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.
T’Ann’s extended family was on vacation and Andy was in Phoenix on business, so it was just the two of them. In desperation, they anxiously searched for any other option that would save Brittney’s life. The only doctor who had any confidence of her survival was gone, and the other doctors they had seen said the same thing. There was nothing left to do.
Andy’s brother, Donnie, lived in Massachusetts and suggested they contact the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. With nothing to lose, Andy made a phone call that resulted in a round-table discussion with some of Boston’s top doctors.
They reviewed Brittney’s MRIs, analyzed her situation, and, in agreement with the doctors in San Diego, determined there was nothing they could do to save her. The only thing left for T’Ann to do was make sure that the rest of Brittney’s life was the best it could be. They played endless games, swam in the pool on “good days”, snuggled on the couch, and watched movies. Every second was spent together, and Brittney was in T’Ann’s arms every possible moment.
One afternoon, they sat on the couch together and watched Gilmore Girls, a show they had grown to love as the mother-daughter relationship in the show reminded them of their own. With her head on T’Ann’s lap, Brittney suddenly jolted forward and threw up before gasping for another breath of air.
Her body slowly jerked and twitched before T’Ann jumped from the couch, panicked eyes searching frantically for the phone, and dialed 911. She held her baby girl’s hands in the back of the ambulance and let millions of tears drip from her face to her daughter’s.
This can’t be it, T’Ann thought. Not now. Not today.
The gurney holding Brittney shook with every turn of the ambulance, and T’Ann stared at her precious girl—the last person in the world who deserved any of this. It was a year ago that her daughter was in remission, splashing in the ocean waves of Tahiti, enjoyi
ng a vacation that had become a turning point in her life.
It seemed like only yesterday that Brittney had popped her tiny body from behind the big door of a department store dressing room and, with a giant grin, modeled a bright bathing suit. Brittney was supposed to be safe now, and free. But she was neither.
God, not now! T’Ann wanted to scream to the sky.
Instead, she pressed her cheek against Brittney’s and whispered that everything would be okay. It had to be. T’Ann didn’t know how to say good-bye. She would never know how and she would never be ready. She just knew it couldn’t be today.
The paramedics tore through the doors of the emergency room and sent Brittney to the doctors T’Ann prayed would have the answers. And they did.
“Take her home,” said a neurosurgeon who worked as Dr. Meltzer’s partner. That wasn’t the right answer. “She stopped breathing because the tumor is growing at such a rapid rate, and her blood oxygen level is low as well.”
Andy, who had just flown in to San Diego from his business trip, stood by T’Ann’s side as she weakly covered her mouth with a trembling hand and muttered the words, “Okay, I’ll take her home.”
That was it. It was time to say good-bye.
“No,” Andy nearly shouted. “I’m not taking this girl home tonight.”
Through reddened, puffy eyes, T’Ann looked up at him. She was weaker than she had ever been in her life, and Andy was staying strong for them both.
“Get us an ambulance,” he demanded. “We’re taking her back to Orange County.”
An ambulance transported Brittney to CHOC, though T’Ann and Andy knew that the doctor was still on vacation. His assistant, who had never met Brittney, sadly delivered the news.
“I’ve been doing this for more than twenty-five years, and surgery alone is not an option,” he said. “If she survived surgery, she would need two bone marrow transplants afterward and chemotherapy.”
“I can’t do it, Mom,” Brittney said weakly. Her voice was so small, so defeated. “If it was just surgery and there was a guarantee I would make it, I would do it. I’m just so tired, and I want this all to be over. I can’t go through chemo again.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t want to be sick anymore, Mom. I just want to go home.”
Brittney had made her decision, and in the deepest part of T’Ann’s soul, she knew it was the right one. Brittney chose to live out the last days of her life quietly and peacefully at home, and before T’Ann could tell the doctor their decision, he confirmed it after a long, deep breath.
“I have four daughters, and if I were in your shoes, I would take Brittney home and make her as comfortable as possible for the rest of the time you have with her.”
Empty and dead inside, T’Ann sat beside Andy in the chilly hospital room and felt like throwing up. The pain was suffocating, nearly intolerable, and her body shook uncontrollably. She stared down at Brittney. Resting by her side were small, gray hands that couldn’t possibly belong to a teenager. Brittney’s chest slowly crawled up and down, and with a tilted head and mature eyes, she looked at Andy.
“Can I see Mom alone for a minute?” she asked, and Andy smiled, squeezed her little hand, and gently closed the door behind him.
“I’ve asked everyone in the family to make a promise to keep after I’m gone,” Brittney said weakly.
She was still so strong. At sixteen, she could say the words after I’m gone without one tear, without one hint of anger or bit of curiosity as to why she had to die at such a young age.
Just a few days before, she asked Charlie for his promise.
“I’ll be okay,” she had reassured him. “I’m going to Heaven to stay with mama and papa.”
Tears drowned Charlie’s eyes, and he squeezed her hand gently.
“Promise me you won’t worry about me,” she added. “You have to keep going. Don’t let this stop you or bring you down.”
Charlie didn’t know how he would keep that promise, but he knew he had to. He smiled slightly, nodded, and let the tears fall.
T’Ann stared down at Brittney with the same love and courage Charlie had shown.
“I’ll make whatever promise you ask of me, sweetie,” she said.
“You have to promise not to do anything stupid after I’m gone,” Brittney said bluntly, and T’Ann knew exactly what she meant.
“Don’t make me promise that,” she said through sobs, knowing that the moment Brittney’s life ended, she would want hers to end, too. “I don’t know if I can keep it.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you promise,” she said.
“Okay, then, I don’t promise,” T’Ann said, poking her daughter’s hand playfully. “There, now you can’t go anywhere.”
“C’mon, Mom,” Brittney said, tears streaming down her face. “I need to know you’re going to be okay.”
“Okay,” T’Ann whispered. “I promise.”
Brittney cried that evening more than T’Ann had seen her cry in her life. Internally, she was dealing with something T’Ann had never had to face, and she saw in her daughter’s eyes that she was terrified.
“I don’t know if I can let go,” Brittney whispered.
The most intense pains T’Ann had ever felt pulled at her heart, and all she could do was weep. There was nothing she could do to save her daughter’s life, and an overwhelming feeling of desperation and helplessness took over her body as tears poured in streams from her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” T’Ann cried in Brittney’s ear as she held her to her chest. “I love you so much. More than life itself.” The next five words flowed naturally from her lips, and she meant them with all of her heart.
“It’s okay to let go.”
They held each other for minutes that seemed like hours. It was the only place either of them wanted to be. Andy came back into the room and they waited for a miracle.
11
What came instead was a tap on the door. A young man who introduced himself as a pathology intern entered and closed the door gently before sitting down in a chair across from them.
“I’ve been up all night and something doesn’t make sense here,” he said. “I think your daughter is having an allergic reaction to Dapsone, which I understand she’s been taking for three years now?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” T’Ann said with wide eyes, hoping he knew something the rest of the doctors didn’t.
“I don’t think the tumor is the reason her breathing is so abnormal,” he said. “I think it’s from a reaction she’s having to her medication. Would it be okay if I gave her an antidote?”
Without hesitation, T’Ann gave him her blessing. The head nurse had asked them earlier that day to start letting family members know that Brittney wouldn’t make it through the night, and here was this young intern, offering them something other than taking her home to die.
In T’Ann’s eyes, they had absolutely nothing to lose. Brittney, who lay, cold and gray, on her hospital bed next to T’Ann and Andy, remained still as he poured what looked like blue ink into her IV, and within minutes, her face lost its pasty tint and her cheeks turned bright pink. She looked alive again, and for the next two weeks, she was. T’Ann and Andy brought her home and waited. There was nothing more they could do. Hospice had set up a hospital bed in T’Ann’s living room and had given them all the meds they would need to keep Brittney comfortable and, most importantly, free of pain.
T’Ann pushed her slowly through the front door of their house, carefully picked Brittney up from the wheelchair, and placed her on the bed where she would spend the rest of her days. She was paralyzed from the neck down but had full use of her mouth for talking and eating when T’Ann fed her. They took naps together, watched movies, and exchanged more than a million I love yous.
T’Ann’s, Andy’s, and Charlie’s entire families came every day to visit Brittney, and when she was awake, they were by her side.
A morphine patch on Brittney’s arm kept most of the pain a
t bay, but when it crept back with unbearable intensity, T’Ann dotted liquid morphine onto her gums, numbing it instantly.
“This is the first time in three years that I don’t hurt,” Brittney said to T’Ann one evening.
Her words broke any part of T’Ann’s heart that wasn’t already in pieces.
“I love you so much, Britt, and I’m so sorry I couldn’t make you better,” T’Ann said through thick tears. “I would trade places with you in a heartbeat if I could.”
Brittney smiled up and whispered, “It’s not your fault, Mom. You did everything you could. Please just remember the promise you made to me.”
She must have known her time was soon. A few nights later, on a Sunday evening, Brittney slipped into a coma that let her heart beat but shut everything else down. Aside from the rise and fall of her chest, her baby girl was gone. Candlelight danced on her beautiful face and T’Ann sat with Charlie in the quiet of the room, waiting.
He had been sleeping on the floor beside Brittney’s bed for the past two weeks, and he sat up that night and said quietly, “This is it. She’s going.”
“Her heart is still beating,” T’Ann managed, and Charlie sobbed.
God, if you’re going to take her, take her on a Sunday, she prayed.
And He did. At 11:05 p.m., Brittney took her last breath in T’Ann’s arms. Before she cried until her chest bruised, before her sobs announced that Brittney was gone, before anything else, T’Ann was calm.
Defeated.
She looked up through her tears and whispered, “Good-bye, baby. I love you.”
Author’s note: The process of sharing Brittney’s story for the purpose of this book was both painful and healing for T’Ann, but she did it to fulfill the dream her daughter had of helping other children by sharing her story with the world.
A POEM—A MESSAGE—TO KIDS BATTLING CANCER
by Brittney Wolfe
I think I could help children with the same disease as me,
Once Upon a Wish Page 12
