looking tech says we’re all done and there’s this smile on his face and in his eyes. “God Jen, thank you…It’s never been this easy before… going through this.” I kiss him back, feeling…stronger? “C’mon handsome we’re far from done.” He nods and I head out wheeling him to medical imaging. I feel empowered not strong, you know when you’ve been there or done that thing for the person you love most in the world and it just runs through you after that. Affirming who you are, in my case who and what I am. I know in my heart I was meant for this, for Taylor.

I’ll take real good care of our boy Charlotte. I even kiss the ring as we ride the elevator.

Medical Imaging was harder than I thought it would be.

He was left alone for long periods of time fully packaged on the back board and straps as a young kid when his folks died. Alone, no friends or family and scared and injured and just a kid. Again and again and again when he was in here when the found out he was sick.

I lose him a few times with him flashing back and zoning out in the waiting area…I just stay close, stay there when he’s not really there and hold his hand. He squeezes mine so hard it hurts. I love him more than the pain.

He looks at me with tears, once and at my hand and there’s this almost little boy voice there. “….mum?” I kiss his cheek. “No baby, she died but she’s here with us.” I run his hand over the ring. “Charlotte asked me to be here for you. She wanted me to take care of you.” Oh…The tears building up and spilling out of his eyes look he gives me just is so heartbreaking. “She did?” My voice is all tight and I nod. “Yeah baby, she did.” He breaks on me there and hugs me like I’m the only thing keeping the bad stuff away. He sobs; I don’t think Tay’s ever really, really been able to cry over it all. I hold him and rock him and just kind of Whisper sing to him “In the Arms of an Angel” in his ear holding his head to my breasts and letting him cling to me and my hand. It takes me a good hour to get him out of it and ready for the CAT scan, and then his MRI. It took three times to get him to drink the glow in the scan stuff he did manage to gag it down though.
Apparently the flavors really don’t help that much.

It wasn’t much better in the machines either. They weren’t going to let me stay with him in the room with him as he went through the machine. Taylor was just too keyed up and too scared to go it alone. They say time heals all wounds but sometimes if you really hate something all it does is let you build on your fears. I would have crawled in with him if I could have but not really advisable with the kinds of tests they were doing. Instead I talked him through them. The CAT scan was hard but he had to go all the way inside the MRI machine. Taylor was obviously freaked, the only way I could be close to him was down at the bottom. So I took off his sneakers and his socks and to distract him. “Jen? What are you doing?”
“Distracting you honey…why?” I’m trying to sound innocent and sweet.
“So what does taking the stuff off of my feet have to do with distracting me, you know I’m not ticklish?”
“I know you’re not ticklish honey that’s why I’m doing something else.”
I reach into my purse, and take out my ruby red pink grapefruit color of nail polish.
The med-tech started to giggle.
“Jennnn, why are they giggling?”
“It’s a good idea Tay, it’ll keep you distracted.”
“Why, what are you doing? What do I smell?”
“Nail polish.”
“What, Why?”
“I’m going to paint your toenails.” I give the tech the nod.
“What! Whaddayamean you’re gonna paint my toe nails!”
*Med-Tech, “Please don’t move sir.”
“She’s painting my toenails!”
* “Please sir don’t move, the scan needs to take time and you can’t move around or it’ll blur the pictures.”
“Yes, Taylor sit still, or we’ll be in here longer.”
That shut him up.
Sort of.
He did keep up a steady diatribe about Hospitals and how they treat patients and not stopping me from committing spousal abuse. He goes on for quite a bit and I’m more than amused at the whole thing and even how it got a little worse when I started to blow on his toes to dry the little piggies.

Yes, I painted his toe nails but it worked, but he was a little sore with me as the people in medical imaging got to see me give him a set of pretty pink toe nails. He didn’t move in the machine but he was too pissed at me to freak out any.

I got him through it however and that’s all that matters to me. He’s back in the wheelchair and touching the dried paint frowning. “I’m gonna get you back for this you know?”
I kiss him. “Hey, it got you through it didn’t it?”
“Yeah…”
“You were having kind of a meltdown hon; I did whatever it took to get you through that in one piece.”
“Yeah, you did.” He pulls me down into a kiss and gives me this smile that’s really worth it even if he’s miffed at me. “Thank you Jenna, I really couldn’t have done that without you…You saved me in there. I’ve…I’ve…I’ve never had this before.”
I kiss him back. “I signed on for this remember, for better for worse, in sickness and in health.” Another long kiss. We stop and just kind of nuzzle each other and rest forehead to forehead staring in each others eyes. There’s that wet look of tears in his after a few minutes. “God Jenna I’m so lucky to have you, so lucky…” I kiss him again and get the stuff we need to take back to Dr. Clark’s office and start pushing him.
“You just remember that when it’s my turn and you have to help me with my dilation.”
“Your what?”
I laugh all the way to the elevator and even pop a wheelie for him as we get inside.
“Look it up Bucko it’s got to do with your wife’s medical condition.”
Taylor began to look it up as we went on the internet through his phone. I reach over his shoulder and start taking him to one of the GRS sites that I’ve been looking at with there being surgical videos and stuff for all the stages. He’s actually more interested than I though he’d be. He stares at the befores and afters and looks at me. I can’t help it and I kind of slip into that quiet introspective me when I’m kind of day dreaming just what it’ll be like. He pulls me onto his lap a bit more.
“You really need this don’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m on my way and this just kind of drives it home the need for me to really be as close to me, the way I know I should’ve been born as I can. That’s as close to as I’m ever going to get.”
“No…you were born this way, your souls has always been the girl I love.”
I let out a sigh.
“What?” he’s looking at me.
“It’s that whole I’ve always been this on the inside thing, I just feel like it’s a cliché.”
“Jenn, aren’t clichés, clichés for a reason?”
“Yeah but it just kind of seems that a lot of people think my life’s going to magically fixed because I had the surgery. It’s just the tip of a very scary iceberg.”
“Scary?”
“Taylor, not counting the really bad kill me kind of stuff that might happen with the operation there’s the chance of stuff not going right with things down there. It can happen; then there’s recovery and the rest of my life. I don’t have a license, I quit school and have crap for an education and that really bothers me.”
“Jen, look hon. Everything’s going to okay down there. Your dad’s connected and I’m sure he’s going to get the best doctor that money can get for your GRS. It’s going to be okay Jenna.”
“I know it’s just kind of scary.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah, life’s gotta be scary sometimes in my book. If there’s nothing to be afraid of how are we gonna get through stuff when bad things happen?”
“There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, a big difference. It’s like when you were thinking about taking those pills. That was a scary moment even when I first met you it was kind of scary. But the stuff with you getting hit by that car…you never meant, to get hit by the car you were just trying to get away from me…That was a bad…really bad…”

I hug him a little with myself getting the shivers from the memories this kind of drug up. I kind of can feel the weight of the emotions from the stuff that’s happened in my life, I get it though. Taylor get’s me too. He wraps those strong arms of his around me and hugs me tightly. I love that, I needed this. Him holding me.

This is one of the things that really hits me about this being real. It’s just stuff like this. The soaking into him and his scent, his body heat. That there’s that thing we’ve got where this is us. I’m sinking more into the comfort of it that goes heart deep. I need to love, but I need to be loved, cared for. At the same time I can feel Taylor’s arms tightening around me holding me tighter, I can feel this release in his chest. Like he get’s to let go of something as he holds me. I love that just holding me does that for him. It happens for me too. There’s something spiritually restful when I can lean against his back my breasts pressed into his muscular back and just hold him in my own way. I can feel when I get to do that my heart is like finally….

We’re like that just kind of snuggled into each other for awhile just kissing. The receptionist comes over to us. “Mr. and Mrs. Winters, Dr. Clark will see you now.” She beckons us to follow her with the chart and we follow her to an exam room. Dr. Clark’s there with another woman in a lab coat. There’s screen things on the walls where there used to be the things they’d pin the x-rays to. I guess it’s all computers these days right. I can’t remember if my x-rays from the accident were on these things. Dr. Clark smiles and its right there in his eyes too. “Taylor, Jenna I’d like to introduce you to Sylvia Hendricks the specialist that’s come in on your case Taylor.”

We end up shaking hands and I notice her giving me this definite once over. No she’s still checking me out. She’s definitely noticed, I mean I pass. But I started earlier than most but there’s still I guess things that’ll really never “mesh” with me being a girl. My butt, my hips are too small and my arms are a bit too long and my shoulders are too big. I know these things; I can’t really change too much about them. But I’m happy; I’m a happily married woman now. There’s a ton of GG’s that’ll never have what I’ve been blessed with. Instead of looking down or away or avoiding her looking I meet her eyes. I shake her hand and smile at her. She actually smiles back. She seems nice though, I can see a bit of the shy nerdy girl, way too many freckles to be one of the beautiful people, glasses. It’s just that quick I guess, we sized each other up and we’re good with each other. She checks out my rings as we shake. “That’s a lovely ring, it looks antique.”
“It is, it was his grandmother’s then his mother’s now mine.”
“You’re a lucky girl.”
I smile at her but then just can’t help giving Taylor a loving glance. “More than I deserve sometimes I think.”
She looks at me. There’s this mixture of seriousness with this heart on her sleeve in that look. “Right…Well we have what we think is good news.”
She moves away from us to in front of the screens.
“Alright we knew you’re suffering under an Oligodendroglioma, it’s a slow moving malignancy that luckily is chemosenstive.”
I look at both the doctors. “Uhm I don’t know what that is.”
She nods. “Taylor’s cancer is a branching or tree like cancer that moves very slowly but once it finds a place that it likes it develops into a mass that sends out runners and if they find a susceptible zone of cells then they’ll start a cancer cluster of their own.”
I nod. “So it’s slow moving until it finds a new home.”
“Yes, Taylor’s previous treatments had done the cancer enough damage that he had gone into remission, this cancer responds well to chemo therapy and his tissues remained toxic enough in the treated areas that it didn’t take regrown in those areas.”
Taylor looks at her. “So that means?”
“That the cancers cells had to find a new way around the areas that we had treated, which is why you’ve had different symptoms this time as the cancer is hurting different parts of your brain this time.”
“So how bad is it this time?” I ask them.
Dr. Clark responds. “It’s actually better, this time. There’s less of a mass meaning it hasn’t spread as far as it could have and we’ve a huge amount more of treatment options available to if now then we did back then.”
He still looks positive. That’s a good sign.
Dr. Hendricks is smiling too. “We’re testing out a new chemotherapy technique, and I think it might work well for Taylor, the Japanese have had good results with their efforts at this.”
Taylor leans against me with a shiver. I give him my hand to squeeze lacing my fingers in with his. He manages a hard swallow then asks. “What is it?”
“Venom chemotherapy.”
We both give her these huh looks.
“Certain toxic animals and insects and arachnids are very toxic. There are these ones that like a rattlesnake have a toxin that has a necrotic effect on tissues. We’ve discovered a way that we can harvest a venom derivative that we can feed by using a micro needle and delivering the toxin to the cancer cells directly in very tiny doses that will kill the cancer while we protect the good cells with a ready anti-toxin.”
I say. “That sounds dangerous.”
She nods. “Any surgery is dangerous but we’ll be using reproductive needles used for invitro procedures and we’ll be doing it under really advanced optics, it should work very well if we are very careful with the venom and target only the cancerous cells and be ready with the anti-venom.”
“But even if it does work what’ll be the chances of a relapse.”
“We’re unsure but the CAT and MRI’s from the Japanese tests are very promising. But we’ll have to keep Taylor coming back for further testing.”
“And the dead cancer cells?”
“We’ll strip out what we can using actual surgery but with much smaller implements than we had before and we’ll laser some of the rest using a fiber optic laser.”
“What’ll be the side effects?”
“He’ll have some varying but temporary side effect much like the symptoms he has now but more long term until his brain starts to regenerate the cells”
“Regenerate?”
“We’re going to administer a stem cell treatment.”
“I thought that was experimental?”
“It is here in North America, more than other parts of the world. This is a research hospital so we have the green light on procedures such as this. Do either of you have any moral objections to us using this?”
“I don’t…Tay?”
He closed his eyes. His voice sounds strained, like he’s having one of his headaches coming on. “No, not if it gives me a better shot, not if I get to have as much time as I can have with my Jenna.”
I hold him and Dr. Clark comes over and looks him over. “Migraine?”
Taylor nods.
“One to ten?”
“Fifty-three.” He says through clenched teeth.
“Alright, let’s move you a bit.” Him and I move Taylor over to one of the stretchers and get him to lie down and I crawl onto the bed just above him and pull his head onto my lap and I gently brush his hairs out of the way and stroke his temples with the tips of my fingers. The doctor moves away and he turns off the lights and the screens. “We’ll leave you two here for awhile and I can see a few other cases and check in on you later.”

They leave and they close the door mostly shut.

I just keep doing what I’m doing. It’s all I can do. God, I’d so take his pain as my own if I could. Taylor rolls over and cries and moans in pain and buries his face into stomach and starts to cry because it hurts him that much. I hate, that he’s going through this. I hate feeling like I’m not doing enough. I know I can’t just take the pain magically away but just like everyone else who lives with someone they love who’s hurting and suffering. All we can do is hold them, be there for them and sooth them. I close my eyes and just quietly pray for him, ask, to let me take some of it…Please God?

He’s sleeping for awhile when Dr. Clark comes in. “Hey…good he’s sleeping…Did he mention if he’s willing to go ahead with things.”
“Yes he is.” came out muffled from my abdomen. I can’t help but smile.
“Good, Dr. Hendricks will be ready as soon as next week.”
“That soon?” I ask.
“There’s not a big line up for this…yet.”
“Next Monday then.” Taylor says rolling over to look at him.
“Looks like but we’ll want you to stay here for awhile to keep you monitored awhile for adverse effects.”
Taylor looks like he wants to object, but he looks up at me. I’m looking down at him and he reaches up so gently and touches my face and I never even noticed I was crying until I saw a tear run down his finger.
“Yeah, okay Doc, anything, I’ll do anything you want me too…I’m not giving up on her…ever.”
I lean down and kiss him and my tears are dripping on his face even though the smile is one of somebody so…so loved.
“Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.”