Once Upon a Wish (19 page)

Brittney’s Wish trip was finally complete, and when they got home, T’Ann knew their lives would be drastically different. Brittney would go to high school, chase after boys, and eventually head off to Harvard, the university of her dreams.

She would volunteer at children’s hospitals, completing her goal of helping other kids who were going through what she had survived. To make sure she was still on the right track, Brittney
went in for an MRI every other month to check that the tumor was still gone. Each time, the results came back clean, so her checkups changed to once every three months. After seven months, she went in for her routine MRI, crawled into the machine with the ease of an expert, and waited.

She was tense and her palms were sweaty and still. Deep down, she knew what the MRI would find but prayed she was wrong. She prayed that the strange feelings she had inside of her for the past few weeks were normal. As she lay there, T’Ann could see the doctor through a glass window monitoring the scan.

She stared as a doctor she didn’t recognize entered the small room, hunched down next to the other doctor, and pointed curiously at the screen. When a third doctor entered, took a step back as he looked at the monitor, and exchanged concerned glances with the other two, T’Ann squeezed Brittney’s hand gently, and she knew the answer.

The tumor was back. It had to be. Why else would they look so concerned?

“We’ll have the results in a few days and we’ll call you as soon as they come in,” said one of the doctors to T’Ann. She stared into his eyes with patient fury and said, “C’mon, sweetie, let’s go home.”

Their walk to the car was silent until T’Ann could no longer hold back her tears. She cried and Brittney calmly took her hand.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said, playing the role T’Ann knew she should be playing.

“I think it’s back, Britt,” she sobbed, and her daughter squeezed her hand.

“Mom, I’m sure everything will be fine,” Brittney said, the words flowing from her mouth going completely against the grain of her gut.

   9   

Over the next few days, life continued as normal except for the thoughts that silently consumed them both.

Maybe the doctors thought they saw something that wasn’t really there. Maybe it’s because it was a new machine.

While her mother dwelled over these thoughts, Brittney comforted herself with similar “maybes.”

Maybe I’m wrong and everything’s fine. Maybe the strange feelings I’ve been having are nothing more than my imagination.

When T’Ann received a phone call at work a few days later, every
maybe
was proven wrong. The tumor was back, just as they both knew deep down that it was. T’Ann left immediately and sped home, tears dripping into her lap.

How am I ever going to tell Brittney? Why her? What did we do to deserve this?

Her thoughts turned to screams, and her fists pounded furiously into the steering wheel until she plowed into their driveway. She opened the front door of the house, looked at Brittney, and didn’t even need to say a word.

“It’s back, isn’t it?” Brittney said, before bawling until she had no more tears left to cry.

“You know, baby, it’s three inches this time, not eleven. We can beat it again,” T’Ann said with her hands on Brittney’s cheeks.

They were hoping that the doctors would be just as optimistic, and they were.

“I think I’ll be able to get the rest of the tumor,” Dr. Meltzer said when they met with him after hearing the MRI results from Dr. Kadota. “This surgery will be easier than the last, and I think I can get it all.”

It may have been easier physically, but for Brittney, news of
another surgery was her breaking point. She kept herself together during the days leading up to the surgery, but when the day came, she lost it. As Brittney and T’Ann followed Dr. Meltzer into a cold, bright pre-operating room, she broke down and begged her mom to take her home.

“Please, Mom, don’t make me do this!” she cried hysterically, breaking her mom’s heart. She grabbed T’Ann’s hands with hers and pulled with all her strength. “I don’t want another surgery! I want to go home!”

Her face was red with panic and her cheeks, stained with tears.

“I know, baby, but I can’t take you home. You’re so strong and this will save you,” T’Ann managed between cries. And then she spoke words that she knew existed only because of her daughter’s strength and undying optimism. “You’re going to be just fine.”

Channeling Brittney’s voice, mirroring her fearless spirit, the words poured from T’Ann’s mouth so smoothly, with such confidence. Somewhere buried deep inside of her were strength and hope she could not let go of. Brittney had made it this far, and she was going to survive this, too.

When hiccups separated her cries and her arms frantically grabbed at anything they could reach, a nurse quickly poked Brittney with a needle and within twenty minutes, she was out.

T’Ann’s head pounded and her face hurt from crying, but her tears didn’t stop for the next eight hours. When Dr. Meltzer walked into the waiting room after what seemed like days, T’Ann jumped from her chair and raced toward him, stopping inches from where he stood with a pleading look.

“Is she okay?” she asked quickly, hoping for an immediate answer.

“The surgery was a success,” he said, then paused. “However, I wasn’t able to get the whole thing. The tumor was so entwined that I could remove only half of it.”

“So, what do we do next?” T’Ann demanded, knowing that the inch-and-a-half-long tumor left inside her daughter was still cancerous.

“You’ll have to meet with Dr. Kadota. I can tell you, though, that Brittney’s recovery will be much easier this time than last.”

Brittney had already received the strongest amount of chemo and the highest dosage of radiation one person can withstand in a lifetime, so the way Dr. Kadota explained it was that they had two options.

“Take her home and give her the best life you can, or put her on an experimental medication that will not shrink the tumor but hinder its growth.”

After finding out that side effects of the medication were very minimal, that Brittney wouldn’t feel sick, and that she could live a normal life if it worked, she began taking it right away.

Follow-up MRI’s showed that the tumor was indeed maintaining its size but not growing, and Brittney, once again, had her life ahead of her. She knew she would have to take the medicine forever, but the tumor was finally at bay.

At the age of sixteen, T’Ann knew that returning to school after more than three years would be tough for Brittney, but she had studied hard and stayed caught up with her classmates, and T’Ann knew she would be just fine. They had signed her up for the eleventh grade, and Brittney got her driver’s license and a job working as a receptionist in a real estate office. Her hair was getting longer, and every checkup still showed that the tumor had not grown. A year of normal life passed before the day Brittney told T’Ann that her arm felt funny.

Felt funny.

What does that mean?
was T’Ann’s only thought before calling Dr. Kadota to schedule an appointment.

“We can’t get you in until …”

“You’ll get me in today,” T’Ann said, and the receptionist knew she was bringing her daughter in, appointment or not, so she found a time slot to squeeze them in.

“We’ll need to do an MRI to see what’s going on, so why don’t you come back in two days,” Dr. Kadota said.

Knowing there were no answers he could give until he had the results, T’Ann and Brittney waited two days, came back for the MRI, and waited another couple of days for the answer.

   10   

“Oh, God, no!”
T’Ann screamed in her head after hanging up the phone call with Dr. Kadota a couple of days later. The tumor had grown and was continuing at a rapid rate. T’Ann’s heart raced and ideas thundered through her mind.
If I don’t find somebody to help my little girl, she’s going to die.

Until that point, there was always something else to try. Always a plan B. But the experimental medication was their last hope, and T’Ann was desperate.

“Let’s do surgery again and cut it out,” she pleaded with Dr. Kadota.

“We can’t do that,” he responded, looking scared and hopeless. “We would run into too much scar tissue. In addition to that, the tumor is too close to the brain stem. I’ve already spoken to Dr. Meltzer and he agrees. The tumor is inoperable.”

He told her, in so many words, that her options were watching her daughter slowly turn into a vegetable or die a painful death. Neither was acceptable, so T’Ann made an appointment with Dr. Meltzer to hear the words from him.

“I’m sorry, T’Ann,” he said. “If I do surgery to remove the tumor, I’m taking it all out.”

He knew as well as she did that doing so would either kill or paralyze Brittney, and T’Ann was not going to let either happen. If it was time for her daughter to go, she would be as comfortable and safe as possible until her last breath.

“The only other option is to put her on another experimental drug, but Brittney has been on the most powerful drug possible for her tumor, and in my opinion, nothing else will work,” he said with a kind but matter-of-fact tone. “The risk is not knowing the side effects of other drugs, and they could make her even more ill than she already is.”

T’Ann couldn’t stand to hear another word. He was offering nothing, and her mind was frantically racing. She felt dizzy and weak but determined, so she grabbed the MRI results, plunged through the front door of his office, and rushed them to another neurosurgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) for a second opinion. She met with a doctor who said four beautiful words.

“I can get it,” he said. “I can save your daughter’s life.”

Thinking she would be fine until he returned, the doctor went on a ten-day vacation he’d had planned for months, and T’Ann took Brittney home. The doctor never imagined how rapidly her health would deteriorate in the short time that he was gone—within days, Brittney lost all feeling in her arms and legs until they were so weak they could no longer carry her—and by the time he returned, it was too late to help her. She had quickly become too weak, too sick, for medicines, for surgeries, for anything else.