Designer Baby

by Aaron Elias Brunsdon

  That afternoon, Jayson and I flew to Melbourne to shoot the last episode of Project Runway. We told Kristy Hinze first, who instantly flew into support mode, checking on us every chance she got. She was gutted herself. That day on set, it felt like a funeral. Everyone, including Melissa Hoyer, guest judge on the show’s finale and fashion editor of the Sunday Telegraph, suspected Jayson wasn’t himself. He was sombre, sad and had to focus really hard on getting the episode done. I imagined he was in inner turmoil but he calmly went about judging the aspiring designer’s work. I had to pull aside two producers to tell them the awful news in confidence, breaking into tears as I relayed the news. Both were very supportive, promising to help me handle the press should it come to that. It was too raw now to even contemplate telling the public, let alone all the organisers of previously scheduled engagements. Jayson was due to attend a UNICEF event the following week as Australia’s goodwill ambassador, which was to include the unveiling of the Miss Universe national costume, designed by Jayson for Laura Dundovic, Australian’s entrant to the world pageant. For now, we would keep the news under lock and key, at least until after the surgery, worried the publicity could negatively affect his recovery process. I could only imagine that the public’s reaction would be like mine, the word “cancer” raising the idea of a terminal disease and perhaps leading to conclusions.

  On this particular day, we did not want to be in Melbourne shooting – there were other tasks to complete and we needed time alone to be together, to digest the news, to be emotional and process the grief. I wanted to support Jayson as much as I could. However, it was the last episode of the series and Jayson wanted to honour his commitments. Somehow we got through the day. We flew back on Sunday morning, preoccupied with thoughts of the impending surgery the next day. Even though there was so much to say, neither of us spoke very much, each of us so lost in our own grief. We were fervently hoping and praying for the surgery to be a success.

  I was terrified of losing him. Internally I was bawling but appeared strong externally for his sake, and I am sure he was acting similarly. Sleep eluded us that night. We were praying and hoping for strength to get through tomorrow. I held him tight. I wanted him to know I was here with him and together we would fight it. “We will win,” I repeatedly told him. Dr Brenner said it was lucky that the cancer had been detected in its early stages.

  I held his hands tight until the moment when he disappeared into the operating room. I promised him I would be waiting for him in his room. I asked him to smile for me, to let me know he would keep the promise we made, which was to come out safely on the other end, where I would be waiting. I kissed him and when he was finally out of sight, I sank to the nearest chair and cried my eyes out.

  When the surgery was over our promise was kept, and our prayers were answered as well. Dr Brenner had removed the lump and the cancer was contained. Upon discharge from hospital, Jayson was to see an oncologist to determine if he needed further treatment, like chemotherapy.

  Days after the surgery, Laura Dundovic’s Miss Universe national costume blitzed the local newspapers. Jayson was lying in bed reading a bad review from the newspaper who compared it to a toilet roll doll. I felt for him – first the pain and now this crushing article with photos of Laura in his creation. It was shattering.

  A week later, with Jayson still in hospital due to a post-operative infection, the media became suspicious. Jayson’s non-attendance of the two most important events in his calendar made several journalists wonder. One in particular, a gossip columnist named Holly Byrnes, rang repeatedly to find out his whereabouts. She knew there would have been a quite drastic reason for him not to attend the UNICEF event. I remained discreet, and told her he was recovering from a flu virus. But that didn’t prevent her digging – after all, she was a gossip columnist, and she knew how to do her job. She rang close associates, staff and persisted with me, looking for answers.

  To make matters worse, outside the hospital on my way to see Jayson I bumped into a journalist who worked in Holly’s office. The journo asked me what I was doing there. The cat was creeping out of the bag and I had no choice but to come clean. I thought it better if I said something rather than someone else using their vivid imagination to invent a story.

  I rang Melissa Hoyer, our old friend and confidante. She and Jayson had had a solid relationship since the ’80s. She had guessed there was something in the air on the Project Runway set, and was devastated when I told her of Jayson’s diagnosis. She promised to keep it under wraps and gave good advice. I found her supportive and constructive, and appreciated it as I was not able to be objective at that stage. Melissa, we felt, would do justice to a written story, telling Australia their favourite designer was sick with cancer and was now recovering from surgery. She asked me to give a statement, which I did, imploring the media and public to give us the personal space we needed. The story ran on page three of the Sunday Telegraph with a huge coloured photo of Jennifer Hawkins and Jayson. The article stated facts and statistics on testicular cancer and on Jayson’s prognosis. It was factual, well-written and respectful. Melissa did not embellish or sensationalise the story but concentrated on facts, reassuring readers Jayson would be well again soon but reinforcing our need for privacy.

  As soon as the story was published, Holly rang me again, this time crying and apologising profusely for having added pressure and aggravation when we needed space. There was also an outpouring of emotions from the public, from friends and family who hadn’t known – flowers, cards and food hampers arriving on our doorstep. Even Dr Brenner was shocked when he read the papers that Sunday morning, and learnt his patient was a celebrity.

  The first few months after surgery were tough. While Jayson gradually recovered his strength, we had to make changes, counting on staff and team to complete the collection under Jayson’s instructions. He couldn’t work much; instead he took the time to recuperate and concentrate on changing his diet and lifestyle. He was weak and it took time to get his strength back. Miraculously, thanks to the dedication of the team, we managed to release the collection. In between looking after Jayson, I was managing the team, ensuring things in the business were progressing.

  Months passed and Jayson recovered well. We were determined to ensure that cancer had no part in our lives. We had no room for it! “We will fight it,” we had promised each other. We went to see Dr David Daley, a well-known oncologist in Sydney, a man we later became eternally grateful to and who grew to be a good friend. All was well with the results, the cancer had been contained and had not progressed further – he was in remission.

  To celebrate the fantastic news, we booked flights to the Maldives that Christmas with our godson Ty and his mother Tni. Ty was like our son; we spent a lot of time with him over the years. He stayed over frequently and we travelled with him a lot. Ty brought us joy. His mother had gone through some difficult times since his birth. His father was serving a four-year jail term. She had to single-handedly bring Ty up, struggling to make ends meet. She appreciated our support enormously. Ty was a solid kid. When he was two years old and first started talking, I took him to the beach to play and the innocent kid looked up at me and called me “Daddy”. My heart broke into pieces, the innocent voice identifying me as his father. The look in his eyes and the sound of his voice were so beautiful that I wished I really was his father. That incident reinforced how much I wanted a child. The time was not right to start thinking about having a child so my consolation was at least we had Ty and we were enjoying him.

  We were just happy in our little family, Ty, Tni, and us. We had a wonderful time in the Maldives, swimming among tropical fish and stingrays in water so clear it almost hurt our eyes in the sparkling sun. We sat by the pool and watched the spectacular sunsets over the Indian Ocean. The buffets kept us contented every day with each one surpassing the previous in deliciousness! When we thought they could not get better, the next day there were lobsters and king prawns and chocolate fountains. The only snag was the co
st of the soft drinks.

  When we got back, Jayson had to do another routine test with Dr Daley. He told us that a small group of cancerous cells had swum their way up to the tract in his lymph node, where testicles are formed before they drop. The news was not what we wanted to hear and, to make matters worse, he recommended immediate treatment. Chemotherapy would eradicate the tiny cancerous cells in his body. Dr Daley told us that with chemotherapy, the cancer cells would be destroyed and the chance of the cancer reappearing would reduce. Chemotherapy is given after surgery to destroy any remaining cancer cells that are too small to see, and in Jayson’s case we had a 90 per cent chance of eradicating them. But he would have to go through twelve weeks of the treatment. Chemotherapy is brutal. Put it this way: imagine a substance, a liquid that goes through your body, only that liquid is actually poison but the poison will simultaneously cure and kill the cells in your body – not only cancerous cells but also good cells in the body. Your immune system will be compromised, your hair will fall out, you may put on some weight from the combined steroid medication or lose an incredible amount of weight from chucking up the poison and you will suffer sleepless nights, nausea, lack of energy, flushes, and will no doubt feel like you’re dying a slow death.

  Dr Daley said the treatment would consist of three types of chemotherapy medicine administered intravenously every day for a week, then a week off to rest and let the medication takes it course and then return for another week of intense chemotherapy. The treatment would take anywhere from three to four hours daily as an outpatient in the cancer ward of St Vincent’s Hospital. We had to brace ourselves for this. We had no choice. If Jayson chose not to have chemotherapy, the cancer would grow and spread more. While Jayson was going through chemotherapy, all work was to be placed on the backburner and Jayson was to concentrate only on the recovery process. It would be gruelling and we would need to be patient. It would be hard for the partner as well, many of whom crack under the intense hardship of seeing someone so close to you suffer the ordeal. We were offered counselling to deal with this but turned it down. It was important for us to remain positive throughout as most people become sicker than they already are once they hear about the treatment. The stress of the unknown with cancer sends you spiralling down a large dark well and leaves you worried about whether you are going to be able to climb back up or will be left to die down there. It is normal to worry and think, like, shit, what if it doesn’t work, what if it lingers on, what are my future options after this? There were more and more questions spiralling below our consciousness, making the situation worse than it already was. Again, we had hardly anything to say to one another. We assumed this was going to be a big chapter in our lives and we knew it wasn’t going to be easy, at least for the next twelve weeks. We had several things to decide, primarily to do with the business. Again, it was vital that Jayson’s enforced leave from work would not leak to the press because we did not want to have to deal with them again on this issue. We were also worried about the pain that Jayson would have to endure. We had heard that the treatment was painful and that as the poison propagates you may feel like you are dying a slow death.

  The next three months were tough but we remained resilient. I watched, feeling helpless, as Jayson underwent chemotherapy. It broke my heart to bits. There were times when I just wanted to break down, vent my frustrations and pain at someone, or the world for this big blow. Every time I dropped Jayson at the cancer ward for treatment, it pained and saddened me to see people with cancer. My consolation was reflecting on the degree of Jayson’s cancer as in the ward there were terminal people. One man in particular, barely thirty, had undergone three bouts of chemo and radiation yet he still managed a smile, while his young wife next to him looked crushed. It reminded me of a running race. She was the vigilant spectator watching every single minute to the finishing line.

  Jayson was a trooper in those three months. He never gave up, nor did he ever complain once about the difficult treatment. I take my hat off to him, being in that ward surrounded by sickly patients dealing with their own sickness and pain. The intravenous drugs were causing problems; nurses struggled daily to get a needle into his veins. The process normally took minutes on other patients but it was an hour’s debacle on the veinless Jayson. When he returned home he was completely exhausted, blue-black all over his arms. I would drop him at the hospital in the morning – a friend sometimes would accompany him – and I would go to work, sort out what I had to do and return to pick him up, then drop him home and attend to him. He would sleep with great difficulty due to the flushes from the drugs taking effect in his body. The flushes were uncontrollable and he was very sick.

  Halfway through the treatment, he lost all his hair. Slowly, daily, we saw chunks coming out of his scalp, which became patchy. It was so painful to watch the fine hair moulting away that we thought, “Let’s get rid of it completely.” So one afternoon after chemo, I clippered his hair. He was going to wear hats from now or until his hair grew back.

  They were awful times. There were moments when I went to the car park on the pretext of getting something from the car. Once down there I would burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably. I never wanted to cry in front of him; he didn’t need the extra pressure of knowing how it affected me. He had enough on his plate and did not need the extra stress coming from me not dealing with his sickness. They say when life goes bad, it becomes a lot worse before it stabilises. Our life was a shambles in those three months.

  The situation worsened dramatically when we were robbed one night while asleep. Three men climbed up into our second floor apartment and took our valuables, wallets, laptops, keys, and drove off in our BMW with the loot. Jayson had heard something, thought it might have been his chemo brains – known for bringing about hallucinations – and luckily ignored the noises in the living room and went back to sleep. When he woke up at 5am to watch Tom Ford’s new Gucci collection on style.com, he noticed the computer was missing. He woke me up to ask me where I had put it and when I realised my car keys were also missing, I ran to the car park downstairs and discovered the car was gone. We rang the cops and when they came, we both just burst into tears for over half an hour. We could hardly speak. The cops calmed us before taking our statements.

  The robbery was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Jayson’s parents flew to Sydney the same day to support Jayson and give me a break to recover from the ordeal. We had no money or credit cards that Sunday morning. I had wanted to change the locks and buy groceries in preparation for Jayson’s parents’ arrival. I slept with a knife under my bed for weeks after the robbery, for fear the burglars would return.

  Despite all of this, Jayson, with the help of our staff, designed the spring summer collection which we would debut at Fashion Week. He is a trooper, my man. I am so proud of him; he has the willpower of undying passion. In his head: Stop doing what you love most and then it’s over. Through his behaviour, he reinforced to me that no matter what, resilience, love and passion win, otherwise you surrender to the illness. It was important to stay true and positive. Because he was also in the hospital a lot of the time, he would draw and design while chemo seeped through his veins. It possibly was one of his finest collections, based on his vulnerability and fragility at this time of his life, and inspired by his mother Dorothy, who was the rock in those post-chemo months.

  At this time, we became careful not to be seen in public in case word got out about Jayson’s illness, worried the press once again would sensationalise the news. However before the show’s debut, I thought about the consequences of being silent. The show would reveal his baldness, a dead giveaway. So I took aside another journalist who was covering Fashion Week this season, Jen Mellocco, and told her. She reassured me it would be kept in confidence until after the show when she would cover the collection and also write sensitively about Jayson’s bout with chemo. She promised the story would be uplifting and framed in a positive light. True to her word, the morning after the show, photos
from the collection and a bald Jayson hugging his mother blitzed the newspaper. Dr Daley too had his five minutes of fame as he was invited to the show and his positive comments on how well Jayson was doing were reported. The fashion industry was inspired by Jayson’s strength, his determination and love for fashion and of how, despite the odds, he still managed to design the exquisite collection.