|
|||||||||||||
Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Ashburn toddler battles stage IV cancer
Today blonde, blue-eyed Taylor Love, of Ashburn, celebrates her second birthday. She has already spent a quarter of her life in hospitals battling cancer.In December, after noticing a minor bruise near Taylor's one eye and the other eye “not looking right,” mother Aimee and father Mike Love took their daughter to the doctor to be checked out. The doctor's concerns grew, and Taylor was quickly diagnosed with stage IV neuroblastoma, a cancer of the sympathetic nervous system found in infants and children.
“It is a term and disease I wish I never became familiar with and never had to learn anything about, but here we stand in front of the biggest challenge we have faced in our lives ... EVER,” said Mike in an entry on the family's CarePage, an online journal they use to communicate about Taylor's fight against the disease.
In the past six months Taylor has undergone treatments adults suffer through, but she has put on a brave face with every one of the seven rounds of chemotherapy, numerous blood transfusions, CT scans, bone scans, kidney filtration tests, bone marrow aspiration, stem cell harvest and surgery.
“Taylor is handling her treatments very well, and I believe she is fighting the disease with something very powerful that she possesses,” Aimee said. “She has bounced back every time.”
Rooms in the Children's Hospital unit of Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., have become almost a second home to Taylor with the amount of time she spends there getting chemotherapy and battling the fevers that follow.
Aimee, Mike, grandparents Nana Sue, Pop-pop Jim and Grandma Carol, along with other family and friends, take turns being with Taylor. They've set up shifts so someone is with her every minute and someone is watching her brothers, Adam, 5, and Kyle, 3 – getting them to preschool and T-ball and soccer games.
The past month has been hard on Taylor. Not only was her body bombarded with chemo and blood transfusions, but she also had surgery to remove some of the tumors, she developed shingles and chicken pox, and a CT scan showed potential damage to her left kidney.
“This disease sucks,” Mike posted on their CarePage before Taylor received her seventh round of chemo. “It sucks for what it does to Taylor ... it sucks for what it does to Aimee and I ... and it sucks for what it does to Adam and Kyle. Somehow Taylor continues to fight it ... and somehow Aimee and I continue to fight it ... and somehow Adam and Kyle continue to tolerate their 'new normal' with Mom and Dad and Taylor running all around to hospitals. There is no time to look back but only time to look forward and continue down the path in front of us today.”
Chemo treatments have shrunk the cancer cells in a tumor in Taylor's left adrenal gland and tumors behind each eye, but the cancer cells in her legs are not responding. The next step will be to travel to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York for antibody treatment and radiation.
The last round of chemo left Taylor nauseated and worn out and wanting only to wrap herself in her favorite pink polka-dot blanket. Her blood counts are low as is her energy and immune system.
A trip planned to New York for more treatments has been postponed until Taylor can gain strength and her little body can face more cancer-fighting procedures.
“We continue to put the effort into making her happy and try to heal her spirits and hope and pray that the rest falls into place,” Aimee said. “The effort we put in is to help her rebuild herself, make the right decisions related to her care, and make her strong for the next thing the doctors want to throw at her. The outcome of the medicinal result is unfortunately out of our hands and that is the difficult part to grasp.”
A community's compassion
As the Love family prays and waits for Taylor's body to rebuild itself, the local community has stood up to help their neighbors by any means they can.
Aimee's friend Stacy Brown has set up a Charity Volleyball Tournament and Family Fun Night at the Dulles Golf Center & Sports Park this Friday night. For $25 guests ages 12 and up ($13 for ages 4 to 11), have unlimited use of the center's volleyball courts, driving range, miniature golf, batting cages and more. All proceeds go directly to the Love family.
Family friend Lara Bryson and her sister Rochelle Courtney make and sell Taylor bracelets – made of blue, green, yellow and clear crystals strung on an awareness ribbon – to raise money and support. The bracelets will be available for order Friday night.
Friends in Ashburn hosted a wine and cheese and silent auction, and Loudoun County High School students made and sold pink bracelets for Taylor.
Taylor is also featured on the Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation's Lunch for Life campaign, www.lunchforlife.org , where people can donate monies equivalent to the cost of a lunch to help children with the disease.
“Lunch for Life is about saving children's lives,” Aimee said. “That would be the most precious birthday gift Taylor could receive.”
Contact the reporter at lwolstenholme@timespapers.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.