Waiting

Published: August 14, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

I had surgery on Monday morning to remove the larger of two hard, swollen lymph nodes on the back of my neck. For more than a month since discovering the second node, I’ve over-Googled and WebMD’ed “lymph nodes” and “Hodgkin’s disease” and “lymphoma” and everything in between. By the time I arrived at the hospital before sunrise on Monday, a part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to get the results of the biopsy after the surgery.

My surgeon’s office left a voicemail on my cell phone sometime this morning. When I returned the call, the receptionist put me on hold for what seemed like an eternity; finally, the nurse came on the line and wasted no time letting me know that the node was benign. In the minute or so that I’d been on hold, I think I actually convinced myself that I had cancer, so when I heard a voice telling me otherwise, I wasn’t even quite sure how to react. Quite frankly, I’d spent so much time imagining bad news that I didn’t know how to handle good news, at least not right away. After the words had had sufficient time to sink in (all while the angel on the other end of the line stayed put), I rediscovered the reality of my own essentially good health and hurriedly asked mundane questions like, “When can I play soccer again?” and “Can I take normal showers yet?” And the ghost of cancer drifted out of my life before we ever really got to know each other, just like that.
These past several weeks not withstanding, and especially if you eliminate stress as an indicator, I tend to take my own health much for granted. I assume that tomorrow, I will still be able to run and kick a ball and see the world all around me and hear its many voices and breathe its air and find my own words. But I cannot take a single day for granted.
My sister cannot take her tomorrows for granted, and unless I can learn to appreciate a world that does not include her, I won’t be able to rest.
Taylor has Batten disease.
If that phone call today had been different? If they had asked me to come in to discuss the results rather than receiving them over the phone (what fun that drive to Matthews would have been)? What then? Well, I’ve already said how unsettling the thought of being diagnosed with cancer was to me – as it would be for anyone. But the truth is, even if that had been the case, I’d have been given options, at least. The wonders of medical science would have been waiting in the wings to receive me and give me the best shot decades of research could buy.
When T was diagnosed with Batten disease, we received instructions on how to seek out support for what would, no doubt, be a very difficult journey – a journey with a predetermined ending. If I took that ending for granted, I wouldn’t be posting right now.

The Journey and the Destination

Published: August 3, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

Yesterday morning, John and I packed up our hiking gear, dressed for a 10-mile-plus hike and drove 120 miles northeast of Charlotte to Pilot Mountain, NC We’re going hiking out west in October and could use a tune-up, took note of the beautiful weather forecast for the day and wanted to get a jump on the surgery I’m scheduled to have a week from tomorrow. There were a lot of reasons to go yesterday.

Just as John and I pulled around the bend of the drive leading into the park office lot on the mountain, his truck shuddered, all of the console lights came on, and the message board announced a transmission fault. We were eight hours from sunset two hours from home on a Saturday with a two-year-old truck that wasn’t fit to put back on the highway. So our 10-mile hike turned into a 10-minute stroll in the woods behind the office as we waited for help to arrive. A little after 1 p.m., we found ourselves scrunched together in the back seat of a tow truck with 266,000 miles on the odometer, the driver and his wife up front with a pack of Camel Lights and a Bojangles paper bag between them. We arrived at our dealership just over the South Carolina line by 4 and pulled a brand new truck off the dealer’s lot into our driveway a few minutes before 5. We traded in our mountain odyssey for a game of tennis on our neighborhood court and afterward were treated to dinner by his parents, who felt sorry for us. All in all, a less-than-wonderful but still halfway-salvaged day. As we unwound at the end of the night, we reminded each other that the drive up to Pilot Mountain, at least, had been fun. Our road trips always are; as John likes to say, “it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters most.”
I’ve had many people remark, phrased in all different ways, about how T’s diagnosis has changed me or how they think this fight into which I was thrust will make me stronger. How all my – our – efforts to help find an answer for Batten disease and save my sister can give me a fuller life. I’d call this road we’re on – this fight we’re fighting – a journey; I have before. I’ve marked each anniversary of T’s diagnosis on my blog for the past three years, and I do understand the path that we’re on, though some days, that path is more well lit than others. But unlike the day John and I spent together yesterday – a day characterized by disappointment and misfortune but not all bad by the time sunset rolled around – I’m not sure I’ll care so much for the larger journey if I can’t reach the desired destination. The destination is the cure; the rest is all icing. But what good is all that icing if you can’t eat the cake, too?

Grant Summaries are Online

Published: August 2, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

Summaries of research grants awarded by Taylor’s Tale and our funding partners (Hayden’s Batten Disease Foundation Inc. and the North American and Australian chapters of BDSRA) last month are now posted on our website. Click here to learn more!

There All Along

Published: July 25, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

Today marks the third anniversary of T’s Batten disease diagnosis.

My family escaped to the South Carolina coast for a few fleeting days this week. We had perfect weather, but the cotton ball-dotted blue sky and soft breeze couldn’t mask the changes that have marked the past several years. My brother, a college senior-to-be, is taller and more serious than he was last summer. The beachfront condo we’ve inhabited for one or, if we’re lucky, several weeks each year since I was 6 years old, is a little more tired; the sea spray and SPF that rode the wind to the eighth floor and settled as a thick film on the balcony’s sliding glass doors to be discovered the night we arrived inspired Windex and paper towels, not weathered charm. My little sister’s post-brain surgery hair is more chestnut than golden. Her eyes are unseeing.
Yesterday, as I soaked up the sun’s rays and the pages of my open book fluttered in the breeze, I drifted away and recalled summers spent lying in the surf as the waves washed over me, imagining that I was shipwrecked. When I returned to the present and opened my eyes, I saw my sister, standing upright as the waves crashed over only her ankles and feet; my sister is on a drug therapy that suppresses her immune system, making ocean water too dangerous for whole days spent tummy-down in the wet sand.

When I was T’s age, I used to stand on the very same beach and wonder how many grains of sand made up the vast expanse that stretched all the way to the horizon in either direction. It wasn’t until later that I understood just why counting all of them could never be possible.
I won’t ever know how many grains of sand make up the beach I’ve walked for more than twenty years or even a shovelful. I know that some things are not possible.
After I snapped out of my shipwrecked daydream, Mom, T, and I walked along the inlet that carves out a crescent swath in the sand within sight of our sea spray and SPF-caked balcony doors. For a reason unknown, I remarked that mole crabs, or sand fleas, seemed to have disappeared from the beach in recent years. I described the animal to T and how Stephen and I used to scoop handfuls of them out of the sand below the tide line. I described their smooth gray shells and squirming legs that searched desperately for sand to burrow into even as you held them up in the air. But to help T understand sand fleas, I really needed to have one.
Without a live model, the subject changed to the inlet’s transformation and the apparent struggle of the beach’s newest construction to sell units. Some time later, after we’d turned back for home, I looked down and spotted two minuscule pockets of churning sand. I bent over and scooped up a handful of doubtless thousands of grains of wet sand; there, in my palm, were two sand fleas.

The Fight for a Cure: Another Year of Groundbreaking Research

Published: July 19, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

Last night in St. Louis, Taylor’s Tale helped make it possible to award one-year grants to four talented research teams from the University of Texas Southwestern at Dallas (led by Sandra Hofmann, MD, PhD, whose work we’ve funded for the past two years), Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Missouri and the National Institutes of Health.

These projects will help us move closer to a cure for children with infantile NCL, the form of Batten disease from which Taylor suffers.
On behalf of Taylor’s Tale, I’d like to thank our funding partners in these endeavors: Hayden’s Batten Disease Foundation Inc. and the Batten Disease Support and Research Association (BDSRA) North American and Australian chapters.
I also want to thank all of our donors, who’ve given me the gift of hope and a very real belief in our ability to write the happy ending for which we’ve been desperately searching since July 24, 2006 – the day of T’s diagnosis. That day, my family cried in each other’s arms, but before the tears dried, we’d gathered the resolve to fight for a little girl who deserves nothing less. We couldn’t do it without you; love to you all.

Wake

Published: July 9, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

I headed to the office before sunrise Monday morning for a meeting. The roads were nearly empty, and even though I’d gotten less than five hours’ sleep, I felt mellow. It seemed a little early for the Coldplay CD in my stereo, so instead, I turned to the local classical station and let the notes of Brahms and Beethoven and Hadyn fill the quiet.

Somewhere between Park South and Selwyn, one particular piece my mom used to play floated over the speakers. I remember hiding on the hardwood stairs leading up to the second floor of my grandparents‘ house many nights after I was supposed to have been asleep and peering through the banister that bordered the living room as she played. My mom, a piano major in college, played beautifully. It’s nearly impossible for a child to remain totally soundless on stairs that aren’t carpeted, even in sock feet, but I was always spellbound.
It’s funny how music can spark the imagination, because as I navigated the roads leading to my office during and after that piece played on the radio, I remembered not only those nights on the stairs, but a whole rush of other memories of times past – of swinging so high the swing set shook and my toes seemed to touch the sky, or those afternoons and evenings I spent stretched out on the floor of my open-air tree house with a spiral notebook, a pen, and the breeze. The just-finished Fourth of July weekend, of course, sparked images of summers at our beach house on Oak Island, NC, and picnics of biscuits and fried chicken and sweet tea on a blanket under the fireworks and the stars just across the Intracoastal in Southport.
T’s illness is a threat to the future, but it can’t touch these happy images of the past. And even as we fight for her life, so we continue to file away great moments – if not entire days – away for later.
We headed up to Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia for the holiday weekend for some much-needed quality time with family. The house on the cove that opens up to the breathtaking view of a green mountain rising up out of the lake is the wooded retreat of my aunt and uncle and their two little girls, my cousins. And for nearly three full days, Batten disease was relegated to the background, and genuine smiles graced the faces of the people I love most.

T is on a drug therapy that doesn’t allow her to swim in the lake, but that didn’t stop her from strapping on a life jacket and climbing aboard one of the Sea-Doos with me after some convincing. I never topped 20 miles per hour for fear of splashing her in the face, but her happiness as we cruised the open waters in front of the cove was palpable. She screamed and squealed almost constantly, but by the grace of the Sea-Doo’s side view mirrors, I could see that the smile never left her face. And later, after we’d climbed the ninety steps from the dock back to the house for the evening, I watched as our cousin, Morgan, played the role of T’s angel. Morgan celebrated her seventh birthday on Sunday and is nearly four years T’s junior but was as good with T as any adult I’ve ever seen. Not once did she ever seem to be fazed by my sister’s blindness. Her compassion and acceptance were gifts of the greatest value.
We’ve returned home to find that, as expected, Batten disease is still a veil over every facet of our lives. I’m re-energized for the fight, though – if only for the promise of even one more day with my sister – her laughs in my ears and her hand curled around mine.

Taylor King, Sixth Grader

Published: June 20, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

I’ve been officially mired in my longest stretch between posts since I started my new blog in February; the Charlotte summer has arrived – along with its trademark, near-unbearable humidity – and I think it has fried my brain.

I haven’t written about T in awhile, so a quick update: she “graduated” from elementary school the first week of June and officially became a middle school student. At the moving up ceremony, her teachers recognized her for her “inspirational attitude” and her “amazing accomplishment of learning Braille.” Well said.
Every time I see T lately, I’m shocked all over again at how quickly she’s growing up. She’s getting tall. She has a crush on a boy who’s not on the cover of a Disney album, but rather a real-live classmate, and she’s already talking about this fall’s sixth grade dance. I see her thinking often, the way she does – she gets real quiet and still and tilts her head as if to train her gaze on something off to the side, though her gaze is unseeing. Sometimes I want so badly to know what’s going through her mind, to understand what it’s like to have the things happen that have happened to her. But then I would have to have Batten disease.

I don’t know what is going through T’s mind day in and day out, but I think I have an idea of what’s in her heart.
Tears sprang to my eyes as T’s friend guided her up the steps to receive her fifth grade certificate on moving up day. Really – how many parents cry at these things? And I’m only the sister – the sister who sat with the dad in place of the mom who was on another continent trying to save her daughter’s life.
I’ll never step back, evaluate my sister’s life and decide that she has had her fill; I can’t say, “well, she made it to sixth grade and learned Braille and ran two 5Ks, and that’s already beating the odds;” it will never be enough, and I’ll never stop fighting for more. By that, I don’t mean to detract from the blessings that have graced the first eleven years of her life. I am so thankful for those. And, since I’m on the subject of moving up day and achievements and growing up, my heart goes out to those angels who have been a compass for T, who have encouraged her and loved her and carried her – and her family – when we could not walk. T is our angel; you are hers. Stick with us awhile longer – we have more miles yet to walk for this girl.

We Need Your Words

Published: May 24, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

Taylor’s Tale has a brand new website! Check it out here.

When our original site launched in January 2007, I was still relatively new to the world of Batten disease. We had never had a fundraiser. Our new steering committee had met only once.  My family had never publicly spoken about Taylor’s illness. Though her eyes had already begun to fail her, Taylor still had days when she could see.
In those early days, I didn’t have a firm grasp of our situation or any grand ideas for beating the odds. In fact, there were only two things of which I was completely certain:
1) My sister was born with a fatal disease.
2) To have a chance to save her life, we had to tell her story. So that’s what I’ve tried to do.

Taylor’s Tale, the organization, began on February 9, 2007, the evening of Chapter One, when my family and I stood surrounded by 160-odd friends and spoke candidly about the cards we were dealt and how we were going to play them. Taylor’s Tale, the story, began the day my little sister was born in 1998. And since the ink dried on the pages of Chapter One, Taylor’s Tale has been a story written by committee. The words for a story like T’s can’t be found in the mind or the heart of just one. The happy ending will require your words as well as mine.
So, take a look at the new site. Read our story for the first time or get reacquainted with T and our efforts to save her life and the lives of others like her. Find out how you can help write the next chapter of Taylor’s Tale. There are so many who, like T, need our support to see their dreams come true.

Never Stop Dancing

Published: May 17, 2009  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

I went to Andre Hairston’s cardio funk class today for the first time, and I’m already a huge fan! I’m a group exercise novice and wasn’t blessed with great rhythm, but from the time the music started, I couldn’t stop! (To learn more about Andre and his popular cardio funk class, visit www.andrehairston.com.)

Taylor’s Tale is so lucky to have Andre’s support. On Saturday, June 27 at 10 a.m., Andre will offer a special cardio funk class at Myers Park Presbyterian Church in Charlotte to benefit Batten disease research. A $10 donation to Taylor’s Tale gets you in the door.
It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, young or old. Andre’s calorie-burning dance moves and mix of music styles offer something for everyone. And if you join us for Cardio Funk for a Cure, you won’t just get a great workout – you’ll help us write the happy ending to Taylor’s Tale. It’ll be a morning in the true spirit of T – a girl whose first love is music; a girl who may dance to her own beat but never stops dancing.
RSVP to Cardio Funk for a Cure on Facebook.