Chapter 10

We all stared at the CT scan images: McKayla, me and the doctor.

"It's about the size of a golf ball," he told us. "And based on what we found in your blood work, it's aggressive, too."

McKayla shook her head and let out a deep, bitter sigh. I tried not to break down right there. Things had been going so well lately.

She was taking part in a medical study testing not-yet-FDA-approved drugs, and the shakes were almost completely gone. Her brain was showing no symptoms of memory loss and otherwise she was in good health. And now this.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur for me. I don't remember half of it. They didn't quite ask, "What have you had to eat in the last 24 hours?" but it was close.

A couple of days after that visit to the oncologist, McKayla had surgery to remove the lump from her pancreas and we prayed for a speedy recovery. She was put on an aggressive chemotherapy and it appeared to be working for a little while.

But after another month, they found more cancer. This time it had returned to her colon and was spreading. They tried everything: a different mix of chemo, radiation. We contemplated more surgery.

Finally, when her doctors found it in her spinal fluid and said the next stop was her brain, we knew her time was almost up. I pleaded with her to continue with the treatments, but McKayla firmly told me that she didn't want any more.

"If I go through all that—the surgery, the chemo, the radiation—what's that going to get me?" she asked through teary eyes. "Another month? Two? And for what? Feeling like shit after taking a handful of pills? Or throwing up for two days after the radiation? No, Amberle, I want to die with dignity. I just want to be comfortable and spend as much time as I can with you and our daughter."

The doctors had done all they could, and she resigned herself to the fact that this would mean her death.

I took her home. She was a shell of her former self. She had lost a lot of weight, and her glorious mane of raven-black hair was just now growing back. She seemed so frail, so weak. So unlike the vibrant woman I was used to seeing.

But her smile never changed. The look in her eyes told me how much she loved me.

For a while, she tried to function around the house, but she quickly got worse. As the cancer spread, so did the terrible pain. Her body was often hunched over and she had to fight to smile, something that previously came so naturally to her.

At first, we gave her drugs to numb her, but they made her sleepy and prone to blackouts. She said she didn't want to spend the last weeks of her life in an opium-like haze, so she had her doctor reduce the dosages. She was lucid, but every movement cut her like a knife. I don't know how she could tolerate it.

We put a hospital bed in our room and soon McKayla was spending more and more time in it, until she became too weak to get up. Four months had passed since they re-discovered her cancer.

Maureen took it well, I think. She kept a blog that we checked regularly. We talked all the time. I think she tried to put on a brave face for McKayla but it was tearing her apart inside. Just like it did to me.

One day, she came to me and said, "I want to do something for Mom."

"Anything," I told her.

So we spent the next few days meeting with a lawyer and trying to get our case expedited before McKayla died.

I was sitting in my chair next to McKayla when Maureen came in. My wife had the bed elevated, her legs were propped up in the most comfortable position possible. Maureen was holding an envelope.

She sat down on the bed, next to her mom and pulled out a stack of papers. She handed them to McKayla. Her eyes got wide and then teared up when she saw the court order.