Archive of Our Own

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I don't think it's exactly news to anyone that I keep journals. Pages out of some of my old ones adorn the walls at the Grammy Museum. What might surprise some people is that I usually have more than one at a time. One for song lyrics, one for what's going on in my life. What follows is an edited version of the one I kept in 2016 and the first part of 2017. Some things are still too private, too personal. Some you'll have to hear in songs. I never thought I'd write a memoir so young. At 27 I'd like to think I have a lot of life yet to experience. But after countless questions, I realized I'd rather put it all out there, for you to read on your own, rather than let the media interpret what I have to say. I've had enough of people twisting my words to last a lifetime.* * *To fully understand where I was in the fall of 2016, there's a little history lesson I need to give, so here goes.A few years ago, I dealt with some pretty bad depression. I felt guilty for not being happy with my life, given all the amazing things I'd gotten to experience, and the guilt just made it worse. Depression is a medical disorder, caused by a hormone imbalance in your brain. Sometimes things can be knocked out of whack by bad things happening in your life, but sometimes it just happens. I didn't know that then. So I beat myself up for not being absolutely thrilled with my life. Sure, I'd fallen prey to a guy who used my own insecurities and doubts to manipulate me into thinking I loved him, but I'd also come out stronger, and more sure of who I was than I'd ever been. I thought that meant I should be in a really good place. But I wasn't.Never mind that there were other factors. I was alone, as far as romance went. I'd hooked up with some people here and there, but no one long term. My parents where fighting, a lot, and I was still young enough to be freaked out by it. And meanwhile, the chemicals in my brain were all fucked up. But it worked for me, weirdly, for a while. I got some good songs out of it. I don't think it's going to surprise any of you that the album I was working on through all of this was Red.Along the way, as I was running out of ways to cope, I met the woman who changed my life. It's weird, now, because even though she changed my life for the better, she isn't a part of it anymore. Even losing her hurt less than it should have because she made me strong enough to do it without her. She made me strong enough to say no, when she hit one knee, and I wasn't ready. But before that, she helped me realize that what I was feeling wasn't normal. That I didn't have to struggle with all the pain inside my head. That I didn't have to use series of thin red lines where no one would see them to let it out. My mom never liked how wild and free she was, or how willing she was to give up everything she'd worked for to spend her life with me, but mom, and I, will always be grateful to her for encouraging me to see a therapist.A loving relationship, hours of therapy, and prescriptions for antidepressants and scar cream later, I hit a much better place in my life. I wasn't happy all the time, but I wasn't so hard on myself because of it. I came out of the Red Tour a lot better than I went into it, even though by then I'd already had to make the hardest decision I thought I would ever have to make – the decision to turn down a woman with a ring in her hand, and love in her eyes. She loved me. I don't doubt that. But she wasn't ready to settle down any more than I was. I don't think that's a thing she does. But it's something I wanted. And thanks to her, something I knew I deserved.We made one valiant attempt to reconnect as friends, after I turned her down. By then, I'd weaned back off the antidepressants. I was writing again, pop songs this time. Some sad songs, but without the deep melancholy that dominated Red, even as I wrote songs about the end of what we'd had. Nothing was the same, and that helped, weirdly, because it told me I had moved on. You never forget, or completely let go of someone who's been such a huge influence on your life. But you do reach a point where they're not your everything anymore. The scars she left behind are like old friends. Soft, faded, the kind of scars that evoke pleasant memories of good times, when you took a leap and fell, but jumped up screaming "that was awesome!"So why does any of that matter? She doesn't feature anywhere in this story, although for the record, she did call me when the beginnings of this story first broke. It was sweet, and she said things I needed to hear. But that's not why I thought you should hear what came before. It's because this all started with what I thought was a resurgence of my depression. So I thought it might help to know I'd been down that road before. Because having been there before, it didn't scare me when it came back. I knew, all along, that depression is cyclic. It never completely goes away. And sometimes it comes back even when you're happy.Going into the fall of 2016, I'd had a weird couple of years. I'd fallen head over heels for the girl of my dreams in 2013. I'd considered coming out. That's how sure I was that she was the one. I'd gotten scared, chickened out, and rushed headlong back into the closet at the end of 2014. Professionally, in 2015 and 2016, I'd hit almost every high I could imagine, but there had been some rough points personally. Dealing with a fake ex who turned out to be a nightmare. A point in July when I'd been so distraught I'd shattered my phone against a wall in a hotel in Australia. But through it all Karlie was there. She kept me grounded. She knew every part of my history. She'd seen the scars I never let anyone else see, on my stomach and on my heart.When I started feeling numb, in the fall of 2016, when the happy love songs I wanted to write wouldn't come, it was Karlie I turned to. She encouraged me to add sessions with my therapist, to try to figure out what was happening. I worked hard to make sure she knew that she had nothing to do with how I was feeling. I knew she would stress that her reluctance to come out, now that I was finally ready, was somehow contributing, but I knew that wasn't it. I figured it was just a hormone thing. In some ways, I was right.She's been here with me ever since. We tested out that whole, "in sickness and in health" thing a little earlier in our marriage than I would have liked, but there's just nothing like knowing you have a partner in everything you do. This is my story, but it is also hers. The last year has been the kind of year no one ever wants to face. But I've been fortunate to have the love of my life by my side through it all. I love you Karlie.

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This is a work of fiction. I make no claims to have any idea what is ever or has ever been going through Taylor's head. For the record, I feel really weird telling the story in Taylor's voice (since none of it is real), but I tried to write it in third person and it just wouldn't flow. I haven't seen a lot of these types of stories on here, so I'm not sure how it will be received, but a story in this vein meant a lot to me at a tough time in my life, so this is my attempt to pay it forward.I have fabricated things based off of some real-life events in Taylor's life, some of the Gaylor Swift lore, and real events in my own life. This story deals with some tough subjects, but is ultimately the story of two people who love and support each other through those tough moments. If you like hurt/comfort stories and don't like spoilers, stop reading here and go on to chapter 1 whenever I post it.But if you have any trigger concerns, or want to know what inspired this story even though it's spoiler-y keep reading.......Still here?.Trigger warnings for the whole story: depression, self-harm (not a major plot point, may surface in flashbacks), cancer, drug use (mostly medicinal purposes)....Why I'm writing:Five years ago, a close friend, who I think of as a little sister, was diagnosed with cancer. At the time, a fic writer on another site, in another fandom, was writing a story about one of the members of the band dealing with a cancer diagnosis, and it meant the world to me to see the feelings I was experiencing written out in someone else's story. It made me feel like I wasn't alone. And I needed that, because it wasn't my diagnosis. She isn't actually family. It was my job to be there and support her, and her family. I knew all the ins and outs of her diagnosis and treatment, but none of it truly concerned me the way it would if I were family. So fic helped me cope. The details of the medical stuff comes from my friend's cancer journey. What I couldn't remember, I looked up on reputable sites. There may be some minor embellishment for drama, but nothing that strays too far from the reality I experienced supporting my friend. Her story ends well, in that it isn't over. She's cancer free and healthy. They even consider her cured. So this story is here for anyone who needs to feel like they aren't alone while they cope, and who finds reading someone else's story comforting. If that isn't you, I respect that, and wish you well.

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You should know, I don't date my journal entries. I've never liked that, being all "dear diary, today blah blah blah." I just kinda write. I never expected to publish my journals, other than maybe a page or two here and there. So sometimes, editing them together for you now, I've added in memories, thoughts, things I thought weren't that important in the moment. It's not verbatim, but I used the journal to help remember how things went. How they felt. I even asked Karlie sometimes to fill in how things were going that I wasn't aware of at the time. When it's her memory or perspective I'm using, I'll use italics.
I didn't plan to tell Karlie I even had a doctor's appointment today. She knows I've been going to my therapist more often lately. She knows I've been noticing signs my depression is getting worse, and she's been super supportive. So going to see my regular doctor to see if I can get prescribed antidepressants again honestly didn't seem like a huge deal. She knows I've taken them before. She never would have known, except that I got up early. It's not even that I was hiding it. It just didn't seem like a thing we needed to talk about.When I came downstairs she was eating some kind of chia seed crap out of a Tupperware. I swear to god it was green. No joke. She had the Wall Street Journal spread out all over the island, and she was bending over the counter in her yoga pants so I got distracted by her fabulous butt. Seriously, it is a work of art. Seeing that first thing in the morning will never get old. Plus, she was just wearing a sports bra, so I could see plenty of skin. Definitely not complaining. Although I have a tendency to toss out that green crap when I find it in the fridge, because it looks spoiled, even when it's fresh. But she hates the entire meat drawer, so I guess we're even. God I get distracted easily.Anyway, I was still wearing her shirt that I'd slept in the night before, I had literally just thrown my glasses on my face and gone downstairs to feed the cats before I took my shower and got ready for my appointment. It was early in the morning and since they were going to be probably prescribing me medication, they wanted me to fast before I went so they could run blood work, just in case. I hate needles, but what can you do, you know? I snuck up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, relishing the chance to be the big spoon for once. She yelped when my hands touched her shiny abs, and I laughed. My hands are always freezing. It's nice when I can use it to my advantage. She asked if I wanted her to make me breakfast. Maybe an omelet? She knew better than to even suggest whatever the hell she was eating.I knew she was worried about me after I said no thanks. I could feel her eyes searching my face for signs that it had a deeper reason than just not wanting anything. She offered to toast me a pop tart. If you know my girl, you know that's like sacrilegious. She doesn't BELIEVE in pop tarts. To prevent her from worrying that I was developing anorexia in addition to depression (not a totally crazy idea, perfectionist types are prone to developing the two together, though I personally haven't experienced that), I told her I couldn't because of my doctor's appointment, but I was planning to treat myself to brunch as soon as I got out.The way she tilted her head looked just like an inquisitive puppy, and she was wracking her brain trying to figure out if I'd told her about the appointment and she'd just forgotten. She has a lot on her plate right now with schools starting again and Fashion Week, even though she's not walking like she usually does, she still has events to attend, and she's even presenting Derek with an award at one of them. I've been helping her write the speech. So although I know she would actually remember if I'd told her, I feel like she thought it was possible it had slipped her mind. I love my girlfriend, but she has no filter. "Shit, did I forget? I only have a study group today, so I can totally go with you," were the words that came out of her mouth. I couldn't let her believe she'd forgotten when she seemed so distressed.I told her it was no big deal, it was just blood work and an exam so they could get me back on meds and get my brain chemistry back where it belonged, but as soon as I said blood work I knew she was coming. I knew she would insist on holding my hand, even though she hates it when I'm hurting, or anxious, or upset. She has, from the first days of our relationship, always wanted to protect me. I used to think that kind of thing was smothering, but from Karlie somehow it's just endearing.It should have been weird, walking into my doctor's office with my girlfriend, given that no one outside friends and family knows we're together, but then, I go to the doctor's under odd circumstances anyway. Most people don't bring a completely random dude who isn't related to them at all, but I do. I usually take Mike with me, because he's been here through everything. He's almost like a brother at this point. But even I don't take him back into the office with me. He just sits in the waiting area until I'm done, though he would totally burst in on me if he felt there was a security concern. But that's not the point. The point is, my doctor knows about Karlie. The whole office is bound by HIPPA, and I trust them. I have to, or I wouldn't go there. But still, anyone could have been in the waiting area, but I honestly didn't care. Depression? Maybe. Jury's still out.I can't think of too many times you feel as exposed as you do sitting on that paper liner, basically naked since those gowns don't cover squat. Karlie was sitting on a chair in the corner, holding my stuff, while I waited for the doctor to come in. They'd been really cool about me bringing my girlfriend for moral support. It kinda made me feel like a little kid bringing her mom, but it also made me feel slightly less anxious, so I was willing to deal. She kept making faces at me, trying to get me to laugh. I love her for that.One of the nurses, I think her name was Jayne? came in to draw blood first, before I even saw the doctor. Karlie held my hand and made me look at her, so the needle wasn't too bad. When it was over, she gave me a hug before going back to her spot, trying to fold up her long legs so they wouldn't be in the way. It was almost comical, the way she would turn this way and that trying to figure out where to put them. When Dr. Frye came in, if she was surprised to see a supermodel in the corner, she didn't show it. After greeting me by name and saying it was nice to see me again, she turned to Karlie and greeted her with a "So nice to finally meet you, you must be Karlie."We talked a bit about why I'd scheduled the appointment, and what I hoped to get out of it. But instead of asking me about my mental symptoms, she started asking me about my throat. Had I noticed hoarseness that didn't seem to go away or have any particular cause? What about a persistent lump in my throat? My first thought was, well, I'm a singer, so I guess maybe she's just being proactive. But when I realized that I had, in fact, been experiencing both of those things since even before the end of the 1989 tour, I started to get nervous. How did she know? She kept a good poker face as she moved in and felt around my neck, but it seemed to me she was concentrating quite a bit on one area.When she was done, she told me to get dressed, she wanted to see if she could get a rush on my labs and add a couple of extra tests to my bloodwork, but then she would meet me in her office. I'd never been to her office, like, the one with a desk in it. Karlie could read my worry all over my face, because as soon as Dr. Frye was out of the room, she came over to me and held me, telling me that it was going to be fine, that she was just being extra thorough. Once I was back in my normal clothes, we walked hand in hand to the office, not caring who saw us. The pressure of Karlie's hand in mine was the only thing keeping me grounded, and I was so grateful that she was with me. There aren't words to describe the intense relief I felt knowing I wasn't alone.
I knew this wasn't how we expected this to go. Taylor looked terrified, from the moment Dr. Frye started asking questions that had nothing to do with her mental health. And she looked worse when Dr. Frye zeroed in, immediately, on two symptoms I knew she was having. I knew there was a reason I needed to be here today, but I suddenly wished I'd paid more attention to all those episodes of Grey's Taylor made me watch. Did she know what Dr. Frye was getting at? Was she freaking out about what she thought it might mean, or the fact that she didn't have a clue what Dr. Frye was getting at. I didn't know. I only knew she was scared, and I wanted to protect her from all the things that scared her.
It felt like hours we were waiting, when the reality is it probably was only minutes. We'd left the door open, but the way her office was situated, our backs were to the door. Karlie filled the time with empty assurances, but it seemed like she was trying to convince herself as much as me that things were okay. There had been no discussion of my mental health or depression at all, since I'd said the symptoms had increased and that was why I was there, and I think that scared me the most. Not knowing why the hell she'd focused on my throat when my problem was in my brain.Dr. Frye knocked gently on her own door as she entered, closing it carefully behind her. She handed me a brochure with a fancy Harvard University logo on the front. "When Depression Starts in the Neck" it said across the cover. I tilted it so Karlie could see, then turned my attention back to Dr. Frye. She explained that thyroid problems are pretty common in women, but are often underdiagnosed. She mentioned the fact that it was easily ninety degrees outside and yet I was wearing long jeans and a sweater, then pointed to a side-by-side comparison chart in the brochure that indicated being cold all the time was one of the symptoms of a thyroid problem rather than regular depression. It made sense. This depression was more of a numbness, rather than a crippling sadness, and with the physical symptoms, she said, there was a good chance that antidepressants wouldn't help me nearly as much as treatment for my thyroid.Those were the labs she ordered, ones intended to measure my thyroid hormone levels. She was slightly concerned about the fact that she could feel a nodule on the left side of my thyroid, but there was a good chance it was just a benign fluid-sac that was another signal that my thyroid wasn't working like it should. Once she had the lab results, she would know better what I needed, but more than likely, I would need to take supplemental thyroid hormones. Once I got started with those, not only would my mental state improve, but I would probably feel physically better too, in ways I didn't even realize I was missing. That didn't actually sound too bad, although the idea of taking medication every day for the rest of my life wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to.She gave me a list of reliable websites, so I wouldn't freak myself out googling. She knows me so well. We schedule a follow up in two days, working around Karlie's schedule to make sure she can come too, I know I'm going to need her if I'm going to get diagnosed with something. I don't handle that kind of thing well."How do you feel, Tay?" Karlie asked me as we walked back toward the waiting area.I honestly didn't know. I still don't. Having something wrong with the hormones in your thyroid shouldn't be scarier than having something wrong with the chemicals in your brain, right? But I just can't shake the feeling that something's really wrong. Like it's going to take more than just a pill to make it better. When I told Karlie that, she just laughed and told me to shake it off.  We dropped our hands automatically the second we walked out of the office door. I hate that. We work so hard to keep each other a secret, and I understand the thousands of reasons why it makes sense to do what we do, but in moments like this, I really wish I could just hold my girlfriend's hand and not care who sees us. We haven't been seen together in ages, so we walk less than a block to this little diner near the Franklin Street place. I'm renovating that one right now, so we don't spend as much time around here as we used to. I miss it. I miss us. But I'm 'single' now, and Karlie and Josh are finally going to split after the election, and we're going to start easing back into the public eye, I think, so there's no time like the present.A couple fans came up and asked for pictures while I was waiting for my burger and fries, and I did my best to smile, but I saw the pics on instagram, and I know it doesn't reach my eyes. More than anything, I don't want to disappoint the fans. This funk I'm in, whether it's caused by serotonin or my thyroid, I have to get out of it, for them. And for the girl who sat across from me in a diner in Tribeca and ate a salad to be healthy, but also stole half my fries and dipped them in the chocolate shake we got to share, just to make me smile. She'll eat junk food for me. If that doesn't say true love...I haven't been on tumblr in ages, but I think it might be time for some taylurking. I need a distraction, badly, and I don't have any studio time planned this week. With fashion week, I have events to go to. Not as many as Karls, obviously, but I've made promises here and there. I want to see friends, this week, maybe try writing with a new co-writer. Anything so I'm not waiting with bated breath for the test results Thursday. There's literally nothing I can do to change the outcome, and there isn't anything I could have done to prevent whatever's going on. The one thing I know for sure, is this is one topic I won't be talking about when I call Mom. I have enough anxiety for the both of us, without worrying her. I didn't want to worry Karlie, but I'm glad she came.The fans on tumblr are right. She is the only one who can calm me down when I'm freaking out. She's at some event tonight, I'm not sure which one. She told me, but I'll admit I wasn't listening. I should get better at that. She's always putting me first, and I've been a pretty crappy girlfriend lately. But I love her more than anything. And I know she'll be here, whatever this turns out to be. Thyroid, depression, whatever. And now that I'm realizing just how crappy a girlfriend I've been lately, I know what I need to do, so I'm heading into the kitchen to invent some kind of healthy cookie with oatmeal and bananas and chocolate chips. Because nothing says 'I love you Karlie' more than baking her kookies. But in case that's not enough, I think I might still have some sexy lingerie she still hasn't seen ;)

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Today was...wow. Not the good wow. Not at first, anyway. It was nothing like I expected. I thank God every day that He brought me Karlie. I don't know how I would have gotten through today without her. And I have no freaking clue how I could possibly get through everything that comes next if she wasn't here. She's so strong. It's horribly cliché and I HATE that. As a songwriter it rubs me the wrong way, but she really is my rock. Right now, I'm writing this on the couch, curled up against her chest while she messes around on her phone. Just having her here makes things better. She makes me feel safe even though I feel like I'm about to fly apart into millions of pieces. I wish I could stay here forever.The morning started out boring. I made the coffee, while Karlie cut up fruit. She's scared of the Kurig, which is adorable, because she's not scared of anything. I diced tomatoes while she made egg white omelets, both with spinach and feta, hers with jalapenos, mine without, tomatoes added at the end, so they wouldn't get too squishy. The kind of ordinary morning you hope to have so often you take it for granted. You hope one day you stop noticing how graceful her hands are as she slices strawberries in half. That you stop getting lost in the way she tosses her head to get her blonde locks out of her face so she doesn't get cantaloupe juice in them. You pray a day comes that her laugh when a grape shoots out from under her knife and across the kitchen floor doesn't completely captivate you, because it's been so long, and you've loved it so much, it stops being remarkable.We work well in parallel. Last time Lily came over she laughed because she thinks we're more married than her and Caleb. We share the master bath in the morning, Karlie showers first while I brush my teeth and figure out what I'm going to wear. Then she dries her hair and brushes her own teeth while I get in the shower. Sometimes, like today, she'll dry my hair for me. There's something so relaxing about having someone else do your hair, especially when it's someone you trust. I've always done my own hair, even for shows and stuff since I first started out. But with Karlie it's like this little thing she can do to let me have a few extra minutes to chill out in the morning, and I love that. In return, sometimes I'll do her makeup, just because it's fun, and she says I'm better than some of the artists from her shoots. I figure she's talking about, like, the one where they sprayed her with glitter that she was so allergic to she had to go to the hospital, or some of the really out there looks that no one would wear on the street, but I take it as a compliment anyway.Mike came to the main floor to get us, where we'd paused to finish the last of our coffee before the appointment. The follow-up with Dr. Frye about my thyroid. Or antidepressants, depending on the results of the test. I'd managed to forget what was coming for a while. Karlie's good at that, distracting me. She knew I'd be freaking out, so she made sure we kept to our routine. Right up until we had to get in the car and drive over to the office. Sean drove, so Mike could escort us in. Last time, we were lucky. No one knew we were coming, or that I was there, and when we left, miraculously, no one caught us as we walked out. Going in, this time, I was one hundred percent terrified. There was no question we were going to be physically linked, I could only hope that no fan happened to be on the sidewalk to take photos.They didn't even make me sign in, in the waiting room. They just escorted Karlie and I directly to Dr. Frye's office. The one with the desk again. She'd rearranged the furniture, so that now we could see the door when we sat in the chairs, waiting for her to come in. My breath caught in my throat when she entered the room, followed by another doctor. Dr. Frye never wears a white coat, but this lady did. It's weird, how time slows down. I had time to register that the new doctor was really pretty. My type, if you will. Blonde, athletic, light eyes. Older than us, somewhere in her thirties, but still fairly young. Still. I knew there aren't any good reasons for your doctor to bring in someone else.I remember Dr. Frye saying "Hi, Taylor. Hello Karlie. This is Dr. Lauren Miller. She's an endocrine oncologist." After that, the room started spinning. I vaguely remember Karlie pushing my head between my knees and rubbing my back, telling me to breathe. My brain just kept repeating the word 'oncologist' over and over again. I've watched every episode of Grey's at least three times. I used to watch ER back in the day. But more than that, I've met Mom's oncologist on more than one occasion. Out of all the possible outcomes I imagined for today, doing my best 'Worst-Case Scenario Andrea' impression, none of them involved cancer. The scariest six letter word in the English language.Karlie took control of the rest of the appointment. Once I calmed down enough to sit up and properly greet Dr. Miller, she re-introduced herself. She has a firm handshake. Not so strong you feel like she's trying to break your hand, but confident. I like the idea of my doctor having a firm handshake. Seems confident, like she knows what she's doing. She told me she graduated from Duke's medical school, and I know that means she's incredibly smart, but that doesn't make this any easier. They said they don't know for sure, but based on the results of my lab tests, they'd like to get a biopsy of the nodule Dr. Frye felt at my last appointment. With my permission, Dr. Miller stepped up and felt the same spot. Her poker face isn't as good as Dr. Frye's.Together, they explained that my labs should have shown decreased thyroid hormone in my system, if the nodule was just that. The other symptoms I have been experiencing are consistent with hypothyroidism, which happens when your thyroid isn't making enough. But I don't have low levels of any of the chemicals they expected to be low. So, just to be safe, Dr. Frye called in Dr. Miller to consult. It is Karlie who asks questions. Karlie who schedules the biopsy and other tests for the next morning. Karlie who clears her entire schedule so she can, once again, accompany me to the hospital.
Taylor lost all color in her face the moment Dr. Frye mentioned Dr. Miller's specialty. Taylor is all too familiar with oncology. I didn't even have time to react to the idea that my girlfriend might have cancer before I realized she looked like she was going to pass out. I was closer, so I could react sooner than the two doctors. Even once her breathing returned to normal and she could sit up without having the room spin, her eyes had a dazed look in them and I knew her mind was either getting pulled in a thousand directions or completely blank and numb. She couldn't answer any of the questions from the two doctors, so I answered for her. She's just working in the studio right now, so I know she doesn't have anything planned. I've got some shows I said I'd watch for Fashion Week but right now I don't give a shit. They'll be just fine without me. I've never been so thankful that I chose not to really walk in anything in my life. Here I was worried I'd get bored just watching, but now I know the shows will go on without me there, and that will be okay. Taylor is what matters.
I don't remember leaving the office. I have no idea if we held hands. Karlie could have carried me for all I know. I do know we made it all the way back to the Cornelia place before I started crying. I'm twenty-six years old. How can I have cancer? I know cancer doesn't care who you are. What you do. How old you are. Cancer doesn't discriminate. But somehow, I thought with Karlie and I having both been through our mothers' battles, we would get off easily. I know it runs in families, but, I guess I thought we were special. I know we're not, but it never occurred to me that this could happen.Karlie has a handful of pamphlets spread out on the kitchen table. Neither of us has had the heart to look at them. I think she's probably researching on her phone but I just, I don't know if I want to know. I want to know what I'm facing, but I don't want to hear if it's bad. I've been visiting sick kids and adults in the hospital for ten years now. My mom was fortunate that her treatment didn't have that many side effects. But I've seen how often the treatment for cancer can be almost worse than the disease. I don't know if I can handle that. How will my fans take it if I lose my hair? If I can't hug them when I see them places because chemo messes with your immune system? I'm going to have to tell them, because if I don't they'll think I'm just being a bitch or something avoiding them. But telling people makes it real. I don't want it to be real.
I realized Taylor was crying when I saw the words on the page in her journal start to run with the drops landing on them. All I could do was put down my phone, take the journal and pen from her hand and hold her while she cried into my chest. It was awful knowing she was scared and hurting and I couldn't do anything. I would have taken this from her in a second but I couldn't. I couldn't fight this battle for her. I couldn't even really help. But God I wanted to. Looking at her that night, she looked so small, and I knew I wanted to be there for her through this, and through anything she might ever face. I'd known for a while, but this cemented it for me. So when she untangled herself from my arms to go to the restroom and wash her face after the tears stopped, I slipped into our bedroom to dig into my bedside table. This wasn't at all how I pictured this moment, but I also knew it was right.
I came back to find an empty living room after washing my face and blowing my nose, trying to get rid of the tears that I know will come again and again. I've never been good at controlling my emotions like that. Usually that helps me as a songwriter. But in that moment I was just worried that I'd freaked Karlie out and she was gathering her things because she couldn't handle me being sick. I could barely handle me being sick. So imagine my surprise walking into the kitchen and seeing Karlie out on the terrace lighting candles, trying to hastily create a romantic space.She turned when I opened the terrace door, a blue velvet box in her hand. I instantly recognized the music she had playing over the speakers. Ed's song, "Thinking Out Loud." And for the second time in twelve hours, my world slowed down for a moment, but this time in the best possible way. My Karlie had such love in her green eyes. She was wearing jeans and a flannel, her hair in it's trademark bun, and she just looked so much like herself, but better, like she was glowing with an inner light I can only attribute to love. She got down on one knee and reached out her hand to me and I was suddenly very aware that I was wearing leggings and an oversized sweater and no makeup and I had no idea when I'd last brushed my hair, and this was nothing like I thought it would be. "This isn't how I pictured this, Taylor. I wanted us to be dressed up, I wanted there to be champagne, I wanted us to be out, I wanted this to happen on one of the happiest days in our lives. But life happens and things change, and today I realized that I want to be there for you, everyday, no matter what curveballs live throws at us. We got hit with a big one today, maybe the biggest, and that only made me want to be there more. I can't fight this battle for you, but I can be there to hold your hand every step of the way, through this, and the rest of our lives if you'll let me. I love you, Taylor Alison Swift. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?"Karlie's words were halting, and spoken with teary eyes, but I knew what she meant. She wanted us to be a united front. She wanted me to know I wasn't alone. That she wasn't going anywhere, no matter what came next. And I wanted that, so much. So I did the only thing I could do. I said yes. She slid the beautiful diamond onto my finger and we held each other, tears streaming down our cheeks, and odd mix of happy tears and sad ones, knowing that this wasn't what we planned, what we envisioned for ourselves, but that with how things were playing out, there wasn't any other way. For one of the few times in my life, words failed me, so I led her by the hand to our bedroom, where I pulled a similar velvet box from under layers of cat pajamas."This isn't how I saw this either. But I love that we're on the same page. I have thought about what I would say over and over, but words can't really express the love I feel for you, especially in this moment when I fully expected you to run, and instead you doubled down, and I love you even more for that. Karlie Elizabeth Kloss, will you be MY wife?"I wasn't on one knee, I barely could form words, but she nodded anyway and let me put the ring on her finger. She told me that no matter what happened the next day, at the hospital, with all the tests, she wanted us to get married as soon as possible. If I turned out to be fine, this was enough of a scare to make her painfully aware that life was too short to waste pretending to be something we weren't, hiding behind men who were friends at best. And honestly, I'm with her. I hope the results of the tests tomorrow show I'm freaking out about nothing. But if they don't, then I'm glad to know I'll have her with me, no matter what.* * *We laid on the bed for a while, allowing the bliss of the fact that we were engaged to drown out the fear that I might be sick, just for a little while. I could tell Karlie was getting restless though, so I pushed back a little so we could be eye to eye. She tucked a strand behind my ear and gave me a small smile. "I think it's maybe time to call your family. They'll want to know you said yes, first of all. And they deserve to know what's going on. You would have been devastated if your mom had tried to hide her diagnosis from you. You owe her the same courtesy."I knew she was right. That didn't mean I liked it. Telling them was another step toward making it seem real. And I didn't even know for sure that it was a thing yet. But I had a feeling. I'd been feeling apprehensive about it from the moment Dr. Frye felt my throat, so I knew, inside, that the test results weren't going to be good.We conferenced in both my parents and Austin. After talking it over, we knew leading with the engagement probably wasn't going to work. The level of joy that I would have shown any other day at Karlie's proposal just wasn't there. They would have known instantly that something was wrong no matter what, so we might as well get the bad part out of the way first. Predictably, my mom wanted to drive right to the airport, the moment she heard I might be sick. She's my mom. I've never had to handle anything big without her by my side before. But when we told her about the engagement, she softened a bit. My dad has always been my biggest supporter through anything and everything, so he was full of words about how I can totally do this, and I'm going to be fine. Austin took it the hardest. He's like Karlie, always wanting to protect me from anything that might hurt me. Between mom and I, it's hard for him to deal with both of the ladies in his life having to fight something he can't protect us from.They all relaxed a bit when Karlie suggested we all meet out at the Rhode Island house over the weekend. She was serious about getting married quickly, and we'd talked about one day doing a surprise wedding by the pool out there one Fourth of July. We were going to have to work hard to get everyone there for the weekend on such short notice, but it would be worth it. So many reasons to do it the way we were talking about. Most important, we'd be married. Sounds basic, but important. If I really turned out to be sick, being married would make all the red tape of medical treatment easier, since Karlie was going to be the one by my side the whole time. Without a wedding, they might refuse to talk to her about me for privacy reasons, and if something drastic happened, I wanted her to be able to make decisions for me.But second, it would give the public and the media only one chance to drag us instead of three. They could say what they wanted about our marriage, but at least there wouldn't be so many chances for negativity. Otherwise, they could drag us for coming out, for dating, for getting engaged, for getting married. Now it would just be, out of nowhere, 'Holy Shit, Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss are Married!?' And any negative reaction would be quickly buried if I turned out to have cancer. Even the media isn't that cruel. Sad it might take that to turn them in my favor. But hate is real, and I've gotten a lot of shit over the past couple months, some for things I didn't do, others for things beyond my control. Okay, some of it was my fault. But this isn't. You don't get to choose who you love. It just happens.Calling her family was even harder, for me. Five Klosses, all concerned for me. The amount of love her family showed me from a distance, through a computer screen was almost overwhelming. But they were thrilled to hear we intended to get married. They've been rooting for us from the start, and I love that about them. They'll all be in Rhode Island on Saturday, come hell or high water, and I know that literally nothing could stop them. All Klosses are extremely stubborn when they know what they want. It's reassuring, in a way. Knowing that they'll be there for me, all of them, no matter what. But it's also overwhelming, having that kind of love and support come at me all at once.After that we texted friends like Abigail, and Brit, and Cara, and Jourdan and Lily and told them to get their butts to Rhode Island on Saturday or else. They thought they were coming for an end of summer party. I didn't want anyone else to know why we suddenly decided to elope. I wanted our wedding day to be happy, without the shadow of cancer looming overhead like a dark cloud. And I intended to do as much as I could to make that happen. The only shadow I was going to allow on that day was the fact that Selena couldn't be there. I always imagined she'd be by my side on my wedding day. The closest thing to a sister that I have. But I love her enough to understand why that couldn't happen, I only hoped that she would forgive me for not telling her. I didn't want her to be worrying about me when she needed to focus on herself. I did send her an e-mail. They'd told me she could get those sometimes. But I honestly hoped she wouldn't get it until after Saturday. I didn't want her trying to leave to get to me.I didn't want to, but Karlie insisted I call Tree and the rest of my team. They deserved to know what was going on, to have a chance to prepare for everything I was about to drop on the world. Honestly, they proved to me over and over why I picked them to work with me. They were so happy to hear Karlie and I were getting married, and so concerned to hear about my upcoming tests and the real possibility that I might have cancer. All they wanted was to support me. To make my wedding as amazing as it could be, to protect me from any media firestorms. They immediately set into motion an ingenious plan by Tree to get hundreds of wedding dresses to the Rhode Island house so we could have options. And they planned the roll out of information about the wedding so we wouldn't have to. We were all hoping the news wouldn't get out until we got my test results, so that both things could go out in one press release, but they planned for the possibility that we still wouldn't know for sure. We didn't know how long it would take to get the results of the tests, so we had no way to plan for that.Once again, Karlie had managed to distract me totally from upcoming medical tests. By the time we got done talking to the team, I was exhausted enough that even my anxiety about the next day couldn't keep me up. I was lucky enough to fall asleep with my head on Karlie's chest, knowing that my fiancé would be with me through whatever tests they'd scheduled for tomorrow, and that by this time on Saturday, she and I would be united not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of the world. It was easier to be brave knowing I had her by my side forever, no matter what. There is nothing in the world more reassuring than her heartbeat, and the feeling of her arms around me. Nothing.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Today started out so different than yesterday. I feel like huge chunks of my yesterday were lost in processing everything that's happening, the crazy overwhelming amount of scary stuff, but also the beauty of Karlie's simple proposal. That, I remember perfectly. I woke up with a smile on my face this morning, thinking of seeing the rings on our fingers, of seeing her smile. But there's so much I didn't really retain. I know Karlie scheduled me for a bunch of tests today, to find out the truth. It's not as completely mind-numbing as it was yesterday, but I feel like I'm still catching up on my own life. There's stuff I needed to do to prep for the tests today that she guided me through without even realizing.I thought she was just being super healthy, feeding me a really low-carb lunch and dinner. That kind of thing happens when you date a health-nut model during fashion week. Usually she'll throw in a carb, or something sweet for me, but I wasn't really paying attention. This morning when she handed me a huge bottle of water for breakfast, nothing else, I figured I'd better find out what I was in for.Three main tests. A PET scan, accompanied in Karlie's explanation by a lame joke that I should be taking Mere and Dibbles for that. Haha, a PET scan, get it!? That one prevents me from eating carbs the day before, and having anything but water this morning. They'll inject me with some kind of sugar-based tracer that will get picked up by any cancerous cells in my body, which the doctors will be able to see on the scan, and which will tell them if they need to get biopsies from places other than the thyroid nodule. While they're waiting for the tracer to settle in, they're going to do a laryngoscopy, which is where they feed a camera on the end of a tube up my nose and down my throat to watch my vocal chords move. I've had one before. Most singers have. It's not fun, I don't recommend it for giggles. But they want to make sure nothing in my thyroid is affecting my vocal chords, or the laryngeal nerve that controls them. I guess it runs close to the thyroid so they want to be extra cautious because of what I do for a living. After that, and the PET scan, they'll let me eat although after the tube has been in my throat all I'll want to swallow is soup. After lunch they'll actually do the biopsy of the nodule, and any other areas indicated by the PET results.It's going to be a long day. Karlie told me all of this yesterday, but somehow I didn't really hear any of it. My brain just shut off for a while. But she's going to be there to hold my hand when they'll let her, and that means the world to me. And when it's all over, we're going to the courthouse to get our marriage license. And the elation I feel about that almost outweighs the fact that I'm getting tested for cancer today. Almost. I am actually looking forward to walking into a public place with Karlie's hand in mine and her ring on my finger. Even if it is a hospital. For the first time in almost two years, it doesn't matter who sees us, or what they think. By Monday, everyone will know we're a couple. And that's freeing. I mean, I'm gonna take a shit-ton of heat from a lot of directions. I know that. But I hope that the majority of people will be happy for me, for us. And if they aren't, I know my team will do their best to shield me from that.What they can't shield me from, is the mounting anxiety I felt driving to the cancer institute. It's only six minutes by car from the Cornelia house. It felt much further, yet all too close. Karlie held my hand the whole way, gently rubbing her thumb back and forth, occasionally lifting my hand to her lips so she could gently kiss right next to her ring. Her way of reminding me that we're together in this. Rolling up to the entrance, I was suddenly possessed with the desire to pull an Olivia going into the carrier and splay my arms and legs out and refuse to let them pull me out of the door of the car. But of course, I didn't. I let my fiancée help me out the door like the gentlewoman she is, holding my hand to keep me from tripping over my own feet. I let her open the door to the building for me. And I let her wrap her arm across my back and guide me to the reception desk, where we checked in and got directions to the elevator.'The Institute for Head, Neck and Thyroid Cancer' read the sign over the desk on the sixth floor. Suddenly my mouth felt dry, and I didn't know how I was going to introduce myself, so of course, Karlie took over. "This is my fiancée Taylor. She's a patient of Dr. Miller's. She's here for a PET scan?" The receptionist directed us to a seating area and indicated that someone would be with us shortly.There were only two other groups in the waiting area, this early. An older couple, the husband wearing a scarf around his neck even though it wasn't that cold out, the wife knitting him another one while they waited. He looked tired, and not just in an old way. The other group was a mom with two daughters. She looked fine. Healthy. So did the girls. It took me a few subtle glances to detect a faint scar at the base of her throat. I hope she had what I have. I hope I come out the other side looking as good as she does. My face was all over the magazines on the coffee table. They were old, from the start of promo for 1989. One of the daughters, the older one, twelve maybe, recognized me. I saw her poke her sister, maybe nine, and then her mom, trying to point at me without actually pointing. I heard her mom tell her to shush, and I could watch the internal debate as miss twelve tried to figure out just how bad it would be if she approached me. Years of media training, and genuine love for my fans kicked in and I found myself smiling and waving. We took a picture, me and the two girls, there in the waiting room. It didn't even occur to me that the ring was visible as I draped my arms across their shoulders. I should have been concerned that someone would talk about where I was, what I was doing there. But I wasn't. And then a nurse in blue scrubs called my name, and I had to face the music.Once again, I had to change into one of those awesome gowns. They told me to have the opening at the front, and unlike the ones at Dr. Frye's office, this one had an extra panel so I felt a little less exposed. When they called me back, they put two bracelets around my right wrist. The pale blue one has my name and birthdate, and lists Dr. Miller as my doctor. The red one says I'm allergic to penicillin. Karlie held my hand as the nurse pricked my left index finger to check my blood sugar level. It has to be fairly low for the PET tracer to work right. I thought my heart would beat out of my chest as she started an IV in the back of my left hand, something I've only experienced one other time, when I had my wisdom teeth out years ago. But I did it. I was proud of the fact that I didn't even cry. The nurse told me Dr. Miller would be in to see me before they inject the tracer, and to introduce me to the ENT doctor who is going to do the laryngoscopy. Then she slipped out of the room, leaving Karlie and I alone.
Taylor did so well while the nurse got everything started. But as soon as it was just the two of us again, I could see in her beautiful blue eyes that she was starting to get scared again. I watched her nervously twist the hospital bracelets around her wrist. I saw her eyes drift to the needle in the back of her hand, and I saw a shift. It was so fucking hard to see her look so vulnerable. All I wanted was to make her feel strong. To help her understand that she can do this. That it's scary, and it sucks, and she doesn't deserve it but she can handle it. But words aren't my thing. They're hers. And I couldn't come up with any words, in that moment, that don't sound hollow and cliché, and patronizing. And she didn't need words that were just a band-aid. So once again, I acted on instinct. I climbed up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, gently kissing behind her ear. That's where Dr. Miller found us, a few minutes later when she came in to greet us and introduce the other doctor who would be doing tests on Tay.
I jumped a little when Dr. Miller knocked on the door. Karlie was behind me on the exam table, and she was gently stroking her thumb over the back of my hand. Karlie is more eloquent than she gives herself credit for. I think sometimes it intimidates her that I'm known for my songwriting and lyrics, but she usually knows the right thing to say. And in that moment, I think she knew it wasn't time for words. I didn't need her to assure me for the millionth time that I could do this. I needed her. Just her. And that was exactly what she gave me. Herself, her physical presence. And that was perfect in that moment. Dr. Miller noticed the rings immediately. Her face lit up in a smile, and she oohed and ahhed over them both, insisting on the chance to inspect each one and offer her sincere congratulations. For a doctor I never wanted to see ever again in life, I loved her for taking a few moments out of her day to see me as a person and not just a diagnosis. Not just the patient number on my hospital bracelet.She introduced me to Dr. Carol Goldsmith, the Institute's leading ENT surgeon. Dr. Miller explained that total removal of the thyroid is half of the recommended treatment for thyroid cancer. Should that turn out to be my diagnosis after these tests, Dr. Goldsmith would be the one to remove my thyroid. The other half is radiation, which she would tell me more about if I am actually diagnosed. Apparently Dr. Goldsmith is known for being able to get the most thyroid tissue with the least damage to surrounding structures, and Dr. Miller thinks she would do the best job of ensuring there isn't any lasting damage to my voice. Yet another effect of this I never considered. Songwriting is my true passion, and first love. But I've come to really relish the chance to perform my own songs. I love the fan interaction, and I've worked hard to become a stronger vocalist. I know it's not as much of a strength as my songwriting. But I should have thought of the fact that if the thyroid is so close to the voice box and the nerves that control it, there would be a possibility that there could be some interaction. I don't know how I would cope, to fight through and beat this, but not be able to sing anymore.
I read about the possibility of permanent vocal changes last night, of course. Taylor wasn't ready to really absorb any of the information, but I knew someone needed to be prepared to ask questions. That someone was me. It's the one thing I can do to help her through all of this. I hoped that maybe one outcome of the tests would be to rule out the possibility of damage. If I lost my voice, only Taylor would miss it. Models are seen and not heard most of the time. I can model, and code, and do charity work without ever speaking a word. But Taylor's voice is known around the world. I didn't say anything to her because I hoped it wasn't true, or it wouldn't affect her, or something. But there, in front of us, was a surgeon chosen specifically because she is known for her ability to preserve the voice of her patients. Which should have been a good thing, except it means they think she's going to be needed. To save Taylor's voice. And her life. In that moment, it truly hit me. I could lose her. I couldn't stop the tears from forming, but I fought not to let them fall.
It was weirdly reassuring to see Karlie break. She had been so concerned about me, and supporting me, and taking care of me, that she hadn't really processed all of this for herself. She let me try to process, and I guess that was the right thing to do since all of this is happening to me, inside my body. But seeing her tear up as we listened to Dr. Miller and Dr. Goldsmith talk about what they planned to do to take care of me and make sure I beat cancer (if I had it, but it was becoming more and more obvious to me that they were fairly sure I did, they just needed tests to see what kind and how bad it was) and could resume my career afterward actually gave me strength. Because suddenly I wasn't just doing it for me. I was doing it for her.In the midst of all these realizations, the nurse came in to inject the tracer into my IV. The room was already freezing, but the spread from the injection was like ice. I could actually feel it going from my hand up my arm, all the way to my shoulder. The nurse said that was normal, but it felt incredibly weird to feel cold coming from inside me instead of outside. Once the cold passed, I waited to feel different. It seems like, if something slightly radioactive is flowing in your veins, you should feel somehow different. But I didn't. The nurse checked in on me a couple of times, just to make sure I wasn't allergic to anything, I guessed. After about ten minutes, during which Karlie tried to pull herself together, an orderly came to wheel me over to the otolaryngology suite.Dr. Goldsmith was in the room already when they wheeled me in, with the equipment all set up. Karlie had trailed behind me, unable to make herself sit alone in a room, wondering where I was and how I was doing. Dr. Goldsmith saw her come in, and asked if she got queasy easily. Karlie wasn't sure how to answer that, but said she didn't think so, so Dr. Goldsmith invited her to sit in and watch. "Want to see what's happening inside your fiancée when she sings?" Karlie nodded, so now I was going to do this with an audience.The numbing stuff they put up your nose and in the back of your throat tastes so nasty. I will never forget it. If you've ever sprayed bitter apple stuff to stop your dog from chewing on things, it's like that but worse. But it did keep me from gagging when they shoved a camera at the end of a tube up my nose and into my throat. It's a weird sensation. I had to lay back on an exam table to allow Dr. Goldsmith to feed it in, but once it got into position where she could see my vocal chords, I had to sit up because she needed me to sing so she could see how they moved. You can sing lying down, of course, but it's harder to support your singing from the diaphragm like that.She told me to sing whatever, it didn't matter. I could only think of one song. "One look, dark room, meant just for you..." I sang it the way I wrote it, making it clear that it's Karlie's song. She needed more vocal range, after that one, but I couldn't think of a single song that would stretch my range. Karlie pulled up a favorite video on her phone, the one from when I was a mentor on The Voice and rendered Adam Levine helpless by singing from Rent. So I started through the soundtrack of that. First time it has ever been easier to sing songs I didn't write myself. We skipped around the soundtrack. Dr. Goldsmith was a fan of the show. Karlie isn't much of a singer, but we had fun concluding with "Take Me or Leave Me." I almost forgot that I was in the middle of a test.The good news, after our musical interlude, was that Dr. Goldsmith saw nothing abnormal in the movement of the vocal folds, which is apparently the preferred term for what the rest of us call vocal chords. If I need surgery, there shouldn't be much risk, since the nerve isn't being affected by whatever the nodule turned out to be. That in itself was a relief. My singing voice and career, whatever turned out to be left of it after the pretty disastrous course of the summer, were likely going to be fine, as long as I was.They wheeled me directly to the imaging suite for the PET scan. I had to take off my necklace and my ring. Karlie put the ring she had given me onto her right ring finger, opposite the one I gave her on the left. The necklace I was wearing was the one she gave me early on in our relationship, the T pendant that matches her K one. She put it around her own neck for safekeeping, putting our two pendants next to each other. They let her go into the room with the radiologist who would be running the test. She could talk to me from there, and also play music for me. It was cold in the room, like they'd warned me, so they let me lay on the table under a blanket. I wasn't allowed to move other than to breathe, and they told me at certain times to hold my breath, to let them get clearer pictures around my chest. But just before they actually started, I heard Karlie's voice over the speaker, saying "I love you, Tay." I wasn't supposed to talk, but I curled my middle and ring fingers to my palm and flipped my hand over so she could see. ASL for I love you.
Twenty minutes seemed like forever, watching the table Taylor was lying on move agonizingly slowly through a huge white donut. I was so proud of her though, she didn't move a muscle, other than letting her hand relax after she told me she loved me too. I put on a playlist from her phone to keep her mind occupied, but I had to skip a couple songs because I wasn't sure she could refrain from dancing along. And I skipped her own songs, because she can't help it, her fingers will form the chords on guitar or play the air piano when she gets into them. It's adorable, but I certainly didn't want to make her lay there any longer because she moved.
When the test was over, I was starving. They hadn't let me eat yet. It was only about 10:30 in the morning but I was just about ready to eat my own arm if that was all I could get. My throat was a little sore from the laryngoscopy, but not too bad, and I actually felt like I could probably eat. A nurse came in to cap my IV so I could get lunch without taking a rather noticeable bag of fluid with me. They were going to have to reattach it later, but at least I got to get dressed again. Karlie slid the ring back onto my finger, and I had to smile. That will never get old. She let me borrow her zip-up so I could pull the ridiculously long sleeves down over the hospital bracelets on my wrist, and the needle in the back of my hand.We walked to a Mediterranean place a couple blocks from the hospital. Mike had been chilling in the waiting area for ages while I got all the tests done, so we invited him to join us for lunch, not just to make sure people left us alone, but to have something to eat and hang out. He's practically family. He's seen things no one should have to see. And I know he would do anything for me. But because his job is to be like my shadow – silent, but always there – we don't always really talk. He sat at the table in such a way to make sure no one could take pictures of me or Karlie and actually get good ones. It made me feel invisible in a good way. I could have a meal with my fiancée and just eat, uninterrupted.The walk back was torture. The last test, the only one that stood between me and an official cancer diagnosis awaited. And it was the one with the most needles involved, since they would be using something called fine-needle aspiration to take the samples. If I was lucky, the PET scan would have shown almost no activity outside my neck, and I wouldn't need many samples. Karlie could tell that my steps were slowing, and she slid her arm around my waist to encourage me to keep going. All it took was a whisper in my ear about our appointment at the courthouse and how the sooner we got through the next part of the day, the sooner we could get the marriage license and head to Rhode Island. Suddenly I couldn't get there fast enough.It took less time to get ready this time, slipping out of my clothes and back into the hospital gown. Giving Karlie the ring again for safe keeping. The room they put me in this time featured a large computer monitor on one wall. It was larger, Karlie could sit in a chair without feeling like she was taking up the whole room. I was chilly, so she slipped her zip-up around my shoulders while we waited. They'd told me that Dr. Miller would be the one performing the biopsies, but a nurse would re-attach my IV before she came in. I was to expect an assisting nurse as well, who would hand things to Dr. Miller. I knew the moment Dr. Miller, Dr. Goldsmith, and the radiologist from the PET scan all came in, that this was it. They didn't even need the biopsy to confirm. Karlie had been looking at her phone, sending messages to her team telling them that she might need them to cancel upcoming shoots, appearances at the fashion weeks overseas, and to keep working with my team regarding the wedding, so she didn't see them come in. She gave a surprised squeak seeing them all assemble.The radiologist slipped a flash drive into the computer and started loading images onto the screen in front of us. I couldn't help but gasp seeing the image in front of me. A normal PET scan shows red in the area of the brain, oranges around the heart, and blues and greens most everywhere else. Outside the brain and heart, red and orange usually show where cancerous tissue is growing. Blues and greens are normal tissue. I had to assume that the image in front of me was of my scan. It was lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Patches of red were everywhere. In my neck, where I'd come to expect, but also under my arms, where my legs meet my body, even down by my knees. Karlie was drawn to the image like a moth to a flame, and I could see that she knew, just as I did, what this meant. I didn't just have cancer. I had either really advanced or really aggressive cancer, and I was in for the fight of my life. I should have been scared. I should have cried, or screamed, or thrown my phone across the room. But instead I felt somewhat resigned. I was going to do whatever I could to beat this.
I expected to see fear when I looked into Taylor's eyes. I expected tears, like the ones I felt in my own eyes. What I got was a look of steel. The strength I knew Taylor had inside her was focused, in that moment, in her eyes, and I knew that in spite of the horrible image in front of me, she was going to fight like hell to change it. I knew we weren't done with tears, for either of us. I knew that. And in that moment, I knew that marrying her was the best choice I could ever make, because despite what I knew people would say, I wasn't marrying her thinking I would become a young widow. I was marrying her because we would grow old together, and look back on this time as just something we had to push through, like any other trial in our marriage.
Karlie's eyes were teary when I met them, but when we made eye-contact she made an effort to smile, and mouthed "you've got this." The doctors knew we knew. We were quite clearly affected by what was on the screen, so they didn't waste much time on explanations. They simply explained that they still needed biopsies to type and stage the cancer, and to determine the best course of treatment, which they would explain on Wednesday of the next week, at my next appointment. They would need that time to come up with a game-plan. But nonetheless, the diagnosis was confirmed. I definitely had cancer.They let Karlie sit up by my head for the biopsies. She had to change into scrubs, put her hair under a cap and wear a mask, but she got to hold my hands while they stuck a needle into my neck, a scary prospect for anyone, but especially a singer. She held them while they gently opened my gown to get access to the lymph nodes under my arms, and the ones below my waist. She kissed my forehead through the mask and told me how well I was doing, how much she loved me, how strong I was. When the biopsies were over she produced a cat band-aid for the nurse to put on my hand where the IV had been, something she brought from home to make me smile.We put on our normal clothes, side by side, without a word. But as I picked up my purse, preparing to pull out my phone and start dealing with the million things I needed to do to prepare my team for the fallout, she stopped me. She kissed me on the lips, hard, the kind of kiss that would usually lead to taking off clothes in the privacy of one of our homes, but just as I started to deepen it, she pulled back and looked me in the eyes. She told me I was the strongest woman she knew, and that she was proud to be becoming my wife. And then she slipped my ring back onto my finger, unclipped the pendant from her own neck and around mine. She took my hand and led me out into the street, where a car waited to take us to the courthouse. And as we slid into the car, she told me that she hoped we could push this aside and enjoy the weekend. We had plenty of time to dwell on what was happening, but worrying wasn't going to help me get better. Living my life and enjoying my wedding would. And I knew she was right, so as we pulled out into Manhattan traffic, I resolved to do just that.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

You would think that after such a momentous day in our lives, that it would be late at night when we left the hospital, but it was actually only about 1:30 in the afternoon. A good thing, too, since I had about thirty messages and missed calls from Tree, members of my team, my parents, my brother, Karlie's sisters, and several friends. The most important one came from Tree, reading "YOU HAVE TO GO TO RI TO GET THE MARRIAGE LICENSE!!!!"Karlie and I had been planning to go to a courthouse in Manhattan together. She's an official New Yorker and I both own and rent property here, although my official state of residence is still in Tennessee, so we thought New York would be the place to apply to get married. Turns out that only works if we intended to also get married here. Since we're getting married in Rhode Island, we have to get a license IN RHODE ISLAND. We were planning to road trip it to the house up there later today. It's only a two and a half hour drive, and we thought it would take us back to Big Sur and all the lovely memories from that trip. That trip got a journal of its own, complete with the original lyrics to the song I tacked on to the deluxe version of 1989 just for Karlie, after she woke one night on the trip to find me up and writing, gave me a sleepy gaze, told me 'you're my best friend' and then went back to sleep. That neither of us had a stitch of clothing on at the time is mostly irrelevant.If we drove straight there, we probably could have made it before the Town Clerk's office closed at 4, but we didn't want to take that risk. Neither of my planes was even in New York. They're housed in Nashville and I had one flying all over the country gathering Klosses (plus Austin, since he was in California and so was Kristine), the other was picking up the rest of my family, Abigail and Brit. The rest of our friends were making their own way to Watch Hill. So I may have pulled a diva move. I rented a helicopter. And then I asked a couple of my guys to drive our stuff up to the house so Karlie and I, along with Sean, could fly up right away. Thank God Tree had done her homework. Eloping is a lot harder than you might expect when you actually want your friends and family to be there, and you actually want to have a ceremony, with white dresses and flowers and everything.Tree was already in Westerly and met us at the airport. We'd put her in charge of the details because she knows me better than anyone outside of Karlie. Maybe even better than Karlie, because when I'm planning to surprise Karls, she's usually the one I tell, and enlist to help me. I knew only that I wanted Karlie to be at the end of the aisle when I got there. Normally, I would be in charge of every detail of something as important as our wedding. If we'd tried to plan ahead, it probably would have taken years to get it all put together. Instead, I had less than forty-eight hours to invite guests, find dresses, get flowers, get a license, get someone to marry us, and get someone to play music. At that point, I wasn't sure I would never know how she made it happen, but I was overjoyed to get out of that helicopter and see not one but two gingers standing there.I squealed and threw myself across the tarmac into Ed's arms. I will never know how Tree managed to get hold of him on his stupid flip phone and get him to the house in Rhode Island on such short notice, but I was ecstatic to see him. Wedding music, check. Not only that, but one of my best friends was going to be there and be able to be part of my wedding. I was a little concerned that the wedding party might be larger than the guest list, at this point, but I didn't care. I just wanted as many people we loved to be there as possible. The moment I released him, Ed hustled over to Karlie to give her a congratulatory hug and a very brotherly lecture about her intentions with me. Given what he walked into immediately after the Victoria's Secret fashion show in 2014 when all three of us were part of it, his attempts to protect my virtue were entirely facetious, but somehow he managed to present it with an entirely straight face. An impressive feat, considering how much his face resembled a tomato that night two years ago. I'm not sure he'll ever be the same. Karlie, for her part, tried valiantly not to laugh. She failed, hard, but she tried.Tree gave Karlie and I an official Rhode Island Marriage Worksheet to fill in together. We began with an argument. I decided Karlie should be party A, since she proposed first, and I should be party B. She thought I should be party A because I'm older, and my name is going to be first when we hyphenate, while she should be party B. Ed gave us about five seconds to duke it out before he took the paper and threatened to fill it out in his own chicken scratch if we didn't get it together. I'm party A, fyi, on our official application. Because Ed and Tree agreed I should be, because it's my house. Which was as good a reason as any. We both checked "bride" on the form, although we weren't sure if they expected "spouse." There weren't any directions, so we figured we got to pick.From there it got easier. Date of Application we knew. Current name and name on birth certificate, so far so good. For mailing address we had to think, because we don't receive mail at any of our residences, but we went with my mailing address in Tennessee since we're going to both be official Nashville residents after we get married. The reasons why are complicated, but basically it benefits me to continue to maintain my official residence in Tennessee, and they don't actually require me to spend any time there, as long as I keep my voter registration and driver's license registered to my house there. We put my current residence there as well, but Karlie's in New York, to match her license. No arguments or decisions to make for state of birth and date of birth, those are pretty set in stone. We had to fill in information on each of our parents, full name and birthplace for each. We joked about the lines about previous marriages (real answer, of course, none for either of us). We had to skip the signature lines until we were actually in front of the clerk. Then came a question we didn't actually know the answer to – name, address and phone number of clergy or judge who will perform the ceremony.Tree had another surprise. Rhode Island allows church elders to qualify as clergy for the purpose of marrying people. And, it just so happens, my label president, Scott, is an elder in his church in Nashville. And, even better, the Presbyterian church recognizes same sex marriages. There was something oddly fitting about having Scott marry us. I'll never forget sitting in his office, discussing his offer to sign teenage me to his fledgling label, and knowing I didn't want to sign with him if I couldn't be myself. We talked about my love of songwriting, and the fact that I wasn't interested in a singing career if I couldn't sing my own songs. He didn't have a problem with that. He loved that I was assertive enough to walk away from my first record deal, and that I was willing to demand what I thought I was worth. He thought I would need that if I was going to succeed in this business as a teenage singer songwriter in a genre that venerated the old guard and was resistant to young up and comers. Especially on a fledgling label. But I still didn't feel it would be ethical to sign without telling him about the biggest skeleton in my closet. The one that I knew would rock the country music world a lot more than the fact that I was fifteen, female, and wrote my own songs.For his part, Scott signed me with the full knowledge that most of my songs were about girls. That my dating life mostly revolved around girls. He never told me I couldn't be out. He was willing to let me be me from the beginning, and all of me. He was a lot more comfortable with who I was than I was, back then. I was the one who wanted my career to be about my songwriting, and not about the gender of the people the songs were about. I was the one who knew that being an out teenage country singer was a one way ticket to being a one-hit wonder. I didn't want to have my entire Wikipedia article be about my sexual orientation, rather than the songs I'd written. We all know the public relations strategy we used to combat that ultimately led to that very thing, only worse, because so little of it was true, but I couldn't foresee that at fifteen. I couldn't foresee that I would try so hard to fall in love with one of those guys, that it would allow him to hurt me. And none of that was Scott's fault. So to come full circle, ten years into my career, and have my label president, the first adult I came out to who accepted me immediately, one hundred percent, at face value, be the one to unite me with my wife, was incredible.We had to list the two official witnesses, so we picked Ed and Lily. Lily introduced us, officially, just before the 2013 fashion show. She told us both she thought we would be friends, but it was very obvious very quickly that it was a setup and she knew we were each other's type. She fully intended for us to become an us. The foresight she had was incredible. And Ed has been a champion of our relationship from the moment he and I were writing together and he realized I was writing love songs again, for the first time in years. He was there for the relationship before Karlie, for the fallout when it ended. And he was thrilled when I found love again, even more thrilled when he saw us together and knew it was real.I think my favorite part of the whole clerk's office experience was the fact that the clerk initially had no idea who we were. I thought she did, at first, because she seemed so gosh darn excited to see us come in. Turns out she was just pretty new to the job and we were her first same-sex couple. I wasn't wearing any makeup, my hair was pulled back, and I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and my glasses. Apparently I was pretty unrecognizable. The recognition that dawned on her face as she read the application was priceless. She promised not to say a word to anyone unless faced with a public records request, until Sunday morning. By then we would be married, and it wouldn't matter. She signed off and presented us with the official license with her congratulations to us both.By this point I was starving again, so the four of us ordered pizza to pick up on the way back to the house. I wish I'd been in the gas station when Ed walked in there to pick up beers for us to enjoy. It's not every day Ed Sheeran wanders into a hole in the wall to buy beer, but he's got a weird sixth sense for picking out obscure local beers that are amazing, so we let him use his talents to their full advantage. Tree went in to get the pizzas, we didn't want to risk anyone else getting recognized. We'd already been out and about in the town enough for one day, given that we were hoping no one would notice the sudden influx of famous faces around town over the next day or so. For the Fourth of July parties we never worried about it. The whole world knows it's a tradition. But for this we wanted some semblance of privacy.I caught a glimpse of a sea of white in the living room when we got to the house, but I was too hungry to explore wedding dresses just yet. It was nice, for a while, just eating pizza and sharing beer with friends. Yes, even though she works for me, and sometimes has to keep me in line, I do think of Tree as a friend. She knows everything about me, every skeleton in my closet. I trust her with things I would only tell to friends or family. And right in that moment, she was acting as my friend, helping me throw together a wedding. Our families were expected to eat on the planes and get in so we could all share a rehearsal dessert rather than a rehearsal dinner. Tree knew the details of why we were rushing to the altar, but Ed didn't, and she treated it like we'd simply decided to elope, giving no indication that there was any other motivation. With so much to do and plan and pull together, it wasn't hard to stay away from the topic. Ed's eyes started to glaze over pretty early in the discussion anyway, and he decided to take his beer out to the pool deck until some more of the guys showed up.By the time we finished eating, drinking, and figuring out how we were going to fit months of preparation into the next twenty four hours, the front door burst open and the in-laws had arrived. Our families get along well, and have since we first introduced them. The moment my parents met Karlie, they fell almost as much in love with her as I did. Austin had to be my brother and threaten her within an inch of her life if she hurt me, but ultimately he could see that we were in love. And that she had fallen hard and fast for me, and that maybe if someone was going to get hurt, I was maybe going to be the one causing it. Now, Austin and Kimby love to go at it every time they're within striking distance. They bicker like they grew up together. He's adopted Kariann as his baby sister, and I pity anyone who asks her out – I think he's more protective of her than he is of me, if that's possible. My mom and Tracy bonded almost instantly, swapping recipes and sharing stories of the two of us as kids. And our dads can argue sports for hours, even if most of the time I have no idea what they're talking about.Abigail, Matt, Brit and Ben all arrived with the families as well. Most of our friends have the means to get themselves to Rhode Island on extremely short notice, but I refused to force my pre-fame best friends to figure it out. Matt and Ben were thrilled to head out back with the dads and Austin to go find Ed and make a larger dent in the beer supply. I think they were throwing themselves a bachelor party, despite the absence of an actual bachelor in this wedding. Maybe a pre-run for Ed or Matt? Once I'd hugged each of the new arrivals and thanked them for coming, Abigail pulled me aside. I expected it, of course. I'd toyed with letting my family break the news to her on the flight in, but concluded that it wasn't fair to her or them. I was surprised that Brit didn't join her, but Brit's family is very 'don't ask, don't tell' so I couldn't entirely fault her for letting Abigail do the interrogating."What the hell, Tay?" She demanded as soon as we were away from the rest of the guests. "I've known you for a long time, and if there's one thing I know, it's that Taylor Swift doesn't just run off and get married. You don't have a spontaneous bone in your body. I'd ask if you were pregnant, but despite the serious problems with sex ed in this country, I know Karlie can't knock you up, so what gives?"I struggled to meet her eyes. I didn't want to do this, on the eve of my wedding. But I couldn't lie to her either. I forced my gaze to hers. "I have cancer, Abigail." I didn't want to watch the emotions shift in her face, from slightly angry, to sad, to pitying. But I did. "That's why we're rushing down the aisle. We want to get married before I start treatment. I didn't want to tell you, because I don't want that to be what everyone thinks about when they think of my wedding day. I'm stuck with the fact that the media and fans and people who don't know me are always going to link the two, even if Karlie and I stay married until we're eighty. But I wanted there to be some people in my life who just remembered me in a white dress, you know?""Does Tree know?" I nodded. "And Ed?" I shook my head. "Brit?" Another shake. "When were you planning to tell us?" There was a slight bite to her words and I knew she was using anger to mask fear."Sunday. We are planning to tell everyone on Sunday. Can you try to let it go until then?" I took her hand in mine, and I tried to give her my best pleading look.She made herself meet my eyes, despite the tears welling up in hers. "Are you, like, dying? I have to know."I shook my head. "Not if I have anything to say about it." She laughed, a short, rueful laugh, but a laugh. And I knew she was okay. We were okay. I told her she could have a few minutes to pull herself together, but then I expected her to help me pick out a dress from the living room. She promised to help me pick a good one, and also not to tell any of the other guests the real reason for the impromptu wedding. I conceded she could tell Matt if he would keep it on the down low as well.Karlie and her sisters had already started going through the gowns in the living room, picking out options and laying them aside. We'd agreed that we didn't want to see each other in our dresses until the ceremony. In fact, she was going to room with her sisters, and I was going to room with Abi and Brit, while the boys were going to have boys night out in the pool house, so Karlie and I could try our best to avoid each other the entire day, right up until we actually got married. One small nod to tradition in our crazy non-traditional wedding.
When Abigail pulled Taylor away, I had a feeling she was asking what was going on. They don't really keep secrets from each other, so I knew Tay was going to tell her. We'd agreed that if anyone asked, and we didn't feel like we could deflect the question, we wouldn't lie. We just were going to avoid the subject as much as possible until Sunday. But with my mom and sisters getting me alone, there wasn't much chance of total avoidance. I just wanted to try on beautiful white dresses and decide whether to go traditional or couture with my gown. But they wanted to grill me. We hadn't given them much detail when we called them, because we hadn't had any, yet. My mom wanted to know how Taylor was doing. Kariann, infinitely perceptive, was the one to ask how I was handling it all. Kimby, who usually doesn't shut up, didn't have much to say, but wrapped her arms around me and squeezed tight. Even with my family I felt like I needed to be the strong one. I'd broken in front of Taylor earlier, more than once. And even though I knew that I would again, a hundred times, I didn't want to do it now. They could sense that I didn't want to talk about it, so Kristine finally asked the million dollar question "What is the prognosis?" Dad is a retired doctor, so we've been hearing about patients our whole lives. He worked in the ER though, so I don't know anything, really, about cancer treatments or anything. I was four when Mom was diagnosed and treated, so I don't remember a lot from back then either.

"The five-year survival rate for thyroid cancer is ninety-seven percent. But it's spread, a lot, and I don't know how bad that is. I don't know how that changes things, because it hasn't been typed or staged yet. But I do know that Taylor is going to fight as hard as she can, and that if heart has anything to do with it, she's going to be fine. It's just going to suck in the meantime."

After that, they let me just pick out gorgeous gowns to try on. I found the perfect one on the third try. It was a simple column style sheath in white satin, strapless with a v-cutout to show more cleavage, which I loved because Taylor is totally a boob girl. The back had a bunch of buttons and a little bit of a train. There was a blush sash with some decorative Swarovski crystals in the center. Simple and elegant. I knew Taylor would love it. I wasn't sure if I wanted to wear a veil or not, but I thought Taylor would like it if I did, at least for the ceremony. I decided to make the final decision the next day, once the hair team arrived, because I hadn't decided what I wanted to do with my hair either.
I had to be careful not to see what Karlie was picking out. There was a sea of dresses in the room, rack after rack, so as long as I turned away when I heard her voice, I could mostly avoid her. I didn't want to know what she considered even. I want her dress and her hair and everything to be a complete surprise. I knew she'd found the one though. I was in the midst of trying on a definite no for my mom and Abigail and Brit when I heard her mom gasp, and Kimby clapping, and Kariann and Kristine gushing. I was so excited to see what she'd chosen. My mom was laughing hysterically at the dress I'd chosen, which wouldn't even zip over my boobs. I'm usually sample size, but some designers prefer models with flatter chests, and since most of these dresses came straight from the fashion week runways, they were not all designed with actual woman shapes in mind. Abigail had my boobs in both her hands and was trying to squish them so Brit could zip the back, but it just wasn't happening. Tree took a picture of it, it's still in my phone somewhere, the four of us clearly about to pee ourselves.My perfect dress was the fifth one I tried on. Allover lace, v-neck in the front, with the underlay a white sweetheart neckline strapless mini-dress, but with the lace floor-length and forming a train in the back. In the back, the lace met at the nape of my neck, but then most of the back was totally open to my bare back, with the dress resuming just above my butt, the opening was kind of an oval shape. The dress hugged my butt just a little before flowing out into the train, chosen because Karlie is totally a butt girl. I knew I wanted to wear a veil, but a light one, without many layers, because I wanted the back of the dress to be visible.Dresses selected, Karlie and I joined our families in the dining room for dessert. Scott had arrived while we were finalizing our dress choices. It was dark outside, and most of the guys were several sheets to the wind, but Scott had only had one beer, so we were ready to rehearse the ceremony. We went through it a couple times, but to be honest, we wanted most of it to be a surprise. I was amazed at how well Scott blended the traditional ceremony he'd downloaded off the internet and traditions we wanted to incorporate. He'd actually found a tumblr post about twin flames (yes, we see that stuff, you never know when we're lurking) that he used part of to introduce the unity candle. We planned to write our own vows, but we also wanted to recite the traditional ones. Another blend of traditional and new.By the time we'd eaten dessert and gone over everything, it was late. Karlie and I had a lot to do the next day: we still hadn't chosen flowers to carry down the aisle, as far as I knew we didn't have a wedding cake yet (minor panic!), and all our wedding guests and the rest of the bridal parties still had to arrive. Plus, we both had to get hair and makeup done, and mine was going to take ages since I wanted to get extensions so I could wear my hair up to show off the back of the dress. I kissed my fiancée goodnight, and we split off to our respective wings of the house.*          *          *It was raining when I woke up to the sound of Cara loudly demanding coffee at eight in the morning. She'd flown a red-eye to get here for the wedding, and while I was thrilled to know she'd arrived, I didn't need to know that at eight am. The rain gave me minor heart palpitations until Brit came in carrying a tray of cinnamon rolls and fruit that my mom had made for anyone who was around to eat. I was willing to bet Karlie had helped her, after already having run like five miles. On the tray was a note, written in Karlie's distinctive hand."Dearest Taylor,I know you're freaking out because it's raining, but don't worry, it's going to stop by ten, plenty of time for the guys to put out the chairs. We didn't want them out too early anyway, given that this whole thing is supposed to be a secret, at least until tomorrow.We're getting married today. I can't believe it! I love you so much, Taylor. Today is going down as one of the happiest days of my life. I want you to know that. I can't wait to see my beautiful bride walk down the aisle.Enjoy your breakfast – by dinner time, we'll be wife and wife!All my love,Karlie"Cara burst in with Lily close on her heels, and suddenly the whirlwind day had begun. For Karlie, choosing a bridal party was easy. Kristine, Kimby, Kariann, Jourdan and Derek, acting in his capacity as big brother, would stand at her side. For me, I knew Austin would be there, a nice balance to Derek. And Brit, since we've known each other since birth. Abigail, because nothing important in my life has happened since I was fifteen without her having some part in it. I wanted Lily to have a part in it, since she was the one who brought us together. That left one slot, the one I would ordinarily have given to Selena. But choosing Cara was perfect. She was so honored to be asked, you'd think I'd given her a Nobel Prize or something. She's wild, and sometimes rough around the edges, but she's an amazing friend, intensely loyal, and exactly who I wanted standing next to me on one of the most important days in my life.American Music Award Artist of the Year. Emmy Award winner. Two-time ACMA Entertainer of the Year. Ten-time Grammy Award winner. First woman to win two Album of the Year Grammys. All of these are titles that have meant the world to me when I got them. But the title that mattered most, right then? Wife. All those statues meant little next to the simple eternity band I was getting that day. Mrs. Swift-Kloss. Mrs. Taylor Swift-Kloss. I was honestly giddy as I escaped into the shower, half expecting Cara to follow me. Wouldn't have been the first time.I wrapped a silky robe reading 'Bride' across the back around myself once I was mostly dry, leaving my hair wet. Harry Josh was doing both of our hair, a favor mostly to Karlie, though he was doing more work on my hair than on hers. With eight ladies in our wedding party, we'd decided to let them each choose their own bridesmaid dress. Everything was going to be tea-length and pastel, but other than that, we didn't care. And in the end, I loved a blazer and capri-length pantsuit in baby blue so much on Cara that I let go of the tea-length dress mandate very quickly. Once each of the girls had chosen their outfit for the ceremony, we sat around in robes, drinking champagne, nibbling on whatever food the girls could nab from the kitchen, getting hair, and nails, and makeup done, the works. My hair took ages, but looked totally natural when it was done.We'd asked some of Karlie's favorite photographers from some of her shoots to come take stills of us as we got ready and during the ceremony, and I'd gotten Joseph Kahn to bring some of his camera guys to take video. He may post problematic tweets on the daily, but he's a genius in the editing room, and I needed him to pull out a miracle. The goal was to create two short films out of the footage overnight – one that could be set to the original recording of You're in Love, and one that was simply a wedding video. The one we would give to whichever media outlets Tree had selected to spread the word. The guys all flitted in and out while we were getting ready, making sure they had shots of everything, including the time Cara told a raunchy joke and champagne nearly came out of my nose.I never would have imagined Cara would be the one to cut me off, but at about two, she took the champagne out of my hand and gave me a bottle of water. The wedding was to begin at four, and she was already worried I wouldn't remember it. She had no way to know that I would remember every moment of this day no matter what. But I appreciated her keeping tabs on me just the same. I felt like we'd talked a ton, but no one had questioned the timing at all. They just accepted that out of nowhere, Karlie and I were ready to dive in head first and tie the knot. And I loved that. I needed to just sit around and get a little tipsy and hang out with my friends and spend an entire day focusing on my beautiful wife-to-be and our wedding and not, at all, on the test results I was going to get on Wednesday. So we talked instead about when they each concluded Karlie and I were getting serious. When they first witnessed the fact that we were deeply, madly in love. Anyone who came in had a story to share, a memory of the two of us together, even the hair and makeup teams. It was fun reminiscing, and it definitely got me in a wedding mood. My mom was busy overseeing the details alongside Tree, but made sure to drop by every now and then to check up on my progress toward getting ready. When I thought I was done, she stepped in with a pair of my Grandmother Finlay's earrings to be my something old and something borrowed. Most of what I was wearing was new, and some of the flowers in the bouquet I'd chosen were a pale shade of blue to complete the rhyme.
I spent the afternoon with my sisters and Jourdan, getting a bit more tipsy than was probably recommended. At one point we threw cheese cubes at each other. I don't actually remember who started it, or why, but I do know that about a week later, someone was cleaning the room we got ready in and found a cheese cube molding on the ceiling fan. I know Jourdan could tell something was off about the timing, and usually she's not one to pull punches, but I guess she could sense that it was important to me not to go into details. She may not love Tay's music, and when Tay and I were fighting last year, she may have been the first one to encourage me to stand up for myself and get out if thing
s
weren't good, but she also respects the love we have, and she knows it's real, even if she doesn't always want to admit it. She was all over making sure I had a good time on my wedding day, even if that meant ignoring the elephant in the room. Instead we talked about when each of my bridesmaids had realized I was seriously in love with Taylor. They each had a moment. When I couldn't shut up about her. Seeing the way I looked at her. When I brought her home to dinner with the family. My mom spent most of the day sitting in the background, not wanting to intrude on girl time, but wanting to be part of every minute of helping her first little girl get married.

Derek came in once we were all dressed to congratulate me on finding the one. It was so cute. He's my big brother, even though we're not actually related, and to see him stepping in and really taking the role seriously was so amazing. He never dreamed I'd get married before he did, especially when you consider the fact that he's been out since birth, and most of the world is going to find out about me through this wedding. It's definitely not how I thought my life would go, but it's beautiful and wonderful, and my only regret is waiting until I was forced into it by circumstance. Taylor has been ready for a while, but I was scared. I'm not scared of what people think of me anymore, not when I'm more scared of losing her. And Derek is going to be a great person to lean on as we navigate everything that comes next. He's in New York, so I know if I need something, he'll come over, day or night, something our families can't do when they don't live nearby.

My dad isn't a crier, but I thought he might today. He's seen me in wedding gowns before, but none were

my

wedding gown. He's been one of the most supportive of my relationship with Taylor from the first time her name left my lips. He's always liking our posts on Instagram, he even calls her sometimes just to talk. I knew he was thrilled to be welcoming another daughter into the family. He actually struggled to find words to say, settling instead for a tight hug and a kiss on my cheek.
Austin was running behind after being dispatched last minute to help Karlie's Kookie partner bring in our wedding cake, but he managed to come up and join my half of the wedding party just before the ceremony. Ed came by as well, rounding out the trio of the most important men in my life. Tears filled my dad's eyes as he came to get me, to walk me down the aisle. He told me how proud he was of the woman I'd become. He told me he loved me, that I would always be his little girl. He told me he loved Karlie, and was ecstatic to welcome her into the family. He kissed me on the forehead and told me he'd always wondered, from the moment he found out I was a girl, who he would give me away to, and that although Karlie wasn't exactly what he'd imagined all those years ago, he wouldn't change either of us for the world.Kurt had walked Karlie down the aisle immediately before it was my turn. From the back of the seating area, I was shocked to see how full the seats were. I had worried that no one would make it, given that some had less than two days notice to get to Rhode Island. Instead, I thought they might have added rows of seats from what I'd seen them putting out earlier in the day. Friends from the music world. I was pretty sure I saw the Timberlakes, the girls of Haim, Kesha, Ella, Ryan and Jack. Friends from the city, like Blake and Ryan, who I was shocked came since Blake is due later this month. I could see an entire cadre of Victoria's Secret Angels, past and present. And at the end, where I'd avoided looking at first because I wanted to take it all in before tears filled my eyes, stood Karlie. I still refused to really look at my ray of sunshine until I could take in the surroundings. She was flanked by our bridesmaids and bridesmen. Her godson Riley and Lily's daughter Dixie had carried Olivia and Meredith down the aisle, with one of Derek's nephews walking Joe. Of course our fur-babies had to be part of the ceremony, although as soon as I got to the altar, Mike was going to put them safely inside. Scott stood in the center in a tux, holding his notes for the ceremony.Finally, I let my eyes settle on the love of my life. Her hair caught the sunlight as she turned to see me on my father's arm. She wore it mostly down, braided back from each side in what I think they call the waterfall braid, meeting in the middle with a spray of flowers and a puff of veil. Her dress was exquisite, simple and elegant and totally Karlie. I wanted to take it all in, but then she smiled and I was temporarily blinded. Ed changed what he was playing on acoustic guitar and then it was time to walk, and I tried to remember what Karlie had taught me about walking a runway but mostly I just tried not to trip. And then my dad placed my hand in hers, kissed us each on the cheek and stepped back to join my mom in the seats.The ceremony itself is like a dream sequence in my mind. Beautiful, but a little hazy around the edges. I remember Scott making a speech about how honored he was to be asked to be part of the ceremony. How he loved me like a daughter, and how proud he was to have watched me grow, and come into my own, and how happy he was to see a little girl who used to sing about her broken heart grow up and find someone who could mend it in such a way that it was stronger than before. He talked about seeing Karlie come into my life and the positive influence she was. The confidence she gave me. The change in my music. He talked about how he didn't think she could be real from the way I talked about her until he met her, and how after that he thought I might have undersold her.
For most of the ceremony, I was so caught up in my bride, I forgot to listen to the words around me. She looked so amazing in her dress, edgier than I thought she'd go with the mini-dress underneath, yet traditional and lovely. I suddenly understood why it had taken ages for her hair to be done, because the way it was put-up had to involve a lot of effort, yet if I hadn't see her yesterday, I would never have known it wasn't natural. There were flowers woven in, and a comb held a single layer veil with lace at the edge, perfectly coordinated to the lace in her dress. Her makeup was also very natural, a hint of gold sparkle on her lids next to her signature cat eye, a pale lipstick instead of her classic red, that complimented the pale pastels of the wedding perfectly. Her blue eyes sparkled as she gazed into mine, and for the thousandth time, I marveled that she let me call her mine.
Suddenly it was time for the vows. I thought about writing a song, but I knew Karlie would be intimidated enough without me singing. She'd already insisted she get to go first so she wouldn't have to follow me. I decided to keep it short and sweet and heartfelt. I knew hers would be lovely, even though I was sure she'd agonized over what to say. We recited our own first, then Scott read the traditional vows."Taylor. My princess. My best friend. You captivated me with your words long before we met, but once we did, it was your heart that captured mine. I know you think I'm the strong one, but it's you. You are the strong one. I will be strong when you can't. I will catch you if you fall. I will hold you when you're scared, and I will be there when you feel alone. You will never be alone, as long as I live. I will love you, everyday, with all that I have and all that I am. Whatever comes, I will have your back.""Karlie. You are truly my sunshine. From the moment we met, I was blinded by the light within you. You are stunning, but your outer beauty pales by comparison to who you are. You are passionate, and strong. You love with your whole heart, put others before yourself, and take each new challenge as it comes. I will love you, through every trial, every adventure, and every day of our lives. I will support you in everything you choose to take on, as your personal cheering squad. For the rest of my days, I will have your back, no matter what."And then we said 'I do' and Scott said "You may kiss your brides," and the crowd in the seats cheered and stood up and it was the best standing ovation I have ever gotten. I heard "It is my great honor to introduce to you Mrs. and Mrs. Swift-Kloss" and then Ed started playing and we walked down the aisle, hands intertwined, giggling and sneaking kisses. We spent a half hour posing for pictures with our families and the bridal party, while both of our teams set out the food. We were just having a barbecue, and everyone who had ever worked with either of us seemed to be part of food prep. I saw Tree dishing out potato salad, and Penni flipping chicken and fish on one of the huge grills. A couple of my security guys were manning the bar, and I'm pretty sure I saw Amos and Paul carrying huge bowls of salad. Someone pushed a grilled chicken sandwich into my hand and I carried it with me as Karls and I made our way around the patio, greeting all the amazing people who had come to celebrate us. There were toasts, so many of our friends and family taking the chance to speak. If the guests picked up on the slight melancholy tinge to some of the family speeches, they didn't let on, for which I was grateful.As the sun began to set, we cut the cake. My favorite, from Milk Bar. They hadn't had time to make it a traditional-looking wedding cake, but the way they usually make it, covered in rainbow sprinkles, was perfect. Karlie proved for the millionth time how well she knows me, carefully feeding me a bite and dabbing just a touch of frosting on my nose. It was cute and playful but not at all messy. I'll do messy for a music video, but I hate it, and she knew I would totally kill her if she got rainbow sprinkles on my dress. I reciprocated in kind, and then she leaned in and licked the frosting off my nose, making me laugh. Once it was full dark, we shared the traditional first dance. My band provided the background to Ed on guitar as he sang our song. As the song ended, fireworks went off over the water, a beautiful cap to the perfect wedding day.Our guests were staying in the house and surrounding hotels, a nice boost to the tourism industry in the area, since it was after the season and the hotels would mostly have been empty. Karlie and I were spending our wedding night in the pool house, allowing us a bit of privacy before brunch the next day. I tried not to think about the brunch too much. I wanted to go to bed surrounded by the bliss of the wedding. With everything going on, this was a chance for us to just enjoy each other, privately, and I intended to take full advantage.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I woke up the morning after the wedding when the sunlight happened to fall right in my eye. Otherwise part of me thinks I might have slept forever, my head on my wife's chest, listening to her heartbeat as she slept. Slow, and steady, and dependable. We'd kept each other up into the night, enjoying all the benefits of the wedding night. One time we knew we wouldn't be disturbed, not by friends, not by family, not even by the cats or Joe Joe. No one wanted to walk in on that. And for a few minutes, I let myself lie there, pretending we could stay like that, the blissful newlyweds, forever.I heard my phone vibrate next to the bed, bringing me back to the real world. With one last gaze at my wife's shiny abs, I gently pulled myself out of her arms to face whatever my phone had to say. It was nearly ten in the morning, they'd let us sleep in. More like they were afraid we might be having morning sex. Not a bad idea, except we were supposed to be joining all our wedding guests for brunch at eleven, and then I was going to have to bring the bliss of the wedding crashing down. Not high on my list of 'things I want to do with my brand new wife.' But I had to tell them. By the end of the day, Tree planned to have notified People and E! for their websites. By Monday morning, the story would be all over Good Morning America and Today. And I couldn't let my closest friends find out I'm sick from Robin Roberts and Matt Lauer.She usually showers first, but she looked so serene I couldn't bring myself to wake her, so I took my turn instead. She was awake and lying on her side, looking at me when I emerged from the bathroom, a towel loosely wrapped around my body. The sheet had fallen away and I could see a smudge of my leftover eye makeup where my head had been on her chest. She looked every bit the angel she was once paid to portray, lying in a swath of sunlight, making heart eyes at me. Her voice was still husky with sleep as she told me I looked absolutely beautiful, silhouetted against the light from the bathroom door. I wanted nothing more than to fall back into bed with her for another round, but had to content myself with a soft kiss on her lips. Getting ready took longer than it should have, because we kept stopping to steal a glance at one another, or to sneak a peck on each other's lips.Choosing outfits for the day, we'd joked about bringing back the Free People dress we both have, just because it's white and people always joke about us twinning. Most of the time it's unintentional, but we thought it might be funny to do it just once on purpose. But somehow it didn't seem right, leading with humor. Not with the real purpose of the brunch. Instead, I was going to wear a simple white wrap-style dress and Karlie had decided on a cropped pants/jacket combo that reminded me a little of the set Cara had worn as a bridesmaid, but in white. I hadn't bothered to wash my hair, when Karls had unpinned it the night before, it had looked remarkably like a deliberate style, the way the curls fell. Wouldn't everyone be surprised to see Red era length from my hair. Karlie's hadn't lasted quite as well, so it was up in her ballerina bun, a style that would always say 'Karlie' to me, almost more than the iconic haircut bearing her name.We emerged hand in hand to climb up to the main house with ten minutes to spare, an impressive feat if I do say so myself. It was really chilly in the morning air, and I was inclined to hurry, but Karlie wanted us to take our time and really savor the first full day of our lives as wife and wife. I felt her squeeze my hand as we pushed open the door to the sunroom, and all our assembled friends and family burst into applause. We shared a kiss and I felt oddly inclined to curtsy, and then we were swept up in a sea of loved ones encouraging us to sample the breakfast buffet, but all we wanted was coffee. Warm, and strong. Eventually I let Karlie fill a plate for me with eggs and fruit, content for the moment to let the sounds of conversation wash over me. I loved watching Karlie flit from table to table like the social butterfly she is. I am usually right with her, I love inviting people over, and being the hostess and making sure everyone has a good time, but today I just wanted to observe. Aside from hearing tens of thousands of people singing the words I wrote back to me, I can think of few feelings as warm and comforting as being surrounded by people who love and support you exactly the way you are, and I got the chance to experience that that morning.Eventually the crowd ceased milling around, plates full, a comfortable lull in conversation as everyone ate. The time had come to start bringing everyone's attention together. On one wall, a huge screen hung, with a projector set up. Even I didn't know exactly what we were going to see. Tree and Joseph stood by the screen, and I could see they both looked exhausted. While Karlie and I had been given a few hours of marital bliss, they had possibly stayed up all night putting the finishing touches on the videos of our wedding. I felt a surge of anticipation, knowing just how hard they had worked to create a beautiful memory of the day Karlie and I vowed to have each other's backs, forever. I expected two videos, but they gave us three.The first was the surprise, a compilation of moments from our relationship. All the times people speculated we might be a couple. Times we talked about each other. Times we were asked about our dating lives and hesitated, or blushed awkwardly. All the moments from the last three years that I'd wanted to forget, somehow, now that we were married and the world was going to find out, held nostalgia. From the aftermath of kissgate to the 'are they living together?' headlines, to video of Karlie blowing kisses to me in LA earlier in 2016, it spanned the relationship. From speculatory headlines and tweets, it gently morphed into clips from the Victoria's Secret shows, and Karlie joining me on stage, and finally, the personal videos we, and our friends and family, had taken over the years and kept private. I never thought I would enjoy watching that clip from TMZ ("Is Karlie Kloss a lesbian?" "She was last night."), but somehow, as part of this beautiful story of our love in the media, it fit. I was awestruck at how it wove together things I thought I never wanted to relive and turned them into a story I knew the fans would appreciate, one that would simultaneously explain that we were together and why we'd kept it a secret, without pointing fingers or laying blame.The next was the expected, but no less breathtaking video of our wedding. Love songs, played on acoustic guitar, most likely by Ed, filtered through the background as clips of Karlie and I choosing dresses, and flowers, and talking and laughing with our bridal parties alternated. It told the story of our wedding day, from our emergence from the helicopter to the moment we went, just the two of us, into the pool house. The lilting guitar never disappeared entirely, but at various points, our voices were allowed to overtake it, so anyone watching could hear us joking with friends, speaking our vows, and saying 'I do.' It was everything I hoped it would be, but better, as the video started in black and white and gradually gained color until it hit it's full saturation at the vows, a beautiful allegory of the way our relationship progressed. The final one was a combination of the two previous videos, some old footage from early on, some footage of the wedding prep and ceremony. All playing out over the true final single from 1989, the bonus track I'd written for Karlie, exactly how I'd written it.As the final chord played, Tree turned to me expectantly, and I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. I rose from my seat, my hands shaking with anxiety. Karlie could see how nervous I was, and without a sound, rose to stand next to me, her arm wrapped around my waist, her free hand holding one of mine, radiating strength and security."I can't tell you how much it means to me, to us, that all of you dropped everything to be here. I can't believe how many of you came to help us celebrate, and I hope you all feel like it's been worth it to come on such short notice." There was a smattering of cheering and whooping, which I took to mean it had, in fact been worth it. I took a deep breath and swallowed, hard. "I know that there are probably a lot of questions, about the timing of all of this. There's no easy way to do this. This past week, I've undergone a number of medical tests. We got the preliminary results on Friday. I have been diagnosed with cancer." I actually heard the clatter of a fork landing on a plate, like you see in the movies, as people who had been quietly eating through my speech stopped what they were doing to focus solely on me. The word cancer does that to people."The kind I have, is one of the most treatable, sometimes even curable, forms of cancer. Unfortunately, it has spread, quite a bit, which makes it more complicated. We don't have all the results yet. I don't actually know what comes next, or how we're going to treat it. What I do know, is that if I'm going to fight this with all that I have, I need Karlie by my side. This wedding had to happen fast so nothing stands in the way of that. I didn't want to end this weekend on such a bummer note, but I also couldn't let all of you, the people we love, and who love us, find out on the internet tomorrow like the rest of the world. You are our support system. We love you all."I finished speaking with tears coursing down my cheeks, and as I turned to my wife, I could see she was crying as well. She forced a watery smile and squeezed me tight. Voices slowly picked back up, and even though I knew they were family and friends, and likely saying very sweet and heartfelt things, it was uncomfortable knowing that everyone was talking about me. Derek approached first, saying he hoped we knew he and Nick would be there if we needed them, no matter what it was we needed. If I needed tampons at three a.m. those two lovely gay men would try to figure it out. I think his goal was to make me laugh, and he did. I couldn't stop giggling, picturing Derek and Nick, standing in the tampon aisle of Duane Reade at three a.m. in their jammies, finally deciding to buy one of everything and showing up with hundreds of dollars in feminine products. Slowly, different friends and family members came up to offer a hug, or assurances they would be there if they could help in any way."Why didn't you tell me?" Cara asked through tears in her lovely British accent. "I spent all day yesterday making stupid jokes and I..." I cut her off, of course. She had done exactly what I wanted her to do by making those stupid jokes. I wanted memories of my wedding that had nothing to do with my diagnosis, and she'd made that happen. I had no idea it would affect her so much, or I would have pulled her aside and told her in private. But she said she felt better knowing she'd unwittingly made me happy by just being herself, which is an entirely Cara thing to do. People judge her on choices she's made in the past and all the tattoos and they fail to see what an amazing person she is. She is one of the most loyal and steadfast people I know, which is exactly why I wanted her here. She will also do anything to make a friend feel better, so she shifted almost immediately into 'make the Swift-Klosses laugh' mode. By the time we were done talking to her, the three of us had almost forgotten the somber mood we'd cast over the group.It was something of a surprise to see Lily and Dixie come up and see them looking sad. I hated that I'd taught her what cancer meant. That she had to learn that there is something you can get sick with that makes grown-ups scared, and that doctors can't fix with bubblegum flavored medicine and lollipops. Hearing her little voice say "I'm sorry you're sick, Aunt Tay-wer," broke my heart. Even Jourdan, who hasn't always exactly liked me much, pulled me into a strong hug and told me she was rooting for me. Riley took Dixie by the hand and led her over to pet Joe Joe, who Kimby had just brought back in from a visit to the yard, and I'll be damned if Lily didn't start humming 'Mary's Song.'Then Ed appeared, standing silent in the background. I knew this would hurt him. He and I are like brother and sister. We've shared a lot. Burgers, and trampolines, and my first joint, and escapes from the police, and hundreds of hours of songwriting. Aside from Karlie or Tree, he is the person outside my family who knows me best. There is something very intimate about writing together, especially for us. We've cried in front of each other hundreds of times, it seems, over heartbreaks and losses, things we both used music to process. As I stepped away from Lily and Jourdan, Karlie hung back. She and Ed have a lovely relationship, but she knew I had to do this one alone. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you," I began, as he pulled me into a bear hug. He shook his head as he pulled away. "I know why you couldn't." His eyes, like so many I'd looked into this morning, held tears. "I wear my heart on my sleeve. I could never have hid it, innit?" He was right, of course. Observation is one of Teddy's many strong suits. Acting, and guarding his emotions, not so much. We didn't talk much, he just pulled me into another hug, and I knew he was saying he was there for me, but didn't have words. And I also knew that sometime over the next week or so, I'd receive a text with a haunting melody in it, with lyrics layered overtop about the fear of losing someone too soon, or the beautiful dichotomy of a wedding juxtaposed against dark days in a hospital. That's how Teddy says what he needs to say, and I knew he would do it beautifully. Karlie stepped up after the second hug, and Ed pulled her in as well. When we parted, it was with smiles, and the quiet reassurance that he would at least activate texting on his prehistoric phone so we could keep in closer touch.After a bit more milling around, during which I noticed people also going up to my family and Karlie's, Tree stepped to the front of the room and requested we all take our seats again. She outlined the plan to give the media both announcements – the happy one of our wedding, and the sad one of my diagnosis. Her plan was to release the videos on my own social media, but give exclusive access to E! and People, our usual go-tos, to still photos and the actual press release detailing the wedding and as much of my diagnosis as I was comfortable making public. She reminded guests that they had been encouraged to take their own photos and videos, but not to post them until later. She explained that she hoped they would post those as soon as they saw the initial reports begin to surface. She encouraged them to use their own judgment in deciding what to say. They could focus on the wedding, their support of me, or both, whatever they were comfortable with. Or they could post nothing, if that felt right. In the age of social media, we knew that people would analyze what our friends and family had to say in the wake of two unexpected announcements, and we wanted them to make their own choices on how they were represented.It was a weird way to end a wedding weekend, that was sure, but the cold, clinical discussion of media tactics actually helped pull people back out of the dark place my announcement had taken them. Karlie thanked them all once again for coming and for their support, and then it was time for the majority of the guests to depart and return to their regularly scheduled lives. Our parents were going to stay for the afternoon, but even our siblings had to take off, with work and school awaiting them Monday morning. I must have given and received a hundred hugs as people filtered out of the sunroom, on the way back to the real world, one I had no interest in ever rejoining. And then we were left with just our families. Even most of my team had departed, leaving Tree to send off the files to our chosen media outlets and then retreat upstairs for a much deserved nap.The sunroom was a disaster of half-eaten brunch plates, and the slightly obsessive part of me couldn't just leave them, so I began to gather the remains into stacks. Slowly, Karlie slipped off her blazer and joined me, collecting all the used napkins into a basket. I waited for someone to stop me, to tell me I shouldn't be carrying heavy piles of plates in my condition, but no one did. The dads started collecting and sorting silverware, while the moms shuttled glasses into the kitchen. I don't actually know where we got all the table settings, I presume we rented them, but I was slightly astounded that they hadn't come with staff to collect them. Working together, it didn't take us long to clean up, and I think we were all a little disappointed that it was over. Funny how you can find a thousand things to do to avoid what you really need to do.Unable to avoid the elephant in the room any longer, we retired to the living room with glasses of wine. I think the hardest part was trying to answer questions from Dr. Kloss, when we didn't have many answers. All we had was a preliminary diagnosis of metastatic thyroid cancer and the beginnings of an outline of a treatment plan. He was an ER doctor, which meant he knew a little about oncology, having admitted and treated his share of cancer patients. Thyroid cancer, I would learn later, is relatively rare, so he hadn't encountered all that many patients like me. I didn't know whether to be glad of that or concerned. After some discussion, we agreed that my mom would stay in New York in Karlie's old apartment – close enough to help out, but not right on top of us while we navigated the waters of being newlyweds. She would stay at least through the decisions about treatment, and probably for the start of that as well, like I had done for her. She respected that we wanted to do this together, and that her being around in some ways made me more anxious. Like, if I needed my mom there, then it might be worse than it really was. Karlie's parents' house upstate isn't far outside the city, so they would have fairly quick access if we needed something. Even my dad, returning to Nashville, would be only a short plane-ride away.Karlie and I outlined our own plans for the time between the wedding and the appointment with Dr. Miller on Wednesday. We wanted to spend one more night at the Rhode Island house, and make a return visit to our friend in the Town Clerk's office Monday morning to see if we could maybe get a rush on our official marriage certificate. If we could, we wanted to fly to Nashville to go to the Social Security office to officially change our names, and then to the DMV to get our new driver's licenses. The goal was to be one-hundred percent officially Taylor and Karlie Swift-Kloss by the time we met Dr. Miller. We would spend a night in Nashville before heading home to the Cornelia house Tuesday night. Moving around a bit felt right, with the news of our wedding about to debut, any minute, online, and with Monday being the likely television premiere. We didn't still want to be in Rhode Island because people would know that was the site of the wedding, and we weren't exactly keen on dealing with crowds of people on our doorstep in NYC either. We knew my security was going to have a rough time keeping them away no matter what, but we hoped that by Wednesday some of the excitement would die down so that we could go to my appointment in peace.The parents headed out in the late afternoon, leaving behind just Karlie and I, Mike, Sean and Tree. The plane carrying Karlie's parents to St. Louis and my dad to Nashville would return in the morning to hopefully take us both to Nashville as well, depending on how things went at the Clerk's in the morning. In the meantime, Karls and I had the whole huge house essentially to ourselves. While you might imagine that as newlyweds we spent the rest of the day making sweet love on the dining room table, the reality is that the enormity of the previous two days finally caught up to us, and after we changed into comfy leggings and sweaters, we fell sound asleep on the couch in the living room with some Food Network show playing in the background.* * *"Tonight is the first Presidential Debate. We'll hear from both sides ahead of the face-off between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. Golf legend Arnold Palmer passed away yesterday at the age of 87, hear how the new generation of golfers honored one of the greatest to ever play the game. And, Taylor Swift ties the knot! We have all the details on the surprise ceremony, who she married, and the unfortunate health crisis that pushed her to the alter, coming up in just fifteen minutes, Today, September twenty-sixth, two thousand sixteen.""Good Morning America. The stage is set for the first debate between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, will the outcome of the debate actually change voters minds? Arnold Palmer, one of golf's most venerated players, passed away last night at the age of 87. On the eve of the Ryder Cup, players from Team USA and Team Europe honor his contributions to the game. Taylor Swift finds love! The pop star married one of her best friends in a last-minute ceremony over the weekend, after a surprising diagnosis...""Tay is Gay? Find out why the Grammy winner married her supermodel BFF Karlie Kloss and see all the pictures from the surprise ceremony, only on E! News."Monday morning, Tree had a sampling of the media headlines and news clips from the internet and TV ready for us when we woke up. The majority were factual, fairly supportive of our wedding, but regretful that they had to pass along the information that I had cancer. The later they'd been published, the more they included posts from our friends' social media accounts, as we knew they would. It was interesting to see the angle various outlets took, whether they focused on the wedding, my sexual orientation, or my illness. I hated that Karlie was largely an afterthought in the coverage, though I could tell she was actually a little relieved not to be the focus of all the attention. All followed the party line from the press release that we would not work, in the future, with any media outlet that discussed our past relationships while reporting on the wedding, simply stating that we had married after a three year relationship. They presented my diagnosis mostly the way I had presented it to our guests – that I had been diagnosed with one of the more treatable forms, but that it had spread which made the treatment more complicated. They all stated that we asked for privacy, and that I would make more details available as I felt comfortable doing so.I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support on social media. Tree had again curated a selection of the ones she wanted us to see, and I was starting to wonder if she might be a vampire, given how much work she had again done overnight. I wasn't surprised at all to see posts from our wedding guests. Most of those featured a line supporting our wedding "Such a beautiful wedding @taylorswiftkloss @karlieswiftkloss !" "Two gorgeous brides, @karlieswiftkloss @taylorswiftkloss" and so on, usually accompanied by a shot of one or both of us with the poster. Then a second post, shortly after, wishing me the best, hoping I would get well soon, or offering support in the wake of the diagnosis. But then she showed me the posts from our exes, real and imagined. From Tom, my most recent PR disaster, a post saying we were good friends and that he wished me the best. From Harry, and Joe, and Taylor came well-wishes on the wedding and hopes for a quick return to health. Even Adam offered support, although his came in the form of twelve ranting tweets about privacy and publicity, ending with back to back tweets reading 'love is love' and 'fuck cancer' which I chose to take as supportive. Even a few of my ex girlfriends posted that they were happy for Karlie and I.One of the scariest parts of doing this all so quickly was figuring out how to do it without outing any of our exes, which was one of the reasons we wanted the cancer news to break alongside the wedding news. We hoped that it would keep people from asking too many questions about what our marriage after three years together actually meant about our relationships with the men who had supposedly been in our lives. In particular, we were both worried about Josh. He and Karlie had supposedly been together more than four years, meaning that with the world finding out about our three year timeline, there was a strong risk they would figure out he hadn't been with her for most of their supposed relationship. With pressure from his family, especially with the election coming, we didn't want to make things worse for him just to suit ourselves, but we also didn't want to lie anymore to the public about our relationship, including the duration. In the end, we'd taken inspiration from a tumblr post I'd seen about how he could just say he had asked Karlie on a date back in the day, and that although he'd figured out very quickly that she wasn't into guys, it had played into his hand because they could continue to be each other's date to events and work together for business reasons, and that would keep people off his back about finding a girlfriend when what he wanted was to focus on his career. In his circle, I thought that would come off the best to help him remain in the closet but not look pathetic for being a lesbian's beard. So far, it appeared that story had stuck in the media portrayal of our relationship for which I was glad. I wanted him to avoid as much questioning as possible.Before bringing up fan social media, Tree revealed to us that the photo of me and the two little girls in the Institute lobby had spread like wildfire. Most people hadn't given a second thought to the location, I'm known for visiting fans in the hospital, but people had definitely noticed the ring on my finger, my hand casually draped across the shoulders of a twelve year old girl, huge heart-shaped diamond prominently on display. In the hours leading up to our wedding, people had speculated like crazy about who my mystery fiancé(e) might be. As a result, she suggested that the wedding might not have caught my fans as much by surprise as I originally anticipated. By the time we'd reviewed a carefully selected collection of tumblr blogs that seemed unsure how to express the combination of ecstasy at discovering kaylor was real and horror at finding out that information in the same breath with the phrase "Taylor Swift has cancer," we'd eaten more than enough breakfast and it was time to get ready and return to the Clerk's office in hopes that if we returned our completed marriage license in person, we might be able to get our actual marriage certificate the same day. We both dressed quickly in jeans and shirts, minimal makeup, hair up. I wasn't wearing my glasses, but I did consider a baseball cap of Karlie's to hide my face, though I decided against it in case it was disrespectful to wear a hat in Town Hall. I didn't want do screw up some little thing and prevent us from getting our certificate.The same clerk stood at the desk when we entered, but I could tell as soon as she laid eyes on us that she'd seen the news. Her bright smile faltered slightly, and when it resumed, didn't quite meet her eyes. I guess I'm going to have to get used to that look, it's only going to get worse as the signs of my illness become outwardly visible. Still, she greeted us warmly, exclaimed over the new wedding bands next to our engagement rings, and enthusiastically agreed to input the official record of the marriage right away. We left the office fifteen minutes later, the paper still warm where she'd removed it from the printer. this time we'd taken a selfie together, Karlie and I eagerly holding up our left hands. She was pretty sure she couldn't post it publicly for privacy reasons, but we were totally cool with her showing everyone she knew that she had been the one to officially certify our marriage.We browsed through Tree's list of kaylor blogs on the plane, each selecting a few to follow, liking posts as we went. Then we did the same for insta and Twitter, knowing this was our chance to renew ties with our strongest supporters. Now that the cat was out of the bag, we could finally enjoy the attention from blogs we'd had to previously ignore. I bummed myself out a little, scrolling my dash and having to un-follow a few who used to be my favorites because they were being outright hostile or homophobic. It was heartbreaking to see someone I'd once invited to a secret session post a gif of me saying 'karma is real' and then saying I deserved exactly what I'd gotten and calling me a homophobic slur. But the majority of my dash was thankfully filled with well wishes, pictures of Karlie and I from the wedding that our friends and family had posted on social media, even some bittersweet photos of me visiting sick fans in the hospital with much better uses of that karma gif.It took three hours just to get to meet with someone in the Social Security office, and I was relieved that they at least took Karlie and I together. We'd spent our time in the waiting room browsing through our wedding photos, picking some for a scrapbook, and others to have printed so we could hang them up in each of the houses. Karlie giggled every time I mentioned we had more than one. She'd gone from having one two-bedroom apartment in NYC and a subway card to having two apartments just in the city, plus a fleet of cars, two planes, and a personal security team. I could understand why it was a lot to take in. The waiting area was blessedly filled with mostly older couples trying to get their retirement benefits and who largely ignored the giggling newlyweds in the corner. One lovely couple noticed us and asked why we were there. When we said we'd just gotten married, they congratulated us heartily and then asked questions that made it clear they had literally no idea who we were, thankfully. Sadly, another couple moved away from us, and I could hear the man muttering hateful words under his breath, but our new besties told us to pay them no mind, the ignorant jackasses (their words, not mine). The guy who was assigned to help us gave us a look that suggested he had at least partially died inside, but became much more animated when he discovered we were both changing our names after our wedding. We had to sit through a twenty minute description of his own wedding to his husband, complete with a slideshow of pictures of the two of them and their matching pomeranians, but we left with a printout documenting our applications for new Social Security cards and assurances that we would have no trouble getting new licenses at the DMV.The DMV was practically a breeze after sitting in the Social Security office. We each took a number, but when the clerk found out I was there with my wife, he had her come up with me as well. There was a minor crisis when I realized I didn't have anything in her name, like a bank statement or utility bill or anything, and all my stuff had my maiden name on it, not the hyphenated one, but he assured me that my valid Tennessee driver's license, as well as our marriage certificate and the printout from social security was enough to prove Karlie's intent to transfer her residence from New York to Tennessee, as well as our new names. We proudly showed off our marriage certificate and left with matching Tennessee driver's licenses. The DMV guy laughed because we both had huge grins in our pictures, but he didn't make us retake them. Swift-Kloss, Taylor Alison and Swift-Kloss, Karlie Elizabeth, officially, according to our IDs. Knowing that the whole world knew, now, Karlie and I had one of my security guys take a picture of us with our arms wrapped around each other under the Driver Services Center sign, though we planned to post it on insta only once we were back in New York. No need to alert anyone extra to our presence in Tennessee.The beauty of the day was doing the normal newlywed things. Worrying about driver's licenses and utility bills and all the millions of places we were going to have to update with our new names distracted me for a while from the why of our rush to complete everything. But alone in the car, just the two of us, it all crashed over me like a wave as we drove past Vanderbilt Medical Center, where my mom had gotten her initial diagnosis. I was glad Karlie was driving, because my vision blurred and I tried desperately to keep tears from falling. If I was going to cry every time I was reminded, I was never going to make it through treatment. I didn't have to completely turn it off, but I needed to be able to face my new reality with grace and poise, not shaking hands and tears. By the time we pulled into the garage for my condo, I'd pulled it back together, and if Karlie knew of the internal battle I'd just waged, she didn't show it. Instead, she cheerfully grabbed both of our bags out of the back and carried them to the elevator bank. She'd visited here once before, early in our relationship, so she knew the way.My condo is very...eighteen year old me. It's whimsical and a little juvenile, and it's very clear that I decorated it myself. Entering for the first time as a married woman, I was suddenly struck by how much I'd grown up since I bought this place. I guess the thoughts showed on my face, because Karlie asked what I was thinking about. I didn't want to tell her I was thinking how much I suddenly hated the décor, and I definitely didn't want to tell her what had run through my mind in the car, so I grabbed her by the hand and told her I was thinking it might be fun to, um, put the birdcage in my living room to use.* * *I found my thong dangling from a lampshade, and Karlie's bra was dangling from the fireplace mantle when we finally emerged some time later, when the growling in Kar's stomach got too loud to ignore. I was worried that there wasn't any food in the house, but as we entered the kitchen there was a lovely fresh bouquet of flowers accompanied by a note from Abigail and Matt indicating they'd put some fresh fruit and veggies in the fridge, along with some different snacks. They'd also left us a gift card for GrubHub so we could order in. We quickly put in an order for vegetable biryani, chicken tikka masala, and garlic naan from Bombay Palace, then chowed down on the contents of the fridge while we waited for the delivery. In between feeding each other chunks of fruit right out of the deli container, we got dressed, and just in time, because as I dropped my shirt back over my head, the concierge in the lobby buzzed to see if he could send the delivery guy up.The thing I love about Nashville is that people see musicians all the time, so unless you encounter a tourist, they generally don't freak out. The Bombay Palace guy didn't even blink at having the two of us answer the door, after all, the sooner we paid him, the sooner he could deliver Jason Aldeen's chicken curry. After he left, we curled up together on the couch to watch re-runs of SVU while eating our dinner and posting our wedding photos on our instagram accounts. We also went through and liked all the posts our friends had made, leaving comments thanking them for coming. I called Abi to thank her for thinking of us, and Karlie made goofy faces in the background, which led Matt to snapchat the whole thing, making the most Inception snap ever, but it made all of us laugh. Since we were staying the night in Nashville, Abigail suggested a double-date brunch the next morning, followed by a hike, and I could see Kar's eyes light up behind me on screen so I eagerly accepted.The highlight of the hike was getting to walk hand-in-hand with my wife, not caring who saw, or if someone took a picture. We posed for pictures by the park sign, trying to re-create the ones from Big Sur. We kissed in front of a waterfall. I pelted her with acorns after she insisted we climb a ridiculously steep trail and while I hunched over gasping for air, she had the audacity to do jumping jacks just to spite me. Abi and Matt brought their dog, Lily, and it was fun to watch Karls play with her. I flashed forward for a second to someday when we have kids, and it's Karlie playing with a little mini-Karlie, and in my mind I'm holding a little mini-Taylor, and she turns and I can see the cutest little bump, and then I heard her call my name and snapped back to the real world, but just for a moment, I imagined a future beyond my doctor's appointment on Wednesday, and it was everything I needed. We flew back to New York that night after dinner at Abi and Matt's. He made burgers on the grill, with a veggie burger for Karls. I know Abigail was bursting at the seams not asking me for more details, but it meant the world to me that she treated it like any date night, with any couple. They teased us about being married and howled at the birdcage story, and joked that we should take advantage of the private plane and join the mile high club. Matt actually snorted when Karlie deadpanned 'too late.' We talked about their wedding plans, still over a year away, and I did my best not to wonder what my life would look like then, not to worry about if I would be healthy, and just to focus on my best friend and her special day the same way she had spent the weekend focused on me and mine. She gave me a hug as we left and told me to call her Wednesday, the only acknowledgement the whole evening that there was anything ahead of us other than a few more days changing our names.Arriving home was bittersweet after the whirlwind of the wedding, but there was something lovely about collapsing into our own bed. The cats were still with my mom at Karlie's for the night, so we actually had the bed to ourselves. Being home, though, allowed the cloud of the appointment in the morning to come back, and I found it hard to recapture the playful mood we'd had in Nashville. Karlie seemed to sense my gloomy mood shift, and usually she would do everything she could to pull me out of it, but that night, she just pulled me in and held me. I guess she felt a little less sunshiny than usual herself. We fell asleep still dressed from the day, arms around each other, like holding each other would let us hold ourselves together.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

My appointment with Dr. Miller to find out the results of the biopsies and plan treatment wasn't until after lunch on Wednesday. Karlie had two classes that morning, and since she'd already missed a few with fashion week and all, I really wanted her to go. I promised I would be fine for the morning, maybe even go to the gym or something. I insisted she take one of the guys with her, just in case there was a smidge more attention on her than she was accustomed to on her way to class. She ended up asking Jeff, one of the relatively new guys, because he looks like a slightly more fit version of your average frat guy, and he expressed an interest in computer science. She thought it would attract less attention to have a body guard who looked like he belonged in college, and I was fine with anyone she chose, as long as she was safe.I ended up going for a workout. There were more cameras than ever outside, snapping pictures of me in my (confession, Karlie's) gym clothes as I went in. I have a love/hate relationship with the paparazzi, but I will give them credit. Most shouted congratulations on the wedding at me, and when one guy shouted something about me being sick, another paparazzo whacked him upside the head. I may not always love living my life in flashing lights, but most of them are, like me, just trying to make a living, and most are fairly respectful. It was kinda nice seeing one stand up for me for a change. I really threw myself into the workout, as though working harder could somehow affect the outcome in the afternoon, and emerged looking actually sweaty for once. I wouldn't normally think that was a good thing, but it meant that the photogs were more focused on getting shots of my sweat-darkened roots than provoking me into changing my facial expression.I had just finished getting ready for the appointment when Karlie burst up the stairs at a run. "Holy shit, Taylor! Is that what it's like for you everyday?" She looked me up and down and gave a low whistle, which I took to mean she approved of the skirt and sweater outfit I'd chosen. I'd gotten everything ready to make apple turkey grilled cheese sandwiches, hold the turkey for Karls, and spinach salads to make up for the gooey cheese and pile of carbs. We ate at the breakfast bar while she told me all about her morning. Going to class had been normal. The first one was Aesthetic Justice, which has something to do with law and art, and the intersection of the two. The second was Data Structures, which has something to do with computer science, I think. And nothing out of the ordinary had happened, other than Karlie asking her instructors if it would be okay if Jeff sat in, for the duration of both classes. But apparently someone in her Data Structures class texted someone not in her classes and suddenly a crowd formed outside as it was letting out, and Jeff definitely earned his paycheck clearing them out so the rest of the students could escape. I felt bad. She's always been able to move around the city like anyone else, and I'd ruined that for her, just by giving her my name. I never wanted to hurt her by her association with me, and I couldn't help but think this was all my fault. She wouldn't let me though, assuring me that once the novelty had worn off she would probably be able to go back to being an oddly tall anonymous sophomore. And until then, Jeff had really enjoyed Data Structures, even though I still had no idea what they were talking about and probably never would.And then it was time to go to the appointment. We picked up my mom from the Charles Street apartment on the way, so she could hear the official diagnosis and be part of the treatment discussion. I had mixed feelings. I wasn't as scared this time, because I already knew I had cancer. They weren't going to change the diagnosis. It was only going to get more specific. They weren't actually going to physically do anything this visit, but we were going to talk about a treatment plan. In a way, I thought that would be helpful, having a plan, knowing what to expect. Sure, I wasn't going to enjoy whatever I had to do to get better, but at least I would know what it was, and I would, hopefully, get better as a result. I was still a little apprehensive, knowing that what happened in that office would define my future for a while, but having a name for what I had, and a plan for how to make it better, that sounded better than just. not. knowing.We entered through a back entrance this time, not wanting to attract any paparazzi. I knew, sometime soon, that I was going to have to see what I could do to keep them away from this place. Not just for me, although I certainly hoped I might be able to retain at least a little dignity during treatment and not have to put up with that here, on my worst days, but for the other patients who had the misfortune to share the space with me. We still arrived at the same reception desk as last time when we emerged from the elevator. With a later appointment time, the waiting area teemed with people, and I was nervous how I would be received. If I were them, I'm not sure I'd want me there. But the receptionist treated us like any other couple who approached. She congratulated us when I said I wanted to change my name on my medical records because of our marriage, but otherwise largely ignored us, bustling around with paperwork as she told us to take a seat. The other patients ignored us as well, for the most part. A few cast furtive glances our way, whispering to their companions, but they largely left us alone. It felt like hours that we sat, waiting our turn, as patient after patient was called back, but it might have been twenty minutes at most, real time, before I heard my name.We were led through a maze of corridors to a comfortably furnished office with a view of the park across Union Square. Dr. Miller and Dr. Goldsmith were both there, looking over a file in a manila folder as we were shown in. Dr. Miller greeted us warmly, like old friends, offering hugs to both Karlie and I, and Dr. Goldsmith wasn't far behind. After introducing themselves to my mom, both offered congratulations on the wedding, asking to see pictures before we could move to the real reason we'd come to see them. It was comforting, knowing that they'd paid attention, that they valued me as a human being. It made me feel confident that they would do their very best to give me the best possible outcome, moving forward. But as we all took seats, the feeling in the room shifted, from that of old friends reuniting to something colder, and more clinical, as we moved on to the business reason for the meeting.They told me that the results of the biopsy indicated diffuse sclerosing papillary thyroid cancer, a more aggressive form most common among women between fifteen and thirty. While the vast majority of cases of thyroid cancer fall under the umbrella of papillary thyroid cancer, less than five percent of those present as the diffuse sclerosing variant. As they listed the characteristics of it, I realized they fit perfectly with what we'd seen in the tests. A nodule you could feel on at least one side of the thyroid, which I had. Distant metastasis to lymph nodes. I had that as well, although I fortunately did not appear to have another common characteristic, metastasis to the lungs. Most commonly appearing in younger patients than the other varieties. But as they continued with characteristics, I heard new information that wasn't exactly comforting. More aggressive than most thyroid cancers, and faster spreading. Less responsive to conventional thyroid cancer treatments. Requiring more aggressive treatment to prevent recurrence. But, comfortingly, the same general survivability as other forms, meaning that despite all the scary parts, they could treat it, and still possibly even cure it.Karlie and my mom were both taking notes, sure we'd forget something in the avalanche of information. After learning the name and characteristics, though, I had only one question. "So how do we beat it?"The first step would be a total thyroidectomy. Dr. Goldsmith would go in and surgically remove all of the cancerous tissue and as much of the thyroid tissue as she could without damaging surrounding structures. It could still be done laparoscopically through a minimal incision at the base of my throat, even with the new diagnosis. Because of the extensive lymph node involvement, they said it would be impractical to remove them all, so they intended to leave them alone for the time being. I would have to stay overnight in the hospital after the surgery, but then I would be able to go home. That was step one. About two or three weeks after that, just as I would be starting to feel better from the surgery would come step two. Radioactive Iodine therapy. The thyroid is the only part of your body capable of absorbing iodine. Because of that, thyroid cancer is usually very susceptible to treatment with radioactive iodine, which is very damaging to thyroid cells but not to any other type of cell since they can't absorb it. Step three would be chemoradiation, a combo treatment where I would get chemo to kill off any stray cancer cells still hanging around after the radioactive iodine treatment, and at the same time, targeted proton therapy to treat the worst of the remaining affected lymph nodes.I could see Karlie making a bulleted list of the steps, but I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Surgery, then some kind of radiation, then a combo of chemo and radiation. Listed like that it sounded simple, but I had a million questions. Didn't I need a thyroid? What would be the effects of having it removed? Side effects of radioactive iodine treatment? What about the chemo? Would I lose my hair? Would I still be able to have kids? And most immediately pressing, I had a concert in less than a month, and I needed to know if there was any chance of me performing it. Dr. Miller and Dr. Goldsmith answered each one. Their goal was for me to be confident in the approach we took to treatment, and to feel like I understood what was being done to my body and why.Didn't I need a thyroid? Not exactly. I needed the hormones that the thyroid makes, but they make pretty good substitutes that I could take to mimic the action of the thyroid and probably not miss it.What would be the effects of having it removed? Immediately after surgery, there would be some pain in the area, although they said most people only need over the counter pain meds. My throat would probably be sore, and I might have some temporary vocal changes because everything is so close together in there. I would have to take calcium supplements for a while because some other glands in the area, the parathyroid glands, might act up a little after the surgery and make my calcium levels drop abnormally low. Over the next few weeks, though, I would notice the absence of the hormones. Between the surgery and the radioactive iodine treatment I wouldn't be able to take the thyroid hormones, because I needed levels of another hormone, thyroid stimulating hormone, to be high to make the cancer cells absorb the radioactive iodine better. And not having those hormones would have some pretty strong effects. I would gain weight, quickly, maybe fifteen or twenty pounds over those three weeks. I would get tired much more easily. Of greatest concern to Dr. Miller was the fact that symptoms of depression had brought me in, and those would be more likely to surface during that period, so they were suggesting that I start a low-dose antidepressant, just to regulate things until after I started on the replacement hormones.Side effects of the radioactive iodine treatment? Immediately after treatment, I might have nausea or vomiting, and discomfort in my neck where my thyroid used to be. It could lead to dry mouth and dry eyes, so I wouldn't be able to wear my contacts for a couple weeks after treatment. It could lead to temporary changes in how things taste. The worst part would be the fact that I would be giving off radiation for about a week after, in high enough levels that it could actually harm people and animals around me who had functioning thyroids and wanted them to say that way. Because of that, I would have to spend most of my time at least six feet away from everyone, getting as close as three feet for less than an hour a day. No physical contact, hugs, kisses, anything, for the first week. During that time, I would have to use a separate bathroom, wash my own clothes, eating utensils, and towels, and keep them separate from Karlie's. Within three weeks after the treatment, almost all of the radiation would be gone, but I would have to carry a special card with me that said I'd had radiation treatment because I might still set off detectors, like at the airport.What about chemo? Would I lose my hair? Unfortunately, chemo is chemo. Nausea, vomiting, intestinal problems all were probably in my future. And yes, I would probably lose my hair. On the plus side, between the chemo and starting thyroid hormones, I wouldn't likely have any trouble losing the extra fifteen or twenty pounds I was supposed to gain after surgery. So, win?Would I still be able to have kids? Probably. Although chemo and radiation can cause infertility, it is usually temporary, maybe six months to a year for it to return to normal after I finished treatment. If I really wanted to, I could do fertility treatments from now until the radioactive iodine treatment and preserve some eggs, but it probably wasn't necessary. They suggested Karlie and I talk about it together before making a decision.Could I do the show in October? No telling. They could schedule the radioactive iodine for right after it, since they wanted to schedule the surgery for October third, and the twenty second would be a little less than three weeks later. But there was no way to predict how I would actually feel. I might get tired more easily, or I might be exhausted. I might be a little hoarse for a few days, or it might take months for my voice to come back. In ten years, I'd never cancelled a concert due to illness. Postponed, yes, but never totally cancelled. And I hated to make this one the first. But I also didn't want to push myself to do it and then not be able to give the fans a quality show. If I could barely sing, or was so tired all I could do was sit on the stage, would that really be good for anyone involved? This one created more questions than it answered, and all I could do was have my team work with the Formula 1 people to see what they wanted to do. Ultimately, my health would have to come first.All in all, they saw the treatment taking between seven and ten months, depending on how I responded to treatment. It's crazy how your perception of time changes. Like, hopefully by next Fourth of July, I'd be cancer free, and that seemed like a relatively short time. But during treatment, I had a feeling time would pass slowly, especially the time I had to spend apart from Karlie and everyone. Yet the next few days would fly, given that I had less than a week before surgery, and things I needed and wanted to get done in between now and then.
Even as I took notes, I kept glancing at Taylor to see how she was reacting. I watched her eyes go wide as they explained that she had the most aggressive and deadly form of thyroid cancer. I'd read about it, the night I proposed, and wondered if that might be it. The other kinds all happen in middle aged and older people. This was the only one that was common in people under thirty. All the others were common in the forties or fifties. It's really rare. Most of the medical articles I found online cited maybe twenty cases, compared to hundreds in similar articles about breast cancer. She was stoic, the opposite of what I expected, as they told her all the side effects the different treatments would bring. I knew she wouldn't want to admit it, but she was freaking out about gaining weight and losing her hair. She's not vain, and it makes it seem like she is, but for her fans, those things, plus the scar on her neck, would be the most obvious. She worries so much about what they think. All I care about is that she comes out healthy.
My mom had written furiously the whole time, stopping the two doctors only to clarify the spelling. I realized that unlike Karlie and I, she hadn't had the opportunity to research (or avoid it, like I had), so she needed time to process what was being said, just as we had. I didn't like some of the answers, but I expected most of them. I'd hoped they might be able to guarantee me the ability to perform the show in October. I'd hoped to avoid chemo, and all the lovely side effects that come with it. I was relieved to be told I could probably still be a mom, though I still hadn't worked out exactly how Karlie and I were going to make that happen anyway. Mom had looked relieved at that as well, I guess she really does want grandkids. I invited her to join us for dinner after the appointment, but she said she needed some time to read over her notes and learn more about the kind of cancer I had. We agreed to all go to dinner the next night, and dropped her off at Charles Street.Karlie and I didn't want to go home, so we drove to a little mom and pop Italian place we both love, where we could hide in a corner booth and talk over glasses of wine and piles of pasta. She wanted to know what I was thinking, about all the information we'd gotten. The most pressing question was whether or not we wanted to try fertility treatments to make sure I could have kids even after treatment. Everything else wasn't a question. It just was. I was going to have the surgery, because there wasn't anything better out there for me. And then I was going to do the radioactive iodine treatment, which scared me, a lot, because I wouldn't get to have my Karlie or my mom hug me, or even hold my hand, for a whole week. I would barely get to see them. And even when I did, I would be worried I was hurting them just by being there. But I was going to do it, because that was how I was going to get rid of the cancer. And then I was going to do chemo, because if I didn't, it could recur, and as much fun as this sounded, I really didn't want to do it again. Ever.We couldn't make a decision about the concert. It seemed we were probably going to have to cancel. As Karlie said, it wasn't like I was cancelling because I had the sniffles. Most people see cancer as a legitimate excuse for missing work. But I still felt bad. People were coming from all over the world to see this show. Formula 1 would be able to get someone amazing to perform I was sure, but it wasn't like there was some artist out there who could easily substitute for me. Ed came to mind, since a lot of my fans and his overlap after the Red tour, and he's huge, but he doesn't have any new music out yet, and he's not exactly in stadium tour mode at the moment. I thought of someone like Adele or Beyonce, two huge artists who both recently released new music, and I'm even sort of friends with Beyonce (sort of, as in, I like her, and she's friendly to me, but we don't hang out on the regular). But they're kinda busy. I thought of Kelly Clarkson, she's just making a comeback, and I love her voice, but I don't have the foggiest idea if our fanbases overlap at all. I guess this is what I pay people for, but I was worried about the legal side of cancelling as well as just being disappointed not to get to perform it.Karlie told me she would support whatever I wanted to do about kids. She said she would do whatever she could to help if I wanted to meet a fertility specialist and see what could be done, but that she would also be fine if we didn't, because if in a couple years I couldn't conceive, maybe she would be able to, and if that didn't work we could always adopt. It wasn't as though we were going to be able to have kids who were genetically both of ours anyway. Except that I'd been reading about studies where they were able to get a mouse pregnant using genes from two female mice. At this point in the discussion, Karlie suggested perhaps I shouldn't have drunk so much of the wine, but I wasn't drunk. I remember the whole thing, and if you google it, I promise the two female mouse pregnancy is real. Promise.When we got home I called Abigail to let her know where we were. She told me she was glad I'd called, though she hated the idea that I had so much ahead of me in treatment. She encouraged us to meet with the fertility specialist suggested by Dr. Miller, even if just to reassure ourselves that we maybe didn't need it. She's known me for more than ten years, and knows how much I've always wanted kids. Karlie knows that too, of course, and she wants them as well one day, if we can figure out how to balance what I love to do with raising kids and not making them feel like they are the animals in a zoo. But it was interesting to hear a perspective outside our own. I wasn't sure how I felt. Part of me felt like I was about to put my body through enough without also shoving a bunch of hormones in there. Plus, fertility hormones make you moody, and I was already fighting depression, with the threat of even more down feelings looming after surgery. I just wasn't sure if it was going to be worth it. I decided to talk to my mom about it in the morning before making a decision.Karlie had a shoot in the morning, plus some kind of business meeting with Adidas, and I had asked my mom to come over so we could talk, so we knew we didn't want to stay up crazy late. But knowing how close we were to the start of treatment, and not being sure how I would feel once that started, I wanted us to have some good couple time before everything got crazy. We decided to go down to the pool in the basement and play around for a while before maybe sharing a shower and taking ourselves to bed.* * *I was wearing a pencil skirt and a blazer when my mom walked in the next morning, and I think it caught her off guard a little. I mean, I was also wearing Karlie's apron and I had french toast batter in my hair (still not used to the length, although I was planning to get the extensions out the next day anyway, it was totally just a wedding thing), but she was, I think, expecting me to still be wearing jammies or something. Definitely not expecting my most professional look, but after I talked to her, I had a meeting with Robert from my legal team, and I really wanted to feel prepared for it.Once she helped me get the batter out of my hair, we sat down at the table to eat and talk a bit, now that she'd had a night to process. I knew, as my mom, she would have a lot on her mind, but I wasn't sure how much she would say. I'm an adult, I've lived on my own for eight years (well, as on my own as I can be, sigh), and now I'm married. We've lived on opposite coasts for most of my relationship with Karlie, although I'd spent more time close to her after she was diagnosed when I could. I didn't know how that would factor into what she had to say either. My mom is one of the few people in my life who I know will tell me the unvarnished truth, but this was different. This was watching her baby girl go through something hard, and I knew exactly what it felt like to be on the other side of this, from being on the sideline while she fought her own battle. From being on both sides, I'll tell you I think her side might be the harder one. I think it is easier to feel like you are doing something however small, to get better, than it is to watch, knowing that you can't really do anything.She mostly started out by asking me how I felt, and anytime I asked her something, turned the questions back on me. It felt a bit like a therapist appointment. It took me finally snapping at her out of frustration for her to realize she wasn't helping, and that I genuinely needed opinions, and guidance. After that, we got to really discuss what was going on, what my future looked like for the next few months. She understood my concern about putting my body through fertility treatments just before starting cancer treatment, and assured me that although she would like to have grandkids, it didn't matter how, or when or if they were mine. What mattered was that I felt like I was making the right choices for me. That was her goal, through all of this. For me to feel like I was doing the right things to get better.Which is why, once I'd recovered from surgery, she planned to go back to Nashville and let Karlie and I handle things. She believed in us, and she knew that her presence made me nervous. She would never be more than an hour flight and a phone call away, but, as much as it hurt her to realize it, she really couldn't do anything to make this better. After surgery, there were things she could do. She could pick up groceries and make my favorite foods and watch TV with me while Karlie worked, or went to class. But once I'd started the radioactive iodine treatment, no one could even be around me. Having her ten minutes away would make no difference if she couldn't come near me. And she couldn't. With her own history, she had to stay further away than most because she had her own residual radiation.We hugged, long and careful, but I didn't cry, and I knew when she left to let me get ready to meet with Robert, that as weird as it seemed, this was right. Doing this with Karlie, being adults about it. It wasn't that I didn't need my mom anymore, because I would always need my mom. But I could do it my own way, with my wife by my side. And my mom was letting me do it, even with all her own anxieties and fears. Which more than anything told me I could do this.
I spent the morning wearing workout gear and getting spritzed every five seconds with a spray bottle to make me look sweaty when in reality the room was utterly freezing. They'd apologized a zillion times about the cold. The space was supposed to be a comfortable temperature, and it was clear that the people they sent to apologize didn't know who I really was, as a person, but had been told I was THE Karlie Kloss. I'm not one to pull diva moves. My goal is always to work hard, do what is asked of me as well as I possibly can, and for the most part, I think that's the reputation I've built within the industry, and I'm very proud of it. I feel like the only thing I said all morning was some variation on "you're fine, it's fine, I'm fine." I can't say I wasn't excited to be done with that part of the shoot though, it was very nice to wrap up in a robe afterward, I was literally shivering up to that point, and I was very appreciative when an intern handed me a cup of coffee to help me warm up.

One of the hair stylists blew out my hair again, and I'm not sure I've ever been more grateful for the warmth of a blowdryer in my life! Once I stopped shaking, I put on my best business outfit. I had a meeting with a few higher ups with Adidas and there had been discussion about me getting to have my own line for the spring. I love the Stella McCartney designs I'm modeling for them now, but having my own line of workout clothes would be amazing. And now with Taylor being sick, I had an idea to create a line that would benefit cancer research, but also be designed with cancer patients in mind. Something that would be cute and comfortable, designed to be soft, or stretchy, or both, but also make anyone wearing it feel like they looked good. I'd been doing a lot of reading when Taylor wasn't paying attention, and I'd seen some ideas from other patients in treatment, like shirts that opened at the shoulder to make ports and central lines easier to access. I thought maybe I could do that, but with zippers so they looked like design features. I wanted anyone to be able to wear my clothes. Maybe even do a line for girls too, for the same reason. And I wanted to make sure it was applicable to anyone. There's so much attention on breast cancer, and that's a cause close to my heart since my mom is a survivor, but there are tons of other cancers out there that deserve attention too.

The meeting went better than I had ever dreamed it might. They loved my ideas. Mixing business with philanthropy is one of my favorite things, and they were happy to let me incorporate that. They expressed surprise that I had even kept the meeting, since it was set before Taylor was diagnosed, but I told them what she had told me while she pushed me to keep going to class, scheduling shoots and attending meetings – if you let cancer stop you from living while you fight, then it's already won. She had her mom coming over anyway, so I knew if she was having any reservations or concerns, someone was there for her. It was going to be a lot of work to get the line put together in time to debut it in early 2017, but I was excited for the challenge. They wanted to call it "Knockout Kancer by Karlie Kloss" abbreviated KKxKK, and while I wasn't sold on the name, I would have let them call it just about anything if they were actually going to use my ideas and designs. I was actually giddy thinking of telling Tay all about it when I got home, but first I had meetings with the designers to start putting ideas into motion. I texted Tay to let her know I'd be home for dinner, but probably not before.
I was glad Karlie was busy with her meetings, because I had a lot to discuss with Robert. I'd asked him to come because as much as I didn't want to think about it, I needed to update my will. As it stood, everything pretty much got divided up between my parents, Austin, some charitable donations, and small funds for Abigail and Brit. But now, I wanted most of what was mine to be Karlie's. I still wanted everyone else I'd designated as beneficiaries to benefit, but things like property, and vehicles, and the planes now needed to be distributed differently. Karlie would get the Franklin Street house and the one in Rhode Island. My parents would keep their Nashville house, Mom's place in LA and Dad's in Tampa, as well as my Nashville apartment. Austin would get LA. Mom, Dad, and Austin could share the small plane, but I wanted Karlie to have the big one because it had the capability for international travel, and I never wanted her to fly commercial again. Everyone who wanted one could have a car, but I designated the others to go to a charity to distribute them to single moms, or disaster victims or something. I reallocated some of the financial distributions to charity to include more LGBT charities, and more cancer research ones.When we finished discussing the changes I wanted, Robert suggested Karlie and I write up a post-nuptual agreement to agree on the division of property and assets if we were ever to divorce. I will admit now that I didn't react well. I may have yelled. There may have been some screaming, which I hate to do because it makes you look crazy. But I didn't want, four days after my wedding, to talk about what to do if it wasn't 'til death do us part given that I'd just had to face a decision regarding what I wanted to happen if it WAS 'til death do us part and I went first. He was right, of course. While most of the time, I don't worry about the differences in our incomes, or property holdings, or lives, because Karlie is one of the few people who makes me feel normal, and lets me ignore those things, the reality is if we were, god forbid, to split one day, a fifty-fifty split wouldn't actually be equitable, exactly. I wanted to make sure she was protected, probably more than myself. He'd already drawn up a couple samples, and I think he was a little mad at me that I consistently picked the ones that protected Karlie the most. Even though I was focusing on Karlie, and making sure she was protected, I still wanted to make sure her lawyer looked it over before either of us signed anything. It didn't surprise me that no one had advised her to do the same, that I knew of, since Robert wasn't entirely wrong that if we didn't plan this in advance, things could get ugly and she would stand to gain a lot more than I would, but I didn't want to think about that. I knew that if it ever came to a split, any ruthless maneuvers from her side would undoubtedly come from a lawyer, and not from Karls herself, but that didn't mean they wouldn't happen.After that, I was in a pretty rotten mood when Karlie got home. She was bursting with sunshine, like always, and clearly wanted to talk about whatever had happened at work, but I went first, hoping that getting my stupid crap out of the way first would allow her to gush over whatever thing was making her so happy, and pull me out of the dark place I'd gone. We didn't make it that far."Hey babe!" Karlie cooed, planting a kiss on my lips. "How was your day?""Honestly, it kinda sucked," I replied, a bite to my words I didn't really intend to direct at her.Her eyes went wide and she took in my appearance. I was still wearing the pencil skirt, though the blazer was now draped across the back of a chair in the kitchen, itself a testament to the fact that I wasn't in a great place. My eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, my shoulders slumped. "What happened? What's wrong, Tay?""I met with Robert," I spat, as though that should explain everything. Looking back, I was being petulant and childish, but I was too defeated at that moment to care."The...lawyer?" Karlie questioned, wrinkling her forehead as she wracked her brain to connect my tone to anyone named Robert we knew who might have upset me."Yeah. Um, my legal team wants us to sign a post-nup, since we kinda jumped in head first to the whole marriage thing. You should have your lawyer look it over before we sign though, because even though I should be able to trust my legal team not to screw you over, I can't guarantee that." I was so not in the mood for this, and I know she could hear it, but I'd just rained all over her parade, so she wasn't exactly in the best place either, not anymore."Um, I don't think I have a lawyer," she replied, looking at me a bit sideways, like she was trying to figure me out."Who the hell reads your contracts before you sign them, Karlie!? Surely you don't just sign whatever the fuck you feel like, right!?" I wasn't actually yelling at her, but I'd hit that place where both parties feel like they're yelling."IMG has lawyers for that, Taylor. I've never needed one to negotiate my personal life before. I don't know if I can have them look this over or not. I'm sure it's fine, we're not going to divorce anyway." Karlie was trying to maintain an even tone of voice, even though I was being pretty antagonistic. You could hear a little of the strain in her voice as she said my name."What if we do, Karlie? What then? Who's going to handle your side? How can you be so ignorant of how this all works? God, Karlie..." I didn't exactly give her a chance to answer my questions."I. don't. know. Why does this suddenly matter? You never cared before. It's not like I want your houses, or your plane, or whatever they want you to protect. None of that shit matters to me. I don't get it Tay, what's up with you tonight?" Even as I got more and more vitriolic, she fought to stay calm. It was that that broke me."Maybe I just want to make sure you're going to be okay without me. Maybe I just want to make sure you're taken care of, and that marrying me isn't the worst decision you've ever made. Maybe I'm just scared. I had to update my will today Karlie, to include you in it. There's a one in ten chance I'm not still around in five years..." I was close to yelling, but also crying, and suddenly it made sense to Karlie."Taylor...""Don't tell me it's not true. My career is a one in a million, maybe one in a billion chance. I've spent my whole life beating the odds. Ninety percent five-year survivability sounds pretty good, but what if I'm still going to beat the odds Karlie? I might be in the ten percent. Seems like with all the times I've come out ahead when I shouldn't, maybe I'll fall on the wrong side of the odds this time." She let me keep rambling in this vein for several minutes before finally stopping me with her hands on mine."Okay, so there's a one in ten chance this isn't a fight you can win. But there's a nine in ten chance that it is. Getting the legal stuff straightened out is smart, Tay. It sucks, but you've done it, and it's over for now. I will figure out my end, but I can guarantee you that this marriage has a one hundred percent five-year survivability rate. I'm not going anywhere, even if you yell at me. We've fought hard to get to where we are, I'm not letting you go without a fight."She ended up putting me to bed like I was a little kid, helping me into my pjs, coaxing me to wash my face and brush my teeth. I got a taste of maternal Karlie, and I loved it. I told her I was sorry, over and over, and she told me it was okay. Emotions were bound to get the best of us. But she loved me. Our first fight as a married couple, and I just felt guilty for turning it into a big deal when it shouldn't have been. Once again, I was reminded how fortunate I was to have her in my world, in my life. Til death do us part, hopefully when we're both old and gray. There were so many things we still hadn't talked about, but I knew she was right when she said we should talk about them in the morning. It had been a long, hard day, and although a lot had happened, the week wasn't over yet. I still had three days before surgery. Just before I fell asleep, I told her I'd decided against the fertility treatments, and the last thing I remember was hearing her whisper, almost to herself "Good decision. You'll beat the odds there too. We'll make it happen."

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I expected to have trouble sleeping the night before surgery, but once I fell asleep, I was totally out. I completely missed Karlie getting up to take her shower and eat breakfast, and only began to awaken when I felt the bed shift as she sat down on my side of the bed. I was lying on my stomach with my head turned toward her side, and I allowed myself to just lay there as she gently smoothed my hair, now back to its normal length, across my neck, exposing my right shoulder. I wasn't at all surprised when she bent to kiss that exposed skin and murmured my approval. I felt her gently lay something there, followed by her pressing something warm and wet to it. "The hell are you doing, Karls?" I mumbled into the pillows, still without having opened my eyes."It's a temporary tattoo of a giraffe," she replied, keeping her voice low and gentle to allow me a few more lazy moments, "because I always have your back. A little piece of me can go with you into surgery, even though I have to wait with your mom in the waiting area." Once I felt her peel away the paper backing, I sat up and slipped my glasses on so I could see her, already dressed and ready for the day. She kissed me, and I tasted cinnamon, as close to breakfast as I was going to get until after the surgery, some hours later. It didn't take long to get ready, given that all I had to do was throw on leggings and a sweater and brush my teeth. I couldn't wear my contacts, or eat anything, and I left all my jewelry at home except for my wedding band, which I planned to wear until the last possible second.I felt relatively calm gathering my iPod, a relic from years ago, but I wasn't comfortable taking my phone with me, given all it contained. The iPod, on the other hand, just had my choice in calming music which they would let me listen to to lower my anxiety levels going into surgery. I'd had the pre-op appointment Friday, when they'd run one last set of labs on my blood and checked to make sure that my heart was good to go for surgery. Hearing once again that, aside from the cancer, I was strong and healthy had been reassuring. I was confident in the team they'd assembled to take care of me, and I knew that they would do everything they could to make sure surgery went well. It was at that appointment that they suggested I bring music and told me how to prep for the surgery. Besides that, we'd spent Friday going over our finances. I didn't want to overwhelm Karlie all at once, but it was important that she be joint on some accounts, and that she have some idea where all my money was, be that investments, or real estate holdings, or basic bank accounts. I don't have one single financial advisor because I've seen enough movies to know that's a really good way to either lose all your money or end up owing millions in back taxes, but I only introduced Karlie to one. The rest could wait.I felt better, after that, about some of the legal and financial parts of marriage that my legal team wanted me to take care of. I still didn't love the idea of signing a post-nup, but I understood why we had to, and Karlie had contacted one of the lawyers she'd worked with through IMG in the past to see if she could look over what Robert had given me before we signed. None of that would happen until after surgery, but now that it wasn't on our plates anymore, I could let go of that and spend the weekend focused on my relationship and my wife before the surgery. The last work related thing we'd done Friday was officially announce my withdrawal from the concert at the end of October. It didn't seem fair to make people wait for a decision while I waited to see how I'd feel. If I cancelled now, fans who'd made plans to travel might be able to change or cancel their plans, and it would give the people at Formula 1 more time to find alternate entertainment. It was in my contract that I could pull out for health reasons, and if there was any pushback, my team didn't pass it on. The fans were, I'm sure, understandably disappointed, but I chose to stay off the internet for a while and let my team deal with any issues that arose from the cancellation without knowing about them. I didn't need negativity right then.We'd been paped Saturday at Whole Foods, picking out things I thought I might want to eat while I recovered, and all the coverage, thankfully, focused on how cute we looked shopping, with nominal discussion of the fact that I was starting treatment for cancer. Little reminders to the public were probably good, given that I was cancelling what should have been my biggest concert ever. They noted how Karlie took care of me and was protective, and also reported that we'd bought and abnormal amount of ice cream. All things I was okay with. We'd gone out to eat, something we knew we wouldn't do for a bit, even dressing up some for the occasion. Sunday we'd stayed home, though Cara, Derek, Martha and Gigi had come over in the afternoon just to hang out and keep my mind off of what was coming. By Monday morning, the day of the surgery, I was in a pretty good place, knowing that things were as settled as I could make them.My mom was in the kitchen, feeding the cats when I came down to the main floor. She and Karlie would be with me as much as they would let them before the surgery, and would be in the waiting room until I was out. Cara planned to stop by once I was in surgery in case they needed anything, because we all knew they wouldn't want to leave the spot until they knew it was over and had gone well. It was comforting to know someone was taking care of them, while they took care of me. I was once again reminded of how incredible our friends are. I had a ton of messages on my phone wishing me well, and I made a list of everyone so someone could let them know when it was over. I figured I'd be pretty out of it most of the day, but didn't want anyone freaking out that they hadn't heard from us. Mom hugged me good morning, and held me a little longer than usual. I know it was an emotional day for her, watching her baby go into surgery. A surgery that came with more risks than getting my wisdom teeth out, even if they were still small. It was weird to think about the fact that they were going to remove a whole body part. I mean, sure, it didn't really work right, and part of it had gone rogue and was trying to kill me, but I'd only been vaguely aware that I even had a thyroid a few weeks ago, and after today I wasn't going to have one anymore.I was quiet for the car ride to the hospital, wrapped up in a white quilt because although it was still fairly warm for October, the sun wasn't up yet, and as usual, I was freezing. The ride was about twice the length of the ride to the Cancer Institute, since the Institute could only handle outpatient procedures, and I would be staying overnight. At the end of the short ride, I was surprised to get hugs from Sean and Mike. They're not touchy-feely dudes, but they're a huge part of my life, and I trust them implicitly. They devote their time to making sure I'm safe, and I guess it hit them, a little, to see me in danger from something internal, something they couldn't defeat with a little muscle or a firearm. That was all though. No words passed between us, just these big, warm, bear hugs. I knew they would be following us upstairs and hovering, as discreetly as possible, outside the surgical wing just to make sure I was still protected.Checking in for surgery, I was given another pair of hospital bracelets, mint green this time, because I was a surgical patient, and the red allergy alert again. I had to change into a hospital gown once again, but they gave me a robe and some slipper socks to keep my feet warm while I waited. Karlie helped me tuck my hair into a paper shower cap and I made a goofy face for a photo. We didn't plan to release any pictures until after I was back home and recovering, but we knew we couldn't keep the fans totally in the dark about what was happening with my treatment. Dr. Miller stopped by briefly just to see if I had any questions, but nothing had changed since Friday, so we just shared a quick good morning before she moved on to her other patients. I met with Dr. Goldsmith who assured me she was ready for surgery, and introduced me to Dr. Neil Zilberg, the anesthesiologist who would take care of me during the operation. I don't think she expected the three of us to burst out laughing when we heard his name, but he got it and laughed along with us. It was just so similar to the short-lived pseudonym from the summer. The laughter was exactly what we needed to break the tension.The anesthesia nurse started an IV, and wired me up to monitor my heart during surgery. Once they had a reading on my heartbeat, Dr. Zilberg gave me an injection to help me start to relax before the procedure. Mom and Karlie were allowed to stay with me while that settled in. My heart rate was a little on the high side, which they said was common before surgery, so they suggested putting on my music for a little. Although that brought it down somewhat, it still wasn't as close to normal as they wanted, so Karlie pulled on a gown to keep things sterile and laid next to me for a few minutes to let me calm down as much as possible. As she laid with me, she slipped my wedding band off my finger and onto hers. I hadn't had it for very long, but I already missed having it where it belonged. She pulled out a fine-tipped sharpie and, taking my left hand in hers, wrote KSK<3 where the band used to be. "Don't want anyone forgetting you're taken," she joked, sealing her doodle with a kiss. I thought it was cute that she used KSK – Karlie Swift-Kloss – as her initials, instead of her traditional KK. All of that let me relax enough for the next stage of anesthesia and things started to get a little foggy. The last thing I remember is Karlie kissing my forehead and taking my glasses off my face.
As they wheeled Taylor's bed out of the pre-op room, I couldn't help but feel like I was holding pieces of my wife. I had her iPod in my left hand, her wedding ring on my finger, her glasses in my other hand. I hoped that I had helped, somehow, with the little things I'd done to try to keep things light and assure her that I was here, and with her, even when I couldn't be there physically. But now that she was in surgery, I felt lost as to what to do, because there wasn't anything I could do, but wait. I'm not good at staying still for very long. I'm a doer, always taking steps to get where I need to be. But there wasn't anyway way for me to help move this forward, and it sucked. Andrea grabbed my wrist to startle me back out of my own head and into the present, where a nurse was waiting to lead us to a waiting area. I slid Taylor's iPod into my purse, put her glasses on top of my head, and followed behind.

The waiting area was huge, with seats arranged in little pods, so each family could claim their own section, keeping to themselves. Andrea and I took a spot along one wall, where they had a couple couches next to an outlet I could plug my laptop into. My plan was to try to work on a project for Data Structures, hoping I could get lost in the world of code, just for a while, and keep my mind off of what Taylor was going through. I cursed her for making me watch all those medical shows, because I couldn't stop inserting her face into images from the shows. They had to put in a breathing tube because of the general anesthesia, and because the thyroid actually wraps around the trachea so removing it could cause collapse of the airway if the tube wasn't there to keep it open. So in my head I kept seeing Taylor, with a vent tube protruding through chapped lips, taped into place, wires and tubes everywhere. I kept seeing a scalpel piercing the delicate skin of her throat, exposing unidentifiable blood red structures, all of which looked vitally important to me, but one of which would be removed. The surgery itself was supposed to take three hours, with another half-hour to an hour in the recovery room while the aesthesia wore off. I couldn't help thinking that was an eternity. Andrea pulled out a book, but before she opened it, she squeezed my hand and said "she's going to be fine." I needed that.

Cara came by about an hour after they'd taken Taylor into surgery, bearing coffees for both me and Andrea, as well as some granola bars, in case we were hungry. She listened intently to my rambling explanation of the project I was working on, and tried to ask intelligent questions, even though I knew she had no idea what I was talking about. She even took the time to ask Andrea about her book, which turned out to be an autobiography written by an Austrian Jew who hid in plain sight during World War II as the wife of an SS soldier using papers that actually belonged to a friend of hers who wasn't Jewish. It made the time pass much faster, the three of us talking there in the waiting room. We tried to keep our voices low, so we wouldn't disrupt other families, but we also didn't want to stop the conversation. Cara was still sitting with us, eating one of the granola bars when they came to say Taylor was out of surgery and headed to recovery. We would only get ten minutes to see her in the recovery room, but then once they thought she was recovered enough from the anesthesia, we would get to spend the rest of the day with her in her room.

The nurse led us to her, where she lay swathed in blankets, shivering from the cold of the surgical room as well as the after effects of anesthesia. The nurse attending to her said her first word coming out of the anesthesia had been "Karlie," even before "water" or "mom." Her voice was really hoarse. We'd been told over and over that that would result from the breathing tube, but it was hard for me to hear her sound so weak, her words broken by the aftereffects of surgery, and to see in her eyes that it worried her not to be able to speak normally. She was having some pain as well, to be expected, but still hard, as her wife, to witness. I can't even imagine what it was like for Andrea, but she held it together well. I slid Taylor's glasses gently onto her face and she smiled at me, though she seemed pretty unfocused and out of it, still under the influence of the anesthesia. Ten minutes passed in a flash and we were herded out of the room. The only thing that tempered the short duration of our visit was the fact that as soon as we emerged from the recovery suite, Dr. Goldsmith was ready to talk to us about how the operation had gone.

She said it had gone really well, she had been able to remove the entire tumor, as well as an estimated ninety-eight percent of the unaffected thyroid tissue. The tumor hadn't invaded any nearby structures, which was as she and Dr. Miller had hoped. She had been able to preserve the parathyroid glands with minimal trauma, so hopefully Taylor's calcium levels would be unaffected. And, although she had brushed against the nerves to Taylor's vocal chords, there had been no damage to them, so while there might be some residual hoarseness for the next few days or weeks, she fully expected Taylor's voice to return to normal, a huge relief for both of us. I couldn't wait to tell Taylor that it was going to be okay, for sure. In order to avoid damage to the surrounding structures, Dr. Goldsmith had needed to make a longer incision than initially anticipated, taking the usual two to three inch incision out to about four and a half, but everything else had gone as planned, and when it comes to surgery, as planned is definitely a good thing.

Cara had hung around in the waiting room with all our stuff while Andrea and I went to see Taylor so I didn't have to pack up my computer for just ten minutes with my wife. She was happy to hear that things had gone pretty well, that Taylor had been able to speak to us some, and that Dr. Goldsmith had been able to get the whole tumor. She promised to stop by later in the afternoon, I think she really wanted to see Taylor for herself, and I knew Taylor would be happy to see her once some of the drowsiness from the anesthesia had passed and her pain was under control. It's been fun for me to see them get closer. Taylor has really been talking to her a lot lately since she and Annie split, and it's made Tay feel good to try to help her deal with the break-up. It's been a welcome distraction from everything else going on, though we both hate to see Cara hurting. I told Cara to spread the word to as many of our friends as she knew. I sent a quick text to my family to update them on the progress, and I know Andrea was talking to Scott and Austin, letting them know she was in recovery but still pretty groggy. I also shot a text to Tree, who I knew would keep the rest of Team Taylor, as I like to call them, informed. I didn't even know Scott Borchetta had my number, but he texted me a few minutes later to say he was glad surgery had gone well and would be thinking about her.

After about another hour in the waiting room, a nurse came to lead us to a totally different wing of the hospital where Taylor had a deluxe private room. Mike was already stationed outside the door when we got there, and I had to wonder how he'd done it. The man is a former Navy Seal, and it clearly shows. I'd lost track of him and the other security guys while she was in surgery, but he took his job protecting her very seriously, so I hadn't been worried. I really felt like where we were was about as safe as she could be short of being in the White House or something, but I also knew how little she actually let me know about the very real threats they were here to protect her from. We'd been dating almost three months before she let on that all her guys carried, she didn't want to scare me off. But it only takes one close call, one incident to remind me that they are very much needed, even if sometimes I wish we could just get away from them for a little while. Right then I just wished they could have protected her from this too, and I could see in Mike's eyes he felt the same way.

She was sitting up in bed this time when we walked into the room, still buried under a mountain of blankets, but she looked much more alert, holding a can of ginger ale. She smiled when I came in, and although it was small, it was genuine, and I knew she was doing okay. Her voice still sounded weak and hoarse, but better than it had just an hour before. She looked exhausted, which was interesting given that she'd been asleep for hours while her mom and I were awake and anxiously awaiting news, but surgery isn't an easy process. She'd had a little post-anesthesia nausea, but they'd given her meds for that and she was able to sip her ginger ale comfortably. If things went well, they'd let her have some jello in an hour or so, and then pudding, and if all that was good, she'd be able to have a normal dinner before they kicked us visitors out. She drifted in and out of sleep for most of the afternoon, hopped up on pain meds and still feeling some after-effects from being put to sleep. Dr. Goldsmith came in to see her after her second surgery of the day, and Taylor was happy to hear how things had gone, especially the good news that although it might take time, her voice was fully expected to recover. Once Dr. Goldsmith had come by, Andrea left to go start the "Taylor is doing well" phone tree and give us some time together before visiting hours ended.

By about five, she started to really feel better, as alert as the meds would let her be, even a little hungry. It was about then that Cara came by, bearing food from Shake Shack, which was infinitely more appetizing than the various beige objects on the hospital tray. I was overjoyed to find a 'shroom burger in the bag, though I wasn't sure how my body would react to the piles of cheese. Taylor couldn't finish anything, but she ate bits of it all and made sure Cara knew how happy she was that she'd come by. Adorably, Cara had brought Taylor a stuffed giraffe – she knew Tay would have a hard time sleeping alone – but even cuter, she handed me a stuffed koala because she knew I would have an even harder time without the benefits of pain meds. They actually let Cara and I stay a bit past the end of visiting hours, since we were in a completely private room and Taylor was doing well, but they kicked us out a little after nine. I made sure to leave her with a pile of DVDs and kissed her goodnight, assuring her that the moment the hospital opened for visitors the next morning, I'd be there.

Jeff drove me home, though it was hard to think of it as home while Taylor wasn't there. When I got out of the car inside our garage, I was surprised to get a hug from him while he mumbled in my ear "She's strong, she'll be fine." I tried to relax on the couch, maybe watch some TV, all the while clutching my stuffed koala, and the cats tried to comfort me. Dibbles brought me a catnip mouse, then proceeded to fall off the couch backward, making me laugh, but also making me wish Tay had been there to see it. Meredith curled up on the back of the couch, just behind my shoulders, her back against mine, because just like her mother, she has my back, I guess. When I realized I was too restless to sit after a day of waiting, and sitting, and waiting, and sitting some more, I took myself down to the workout room, throwing up a snapchat of myself running on the treadmill at ten at night, just to deflect attention from Tay's absence from the house that night. I'm normally a strong sleeper, but that night I wished I was brave enough to try some of Tay's sleep meds. It just wasn't the same sleeping in our bed alone, worrying if she was sleeping, if she was in pain, if she was missing me like I missed her.

I woke up at six, unable to return to sleep. The cats were curled up next to me, and I appreciated their effort to fill the space Taylor usually occupied, but it just wasn't the same. I had the koala clutched in my arms, a poor substitute for my real koala. Not knowing what to do with myself, I decided to bake Taylor's favorite pumpkin muffins, since I couldn't even go over to the hospital until nine, with Tay hopefully getting discharged at ten. I guess Andrea couldn't sleep either, since she showed up at about seven-thirty, carrying two lattes, the bags under her eyes betraying the fact that she'd slept about as well as I had. She helped me clean up the kitchen, like mother like daughter I guess, since Tay always does the dishes. I'd left the dirty bowls and pans in the sink, half expecting her to come behind me and start clearing up like she always does. I never thought I'd miss that as much as I did that morning. It's just part of the routine. Without Andrea, the dishes would probably have still been there when we brought Taylor home, and I would never have given them a second thought.

The second we both thought they might let us in to see Taylor, we were standing in the reception area, ready to collect the woman who'd brought us together and take her home. She was eating oatmeal in bed when we arrived, a small serving of fruit already picked over, and a cup of coffee, if you could call it that, off to the side. I felt a little like the Grinch when he finally understands Christmas, because I felt like my heart grew three sizes just seeing her again. Her hair was greasy and tangled, she wasn't allowed to shower for another day yet, and she wasn't wearing any makeup, but she was wonderfully, beautifully, my Taylor. When she was sure her mom wasn't looking, she seductively licked the spoon with a wink, and I was torn as to if I should wink back or giggle, because there was no way the day after surgery she was going to have the stamina for what her little spoon trick suggested, if she was even allowed to do something strenuous, which she wasn't. I went with a smirk, and she laughed, though she almost immediately put a hand to her throat, wincing with pain.
"It hurts to laugh," I croaked, still not accustomed to the way my voice would fade in and out when I spoke, an expected but unfortunate effect of the surgery that would, I had been assured over and over again, disappear with time. They encouraged me to talk as much as was comfortable, because it would actually help with the recovery, but I hated listening to myself speak. Still, after an initial look of concern at my expression of pain, she smiled broadly and stepped up to give me a kiss. Mom was right behind her, and I embraced her carefully. The surgical site didn't actually hurt that much, surprisingly, but my neck and back were pretty uncomfortable, the result of spending three hours with my body contorted for the surgery, and I could barely turn my head side to side. I was hopeful that maybe I would be cleared to do some light yoga moves or something to try to work out the kinks leftover from the surgery. I wasn't allowed to lift anything heavier than fifteen pounds, or do any kind of vigorous cardio, but Dr. Miller had said before the surgery that walking as much as I could tolerate was great, and would help lessen the weight gain as my thyroid hormones dropped.Dr. Goldsmith came in along with the nurse who had been helping me all morning just as I finished the last of my breakfast. She examined my incision and said she was pleased with how it looked. I couldn't say I felt the same. It was long, and red, with bits of dried blood showing under the paper steri-strips that ran it's length. It looked to me like someone had tried to slit my throat, and when I'd seen myself in the mirror, it had drawn my attention so strongly I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that my hair was a disaster, or the way the hospital lighting washed me out. All I could see was the mark on my skin. But I knew what she meant – it wasn't bright red and itchy or painful, so there were no signs of infection. She had me say different things, to listen to my voice, and told me that even though she knew it was probably very uncomfortable for me, it wasn't even close to the worst she had heard that had made a full recovery. They'd done blood work early that morning to check my calcium levels, and although they were low enough that they wanted me to keep taking calcium supplements, they weren't crazy low, and were well within the range that indicated my parathyroid glands were doing fine after the surgery.I was cleared to go home with Mom and Karlie, and as soon as Dr. Goldsmith had given me the okay, the nurse started prepping me to leave. Once my IV was out and all the monitors disconnected, I was allowed to put on my own clothes. Karlie had brought me leggings and a turtleneck, and I marveled at how well she knows me, that she picked clothes that were comfortable but cute and that would cover the evidence of the surgery. I wasn't ready to tell the world everything, but once I was home I wanted to at least let them know that I'd had surgery to remove the primary tumor, that it had gone fairly well and I was home recovering, but as they would be able to hear, if I made a video, my voice was still not fully back after surgery. I hadn't put my full diagnosis out there, only the huge umbrella of cancer, and I wasn't sure how specific I wanted to be. The turtleneck would give me some room to stay vague if that was how I wanted to go. While I contemplated that, she stood behind where I sat on the bed, French braiding my hair to cover the fact that I hadn't showered in a day and a half and still couldn't for another day, yet another one of the glamorous results of surgery. I felt her lean down to kiss the top of my head, and I let myself lean back into her. I'd almost forgotten we weren't alone until I heard my mom clear her throat.She sat on the other side of the room, holding the bag of toiletries I'd brought with me, making sure the hospital couldn't make bank auctioning off Taylor Swift's toothbrush. Not that they would, but through the haze of pain meds, there was a good chance I'd forget something. They'd taken me off the drip meds the night before, but I was still taking stronger pain pills than I'd ever had in my life, and it made everything seem slightly out of focus. The fact that I was wearing my glasses, a way of seeing the world I wasn't accustomed to didn't help. I wondered if my bad mood was an effect of surgical meds, the lack of thyroid already taking effect, or the depression I already had before all this happened. I just felt out of sorts, when I'd been happy just minutes earlier, and I hated that. I grabbed Cara's giraffe off the bed, trying to recall how the three of us had sat around eating Shake Shack and laughing, and failing utterly.They herded me into a wheelchair and pushed me to a back entrance, away from the main streets, so that I could exit as unobtrusively as possible. Mike and Jeff were both there, blocking off the alley, so Mom and Karlie could bundle me into the car. Mom could tell my mood was off, and I watched her and Karlie try to communicate with their eyes over my head. Apparently the general consensus was that I was just tired, despite the fact that I'd been asleep the most out of the three of us over the past day or so. They weren't entirely wrong, I guess, because once I'd laid down in my own bed, I was out like a light, still wearing my shoes because I couldn't bend enough to take them off.
Once Taylor headed to the bedroom to take a nap, Andrea and I held a short conference in the kitchen. We were both concerned about the quick shift in her mood this morning but hoped it was still just a leftover effect of the surgery, and all the meds they'd pumped into her. A little residual fatigue was to be expected, and I hoped the nap would help her. I was pretty tired myself, asking forgiveness a dozen times for yawning in front of my mother-in-law, who finally suggested I go in and join Taylor, since we would both sleep better together. She said that without a hint of bawdiness, just knowing that we were used to having each other, after three years together, and that especially now, we would appreciate the security of knowing the other was there. She planned to do some cooking, some of Tay's favorites, while we napped.
* * *I woke up feeling mentally better, but physically it was the pain that woke me. Karlie was pressed up against my back, and I loved feeling her warmth, but I was horribly uncomfortable, and if I so much as breathed, I felt pain shooting from my neck down my arm. I must have groaned out loud, because Karlie was up in an instant, practically leaping over me to try to retrieve the bottle of narcotics they'd sent me home with. They'd warned me to keep up with the pain meds and not let it get too bad, but it was still hard to make myself take them. I didn't like the way they made me feel disconnected from the world around me. Karls helped me sit up against the headboard so I could take the pills, and mom brought me some homemade chicken nuggets. She knows how much I love them, and I almost never let myself eat them, so she'd made them while Karlie and I napped, along with some honey mustard to dip them in. I had to eat whenever I took the meds, and I was starting to see a hundred reasons I was going to gain that weight, even without the hormone problems.Still, I had a good afternoon, sitting on the couch between my mom and my wife, watching movies I'd loved in middle school, occasionally drifting off, but surrounded by the two women who loved me the most. I was starting to feel better, physically, by the end of the day. My back and neck were doing better, and I still wasn't having pain in my throat where I expected to, which was great. I still couldn't stand the sound of my own voice, the way it cracked with every other word, how weak, and unlike me. I was supposed to talk as much as possible, because that would help it get better, but it was a constant fight against my instincts that vocal rest would be better. I knew I'd made the right decision to cancel the show at the end of the month, and I hated that it had come to that, but my voice was in no shape to try to perform. I couldn't talk, never mind sing.Mom made minestrone soup, salad and garlic bread for dinner, and the three of us sat together, mostly just enjoying comfortable silence. There wasn't anything to say, nothing new had happened since the surgery. I wasn't up to talk legal issues, or future treatment, or even how I felt. I just wanted to be Taylor, for a while, and they let me. When we'd eaten, I asked them to come to the music room with me, and I had them film while I made a short video for the fans, explaining very basically about the fact that I'd had the tumor removed, and that there was still a lot left to do to get me healthy again, but surgery was over for now. I told them that my voice sounded the way it did because of the breathing tube, and that it would come back over time, but that that effect of surgery was one of the reasons I'd had to cancel the show. I told them how sad I was to be missing it, and that I was going to fight as hard as I could to get healthy so I could plan a performance I COULD attend. I sent it to Tree for approval, and allowed myself the indulgence of the three of us sharing a pint of ice cream, right out of the carton.Mom went back to Karlie's old place after that, but made me promise to rest. We stayed up watching movies a bit longer, before my eyelids refused to stay open any longer. Karlie was so gentle, helping me out of my clothes and into pajamas, another dose of maternal Karlie. I had to sleep propped up a bit to prevent swelling, so she spent what felt like twenty minutes making sure the pillows were arranged so that I would be comfortable but also at the proper angle. I could see her going all math nerd on me as she tried to figure it out like I was a rocket she was preparing to launch rather than a wife she was preparing to let sleep. I'd swelled a little after our nap, so I knew she was right to set it up, but by the time she decided to shove one of the cushions off the sofa between the box spring and the mattress, I was about ready to pass out, comfortable or not.* * *Two days sleeping finally caught up to me at four a.m., when I woke up uncomfortable, and not the least bit tired. I was no longer feeling sharp pain, more of a dull discomfort, so I took only one pain pill, a compromise between my dislike of them, and the fact that I'm a rule follower, and the doctors told me I had to take them. I pushed my glasses onto my face and slipped carefully out of the bedroom, leaving Karlie to keep sleeping, a small bead of drool dripping onto her pillow that I one hundred percent planned to tease her about later.I padded into the music room, the only place I knew to go at four in the morning. I couldn't sing, but I could still play, and write lyrics down even if I couldn't sing them myself just now. I didn't have any particular inspiration, unusual for me, but I figured the combination of meds and the fact that I didn't particularly want to write about being sick was holding me back. I did, however, have a melody without lyrics, so I sat down at the piano and began to plunk it out, my phone sitting on the ledge, just like always. Karlie found me in the music room about three hours later, a guitar in my lap, my notebook open in front of me, about five pens stuck in my hair, because each time I thought of something, I would grab a new one from the side table rather than get the same one I'd just been using out of my hair. I didn't even realize she'd come in until I heard the shutter sound from her phone as she took a picture."I thought the fans should see what it really looks like when Taylor Swift is inspired," she laughed, gliding into the room. "Those Diet Coke commercials make it look more glamorous than it is. Write anything good?"I told her I hadn't really gotten anywhere as far as a finished product, but that I'd thought of some things that might be something someday. She just nodded, she knows I won't share until I'm at least at demo stage, or actively writing with someone, which was no longer high on my current list of priorities. She gave me a hug and kissed behind my ear and asked if I was ready to finally take a shower, because, she joked, she loved me but I kinda smelled.There was nothing sexy about the fact that we shared the shower that morning. It was purely about her helping me because there were still directions I didn't move particularly well, especially after spending my morning hunched over the piano and guitar, maybe not my best decision ever. She'd grabbed a plastic bench off the terrace outside and set it in the shower so I could sit down, and I was glad to have it, since I did, in fact, get tired very easily. Feeling her strong, slender fingers work shampoo into my greasy hair was incredibly relaxing, and paired with the fact that I'd been up for hours, I thought I might fall asleep right there, with the warm water running over me. Once we'd both washed, she helped me into a fluffy robe and helped me dry, being especially gentle as she patted the area around my incision, which was actually more numb than painful. Once my hair was dry, she grabbed q-tips and peroxide and gently swabbed away the worst of the dried blood, and when I looked in the mirror, it wasn't nearly as prominent as I remembered it from that first morning in the hospital."So, breakfast?" She asked, pulling a sweater down over her head. "I think your mom left food, but if you wanted, we could walk to that little café you like, if you feel up to it. We could have the guys pick us up if you get tired."I was shocked to find that I did, actually, kind of want to walk to breakfast. It wasn't something we would have done a month ago, risking getting caught by fans leaving my place together, but now that we were married and everyone knew it, we could go wherever we liked, hand in hand, and not worry about it. I also knew that I should savor these moments. In a few short weeks, I would be trapped in my room, emitting radiation that would keep me away from everyone, not just Karls, and a short time after that, chemo might keep me from feeling like going out at all. So I agreed to walk to breakfast, and when I watched her beautiful smile reach another level, I knew I'd made the right choice.Jeff led the way as we walked a few short blocks. We had the advantage of surprise, since no one expected me to go out the day after surgery, but I was feeling pretty good, other than the continued cracking and hoarseness of my voice. The worst part of the whole experience was ordering my breakfast and realizing someone at the next table was recording video of the whole thing. Jeff politely suggested that he delete the video, and just by standing over him, Jeff was able to intimidate him into deleting it. Didn't stop him from tweeting about how wrecked my voice was though, and I finished breakfast feeling pretty low, since the video I'd made hadn't been posted yet so no one knew I'd even had the surgery. I texted Tree to either post it or release a statement, because the last thing I wanted to deal with was rumors I would never sing again, that my voice was directly impacted by the cancer, when thanks to Dr. Goldsmith's expert hands, neither of those things were true. The damage was temporary, and I needed that to be known. I was wearing a lower cut sweater, having wrapped a scarf to carefully cover the steri-strips, but now, with a small crowd of paparazzi gathering outside the café and the tweet spreading like an awful oil slick, I realized there was an easy solution to the immediate concern of my fans and the media. I unwound the scarf and draped it around the open neck of my coat, a style I've worn before as a decorative choice. Karlie looked at the changes in my outfit and raised an eyebrow, but didn't say a word after I nodded.We stepped out together, heads held high. She'd bent her arm at the elbow and I'd threaded my hand through, and then we were holding each other's hands, so we were a pretty compact unit as we walked the gauntlet of flashing lights. Jeff parted the sea, so to speak, and we walked through, saying nothing, but allowing my glasses and surgical scar to speak for themselves. By the time we walked the short blocks home, I was utterly exhausted, and collapsed in a heap on the couch, only stirring when Karlie woke me to take another pain pill and give me some tea with honey, supposedly soothing to my throat. We spent another lazy afternoon watching my Netflix queue, until Mom came over around seven bearing lasagna and ingredients to bake cookies. She remarked that she thought my voice sounded better, and even though I couldn't hear a change, I appreciated it. By the time we'd made the cookies and eaten a few, I was more than ready to go to bed, and fairly confident I'd sleep through the night this time. I knew Tree and I would probably have to talk the next day, as the ramifications of my choices came to light, but I was able to put it off for another day, and through a combination of recovery and meds, I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, enjoying once again the security of having my strong, loving wife behind me, where she belonged.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Recovering from surgery was really, really boring. We watched so many movies and television shows, I thought I would lose whatever brain cells remained after days of narcotics. After about the fourth day, I actually started annoying myself, so I can't imagine how Karlie stood it. The thing was, I did still get tired really quickly, so anytime I tried to do anything, it was like I'd run a marathon instead of washing one load of laundry. I found myself trying to clean the house, but vacuuming one corner of the room and then needing a two hour nap to recover. Karls was still working as I recovered, so Mom would come over and try to entertain me, but she didn't get very far either. I had some success for a day or so painting, since I could do it sitting down, and it was outside of my daily routine. I knitted three scarves, one I even did a cable pattern, just for kicks. I was starting to learn complex origami and had covered the house in folded paper animals one day when Karlie came home from a shoot. She found Meredith lying on her back playing with a folded paper frog, and me, sound asleep with my head on the craft table. She snapped a pic of that and put it on Instagram, part of our collective effort to keep fans in the loop without oversharing.After my video made the rounds on the internet and the gossip shows, coupled with the candid shots of Karlie and I leaving breakfast, there was a lot of speculation about my diagnosis. We weren't confirming or denying anything, but the general consensus seemed to be that I had either thyroid cancer or some type of lymphoma. A few had guessed some other kind of neck or throat cancer, but because most of those only happen in really old people who've smoked for years, those were pretty quickly shot down by the medical experts of tumblr. I was still mostly staying off the internet and social media other than to toss out some quick posts to show I was alive but still recovering, but people from my team were monitoring, of course, which is how I knew what they were thinking. They said people were handling the Formula 1 cancellation pretty well. Most of the fans who would have made the effort to go there were pretty hardcore, which meant I'd been most afraid of disappointing them, but that also meant that a lot of them were among the most supportive. It was nice to know there was a lot of support out there. I'd hoped there would be, but fans can be fickle. I'd lost a few by coming out, but the ones who stayed were just as fiercely loyal as ever.She shook my shoulder gently, then laughed at me as I sat up with an origami crane stuck to my cheek. "Morning, Princess Aurora," she joked, as I peeled the crane off and set it on the table."What time is it?" I croaked. My voice had improved a little, but it was still prone to cracking and fading first thing after I woke up, and at the end of a long day. This somewhat qualified as both.She told me it was nearly six, she'd turned in a paper for Aesthetic Justice after a shoot for Swarovski, and she was hungry. To prove the point, her stomach let out a monster growl which made me laugh, then cough, enough that she started pounding my back to try to help me stop. We hadn't been out since our walk to the café days earlier, and she thought the perfect way to break up the boredom would be a nice dinner out. She'd even brought home a new dress for me, with a clutch to match, and although I suspected she'd gotten it from the set, it was sweet that she'd tried to plan something romantic. The dress was a simple wine colored sleeveless sheath dress with a high neck in front but a slit nearly to my belly button, so the neckline would cover the still-intact steri-strips, yet let me feel sexy too. She's pretty awesome like that, always thinking about how I'd feel. I knew we would barely make it through dinner before I got tired, but I really wanted to try for her.I hadn't worn makeup in days, so I actually kind of enjoyed putting on eyeliner and lipstick, and I pinned my hair into a sort of an up-do to match the sleek style of the dress. Of course, by then I was already pretty tired, just from the effort of getting ready, but I still slipped on a pair of heels for the first time since our wedding weekend and smiled brightly at the gorgeous woman standing in front of me. Her dress was black, tight-fitted on top but flaring from the hip, just the right amount of flirty. Her hair was down and loose around her shoulders, and she looked so incredibly sexy, I was tempted to suggest we skip dinner, until I remembered we still couldn't have sex until after my post-op appointment. I would have to settle for ogling the eye candy for another couple of days. She took my hand and raised it over my head to twirl me around, then pulled me in for a kiss."You look amazing Mrs. Swift-Kloss," she cooed as I pulled out of the kiss, afraid I wouldn't be able to stop myself if I let it deepen."Not half as amazing as you, Mrs. Swift-Kloss," I returned. We were about to kiss again when Karlie's stomach started making inhuman noises, so I suggested we'd better go ahead and get dinner before she decided to eat me, then realized what I'd said and dissolved into another fit of laughter and coughing, while Karlie stood dumfounded and asked exactly how many of those pain pills I'd been taking. I don't think she expected me to be as direct with my answer as I was, but she's my wife. If I can't tell her I'm horny, who can I tell? She smirked at me but didn't say a word as she helped me into my coat. I thought I might be alone in that, but as we were finally walking to the car, having pulled ourselves together, she put her hand on my butt and gave a little squeeze, and told me that she couldn't wait until I was cleared for more 'vigorous exercise.'She actually took me to a steakhouse for dinner, a sure sign she wanted this date night to be all about me. They did have fish on the menu as well for Karlie, so she wouldn't starve, but it was definitely a me restaurant rather than one she would have chosen for herself. I couldn't drink since I was still taking narcotic pain meds, though I was down to just one pill before bed, so Karlie got us both champagne flutes of ginger ale to toast with. She asked me about my day, though I told her she'd pretty much seen it with the piles of origami animals around the house. She told me they were adorable, but also suggested that maybe I should invite a friend over, or something, to help keep myself occupied while she was working. The origami had been Mom's idea, so I could somewhat understand why she thought maybe I should try inviting someone else, before I either folded an entire ark worth of animals, or started knitting slipcovers for the sofas.I asked her about her day, her shoot, how school was going. The Swarovski shoot from that day had gone well, she thought, they'd shot a couple different versions of the campaign. It was all about gift giving and special memories. What she loved about it was that although one version paired her with the expected male model apparently playing her boyfriend or husband and their supposed children, the second one was nearly identical but with another female model. The photographer had decided to embrace who she is, but it was ultimately up to the decision makers if they would actually use any of the girlfriend/wife/two mom shots. She'd seen some of the photos, and while both sets looked good, because she's amazing at what she does, she thought the chemistry was clearly better with the girl. She hoped this was the start of a trend, and that maybe some of her other big campaigns might let her be herself in the same way. The food was amazing, but not quite as amazing as sitting in a public place, dressed up, with my wife, on an actual date.I saw Karlie give a small wave to someone behind me and tried to turn to see who she was waving at, only to discover that I still didn't have full range of motion in my neck and couldn't turn that far. In the end, I realized as I turned that more than likely we were once again the subject of fan photos, though I minded less tonight, as they were at a distance, not video, and I felt more like myself. I felt good in my dress, even though I had already gained a couple pounds, even over three-quarters of a week. So far they were mostly in my boobs, so while I expected the boob job rumors to make the rounds again, it meant I still felt fairly comfortable with how I looked. The dinner took over an hour, and when Karlie asked if I wanted to split something chocolate, my taste buds said yes, but my yawn said no. She ended up ordering flourless chocolate cake to go, and asked Sean to bring the car around so it would be there by the time she paid. It was a few short steps to the car, and for once, even with fan pics, there wasn't a single photog outside the restaurant.Back home, I went directly to the bedroom to take off the lovely dress before I crashed in it. Karlie came up behind me to unzip, and as it slid off my shoulder she kissed the spot where she'd applied the giraffe tattoo the day of my surgery. "You know this thing is at that stage of faded where it actually looks real?" she asked, eyeing it. "I probably should have told you it was visible in that dress."I laughed. If the worst rumor about me after the steak dinner was that I'd gotten a tattoo of an adorable giraffe on my right shoulder, I was pretty stoked about it, actually, and I told her so. While the shots from breakfast hadn't been too bad, in the end, scar and all, I was pretty excited about the possibility they didn't have anything exciting to say about the dinner date OTHER than that I had maybe gotten a tattoo. Karlie got that. So much of what I did had been checkout counter news for the last ten years. I do my best to laugh when I see headlines about myself when I just want to buy toilet paper, but it's not always easy, and especially then, when every tabloid bore headlines about either my love life or my health, I was kind of looking forward to speculation about something as inconsequential as Karlie's adorable method of having my back.We both pulled on sleep clothes and curled up together in bed to share that chocolate cake, alternating bites. When the cake was gone I wanted nothing more than to just go to sleep right there, cuddled with my girl, but she made me get up and brush my teeth and take my pill and wash off all the makeup I'd put on for our date. As soon as we were both ready for bed, we got back into the same place, curled up together, in the place I feel safest in the world, and for the first time since the surgery, I felt like myself again, and I had Karlie and her date night to thank for it.* * *The next morning, I finally met with Tree about everything that had happened since the surgery almost a week before. I had my post-op appointment scheduled for the next day, and I knew that would probably lead to a couple weeks of relative normalcy. Once I was cleared for slightly more rigorous activity, I would be able to just live my life for a little while until the radioactive iodine treatment. The week before that I had to go on a low iodine diet, which Karlie already had magneted to the fridge, but that was still a week away, and although it would make eating out complicated, it wouldn't stop me from doing the everyday things like shopping, or maybe going with Karlie to one of her shoots. It still seemed like everything was moving so fast, even though I'd just been complaining about being bored from almost a week of recovery, now it seemed like all of a sudden we were hurdling toward the next stage of treatment.First and foremost, Tree wanted to know how I was doing. We had texted a bit, and I'd sent her the video and updates, but we hadn't truly talked since just after the wedding. She'd been giving me space and family time, which I appreciated, but it was nice to catch up. I had to laugh though, because once she determined that I felt fine, other than getting tired easily and the way my voice wasn't quite a hundred percent yet, her first question was whether or not the tattoo was real. She was good either way, but I guess she'd gotten a lot of requests for statements and had to admit she didn't know. I assured her it was a temp, just a cute gesture from my wife, but told her not to deny it too strongly, since I hadn't totally ruled out getting one in the future. She was happy to hear Karlie and I were doing well and disappointed that Karls was working. They've actually always had a pretty good relationship, despite some rocky moments trying to navigate how to protect the both of us and our relationship. She would have liked to see her.She supported what I'd done so far, staying vague, yet giving a concrete reminder of the fact that I had, in fact, had a pretty important operation that had come dangerously close to my vocal chords. I could have kept my scarf on that day at breakfast, but connecting the post-surgery video and the scar had apparently increased public sympathy for me, which she saw as a good thing. She didn't think I was going to have much success keeping the actual diagnosis private much longer, the surgical scar was pretty indicative of thyroid cancer. She thought it would be best to just be upfront about it, maybe just write a press release.The fact of the matter was that I had a very rare subtype of the cancer, and while she didn't want any rumors going around that I was dying since at the moment we had every indication it was treatable, she also didn't want people minimizing what I was going through either. Thyroid cancer isn't one of the marquee cancers like breast cancer or leukemia that everyone talks about or knows someone who had. But it is one of the ones that if people know about it, what they know is that it's one of the "good ones." As if there's such a thing as good cancer. It's more treatable than many, one of the few they sometimes declare cured. I wasn't in that boat, exactly, because I had the most aggressive and deadly, and also rare subtypes. One almost no one, even those who have had a loved one battle it, is familiar with. She wanted to go clinical with it, release the statistics, say that so far things were going according to plan, but that I still had months of treatment ahead of me, and that those plans could be adjusted at any time based on how previous stages went.I thought whatever she wanted to do was fine. I wanted people to know that I was doing okay, so far. I wanted them to know that if I went out with my wife, it wasn't going to hurt me. But I also wanted them to know there was more coming. That surgery wasn't the end of it. That the radioactive iodine wouldn't be the end of it either, though for many cases of thyroid cancer, it is. I wasn't fortunate enough to have that kind. Suddenly I understood what they meant by good cancer. Because compared to where I was, something that would be cured after just the radioactive iodine, without the need for chemo and proton therapy sounded pretty darn good.She told me to keep doing what we were doing, documenting the little domestic moments. She'd loved the picture of me sleeping surrounded by paper animals and Meredith. The pic of me making faces before surgery. Even Karlie's snapchat running the night I had to spend in the hospital had been good. An indication that life was going on, even if things weren't exactly normal. Discussing a PR strategy for the fact that I had cancer wasn't normal either, but nothing about my life ever is, except the little moments I get to share with Karlie. She could sense that we were getting too far into depressing territory again, so she shifted back to talking about tattoos and date nights, and I made her take one of the scarves I'd knitted.By the time Karlie came home, I was sitting on the couch with Martha and Gigi, and we were trying to throw grapes in the air and catch them in our mouths, which mostly meant the living room was covered in grapes. For the first time since the surgery, I was laughing without going into a coughing fit, and it was definitely more fun than making more origami. In a fit of athleticism, I yelled "think fast" and chucked a grape at her, and by some miracle she caught it, grinning at me as she chewed, but the real miracle was the fact that Martha caught the whole thing on her phone. She looked to me to see if she should post it, since I was braless, wearing a pajama shirt that said "coffee is my bff" on it, and my incision was clearly visible in the shot. I granted permission right away, this was exactly the kind of moment I wanted to share. One that showed that Karlie and I were still the same goofy girls, even though something big and scary was happening in my life. The world doesn't stop just because you're diagnosed with cancer, even though it can feel like it has.We made gluten-free pizzas with cauliflower crust, sitting around the kitchen island and having girl-talk while we waited for them to bake. It's a favorite recipe of mine for when I'm trying to be healthier, and since I was trying to limit the inevitable weight gain, eating healthier seemed like a good plan. We hadn't seen the girls since the wedding, which was one of the reasons I'd invited them over. I could tell when they'd first gotten there they were kind of tiptoeing around my diagnosis, and the surgery and everything. I watched their eyes go wide hearing my voice pop and crack, but neither said a word about it. It was fun for me catching up with them, and I even invited questions. I knew I would be asked a million times over how I was doing, and what came next, and I also knew the only way to get comfortable talking about it was to talk to friends. We'd moved past that by the time Karlie came in, hence our grape game. It was maybe more athletic than I was supposed to be doing, especially since it required me to look up to catch the grapes, but it didn't hurt so I figured it was okay.The girls drank wine while I settled for Diet Coke, and we ended up sitting by the fire pit out on the terrace roasting marshmallows and making s'mores once we'd eaten our pizza. Somewhere in the neighborhood, they were having a party, and we would listen to the sounds and make up stories about the people we could hear, and what was happening to them. Stupid and mindless, and distracting. I enjoyed spending the evening leaning against Karlie, the warmth of the fire in front of me, and the warmth of friends and family all around me. I wasn't as exhausted that night as I had been all week, so we were able to stay up a bit even after the girls left. I was surprised to hear faint snoring coming from behind me, telling me that for the first time since I was diagnosed, Karlie had fallen asleep first. I let her sleep a bit, just enjoying sharing warmth under a blanket, the fire slowly burning itself out in front of us.Once the fire was down to the last of the coals, I carefully extricated myself from her arms, and she slept on, so I got to watch her sleepily try to pull me back in, a slight furrow in her brow as if she was trying to figure out where I'd gone without actually waking up. I leaned in and kissed her temple, earning myself a sleepy hum in response. I kissed gently down her cheek to her jawline, just little pecks to see how far I could go before she would wake up. It took until I hit her sweet spot, just under her jaw, but when I got there, she actually moaned my name. It had been what seemed like forever since I'd made her respond like that, and all I'd done was give her kisses. I realized that I'd kind of worried that with everything going on, maybe she wouldn't find me sexy anymore. But if her unconscious response was that strong, I felt like maybe there wasn't so much to worry about. Not wanting to take things so far I couldn't follow through, I quit with the kissing and gently shook her shoulder to truly wake her. She grumbled a bit, my girl doesn't always like waking up, but she opened her eyes to see that we were still outside and jumped up, nearly bonking me in the head in the process. The disorientation on her face was adorable as she demanded to know what time it was, how long she'd been asleep, why I hadn't woken her sooner, but eventually she calmed down enough to go in and get ready for bed.* * *My post-op appointment was another early morning one, complete with blood work yet again. This time neither one of us ate ahead of time, Karlie was as eager as I was to get it over with. The steri-strips had just started to peel a bit on the edges, but there wasn't any pain at the incision site, and it hadn't swollen or gotten redder or anything so I knew it was healing as well as could be expected after only a week. The blood work was mainly to check my calcium levels to see if I could quit taking extra calcium and to see how my thyroid stimulating hormone levels were going up. The higher they were, the better the radioactive iodine would absorb into the remaining cancer cells, so I really wanted that one to be high. They would also be checking my weight and how I was handling the drop in thyroid hormone.Honestly, I hadn't noticed any huge change in the other symptoms of hypothyroid they'd told me to look out for. I wasn't any colder than normal, although I'm always cold, so I don't know that I'd have really noticed. I'd been more tired for sure, but that could have been just from surgery, I thought. My moods were up and down, but I thought that was to be expected, between the fact that I'm prone to depression anyway, and the reality of my diagnosis. It wasn't drastic though, and I'd leveled out somewhat since the first couple days after surgery, probably thanks in part to the antidepressant they'd had me start before surgery. I had noticed that my face was a little bit puffy looking, which is one of the symptoms, but I didn't think anyone else would really notice, at least, not any more than they would notice that I was gaining a little weight. My clothes still fit, although my boobs were starting to try to overflow my bra just a little, so it wasn't too bad yet. I knew that over the next two weeks it would become more noticeable. No way around it. I was trying really hard not to be self conscious about it. It's just weight. My whole career I've had people criticizing my weight. If I weigh my normal weight, I'm too skinny. If I gain weight I'm letting myself go. This time around I would have a legitimate medical reason for gaining weight. But it was hard not to worry about the comments to come.Mike couldn't come this time, so it was Sean and Jeff driving us first to Karlie's old place to pick up my mom, then to the Cancer Institute for the appointment. The sun was just barely peeking between the buildings as Jeff escorted us into the building. I tried to think of the last time I'd seen a doctor without Mike and couldn't think of one. Just another thing that I would have to get used to. Karlie held my hand on the way to the sign in desk, gently squeezing as I stepped up to say I was Taylor Swift-Kloss and I was supposed to be seeing Dr. Miller and Dr. Goldsmith. If all went well, this would be my last appointment with Dr. Goldsmith. Her specialty is surgery, and although she would see me again if my voice didn't come back by the end of the month, there was nothing else she could do to help me on my journey. Even if I needed surgery to remove affected lymph nodes down the line, it wouldn't be her. She does surgery around the throat only. That was a bittersweet thought. One step in my journey was complete.Another waiting area, more ancient magazines with my picture, more families all wishing they were somewhere else. Mom draped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close across the waiting room couch, and I let myself lean against her, like I used to when I was a little girl. For once, I didn't have to completely change clothes, just pull off my sweater to get down to a tank top, allowing access to the incision site and my arms for the blood draw. The nurse came in to draw blood almost as soon as I sat down. You'd think I would be getting used to the needles by now, but I still had to hold Karlie's hand, concentrating on anything other than the fact that I was being poked with a needle. Karlie teased me about the fact that I'd told Tree the other day that I was thinking of getting a tattoo, and yet I couldn't stand a single needle. When my mom wasn't looking, I flipped her off. Juvenile, but effective.Dr. Goldsmith came in next, and greeted each of us warmly. She said I'd been a model patient, and that although she hoped never to see me again, since seeing me would mean I hadn't totally recovered my voice, she would miss me, and would definitely be looking out for my next album whenever I was ready. She inspected the surgical site but fortunately there wasn't much to see. She trimmed the peeling steri-strips and told me to keep trimming as they peel so that they couldn't catch on anything and come off too soon. She gave me some special cream to rub on the exposed scar as it healed to help it fade, and apologized that because she'd had to open it wider than expected, it might not be as invisible as she'd hoped. I couldn't be too upset about it. Yes, it's a scar, and at the time it was still pretty prominent and eye catching and reminder of what I was dealing with in the worst moments, but it was part of my story and a sign that I was getting better. We hugged goodbye, and my mom followed her out into the hall. I figured she was thanking Dr. Goldsmith for taking care of her baby. Dr. Goldsmith is closer to Mom's age than mine, and I guessed that Mom felt connected to her because of it. My guess was confirmed when Mom came in, wiping tears from under her eyes, though she tried to play it off.We were alone in the room for a while, waiting on Dr. Miller. I got cold so I pulled my sweater back on and found myself nervously playing with the cuffs. Karlie had a shoot in the afternoon, because we had both agreed she should work as much as she could now, while I felt pretty good, so she could take more time off later, when I was doing chemo and likely to not feel so great, so she was on her phone texting with her agent to make sure she had the right location and time. She's very meticulous about that kind of thing, she never wants to keep anyone waiting on her. It's one of the things I love about her. Mom was texting Dad and Austin, keeping them informed, and also checking in with one of our pilots since she planned to fly back to Nashville that night. That was bittersweet too, a sort of closing of a chapter of my life, and the start of a new one. Closing the chapter where my parents were my everything and opening the chapter where Karlie was.Just when I thought I couldn't stand the quiet clicking of two women typing on their iPhones, Dr. Miller walked in with my test results in hand. My calcium levels were excellent, so I could knock one worry off my list. My parathyroid glands were doing exactly what they were supposed to, and I could expect them to continue. My TSH level was rising appropriately, though she'd hoped it might go up even a little bit faster so I wouldn't have to wait the full three weeks after surgery without thyroid hormones now that I had cancelled the concert at the end of the month. As it was, it looked like the target date of October twenty-fourth was still going to be the right one. I'd gained about eight pounds, more than I thought I had, but pretty much on course for what was expected.Overall, she said I was doing well, and to let her know if I noticed any drastic changes. She asked how I was managing the pain and I said I really wasn't having much at all, so she said I could discontinue the narcotics entirely (yay!) and manage it with over the counter meds if I needed them. I could share a little wine with my wife, but not much because alcohol and antidepressants don't always mix, though the biggest danger was getting sleepy so as long as I wasn't driving, I would probably be okay. We confirmed that I would start the low-iodine diet on the seventeenth, one week before the radioactive iodine treatment. I set an appointment to meet the nuclear medicine specialist the Friday before to ask any questions we might have and get all the special instructions for the day of treatment. Dr. Miller asked if we had any other questions, and it got super awkward having my mom there, because the only question I had left was if I could resume more, uh, vigorous activities with my wife. I think even Dr. Miller blushed when she realized she was going to have to explain the level of 'vigorous' that would be acceptable while I continued to heal. Hearing a doctor try to explain that basic 'vanilla' sex would be fine but we shouldn't do anything too rough without actually saying it in front of my mother might be my favorite thing ever. Watching my mom try to pretend she wasn't listening is my second favorite thing.Karlie, Mom and I headed to a nearby salad place to share lunch before she headed to the airport and Nashville. I caught a little girl, maybe seven or so, looking and smiling at me a couple times as she ate with her mom, so I made sure to smile back. I was wearing a scarf again, not wanting to draw any more attention to my scar as it healed. It was out there and that was enough. The three of us were nearly finished with our meal when I realized the little girl's mom was yelling at her for something. The kid looked so scared, I couldn't imagine what she'd done, but then I heard what the mom was saying and realized it was my fault. This poor little girl was, it appeared, a fan of mine, but her mom had a problem with my sexual orientation and my marriage. She was spitting unprintable words at this child who had no idea why, having been a fan of mine for a while, she suddenly couldn't be anymore. It was heartbreaking. I could take the epithets, I've heard them before and Karlie and I will hear them again. But to see this child being screamed at and totally not comprehending why was just awful.I could see the staff huddling trying to figure out what to do, so I went over to the assembled group and told them they should tell the irate woman their meals had been paid for and ask her to leave. If they weren't comfortable, I would tell her myself. In the end, they sent the biggest dude in the restaurant, I think he was a chef based on how he was dressed. I saw him say a few words, point at our table, then point at the door. If looks could kill, I think I would have died that day, with the venom she shot toward us as they left, but at least she'd stopped yelling at her daughter. The restaurant erupted in cheers once they'd left, and the guy came over and apologized to us, even though it wasn't her fault. He offered to comp our meals since I'd offered to pay for theirs, but I said we'd not only like to pay, but we'd like to leave behind some money so they could comp meals for others down the line, maybe other couples who would be likely to get negative reactions from bigots: gay couples, interracial couples, families with diverse adopted kids, families with members who were different, and they said they would pay it forward for us.Mom told me how proud she was of how I'd handled that, and how sad it made her to see that there were still people like that woman in the world, who would reject me out of hand just because of who I love. She gave both me and Karlie long, tight hugs before we put her in a cab to take her to the airport for her flight. Originally I'd planned to just go home after the appointment while Karlie went to her shoot, but I was tired of staying home, so she'd texted and gotten permission to bring me to watch her work. Normally we try to let the other do her thing to avoid drawing attention away from whichever of us is supposed to be the star in the moment, but she knew everyone on the shoot pretty well, so she didn't think anyone would bat an eye if I tagged along.The shoot was for an editorial in Elle being styled by Brandon Maxwell who we've both worked with before. They were going for a nighttime in the city vibe, some of the shots would be staged indoors, but many were supposed to happen on the rooftop at sunset, so it would be a lot of getting her ready and then rushing to get the shots as fast as they could with the right light. I was willing to hold a light reflector or something if it meant I didn't have to go home and agonize over whether the little girl from lunch was okay, and that I got to spend the evening with my wife when I'd expected to be at home alone. Any shoot can have some drama, and people are usually milling around, so it seems like chaos sometimes, but most of the time you don't walk in to find most of the people involved in the shoot muttering curse words and yelling into cell phones. Apparently there was supposed to be another model on the shoot but she missed her flight or something and everyone was panicking.In the end, they decided to do a solo shoot, which made it more fun for me, getting to sit and watch while my girl totally killed it. Plus, I got to watch while they glammed her up, which has always been a fascination of mine. I love to see how makeup artists and hair stylists work, because they can produce so many different looks on one person, just by making subtle changes in their hair, or the angle of the flick at the end of a cat eye. It is truly an art form, and having been on the receiving end of quite a few different looks, I really appreciate what they can do. When they're working on my hair and makeup, I don't really get to observe because if they're doing my hair they're usually behind me, and if they're doing my makeup they block the view in the mirror. While they styled Karlie, I could really observe what they were doing, and I enjoyed that.My hand made it into one shot, because they decided she should be taking a martini glass off a tray and I was the only person in the room not already holding something, or doing something, so they had me roll up my sleeve and hold the tray so that only my hand and arm showed in the shot. We put on music, since it was supposed to be a fun shoot, and behind the camera I would dance around a little and try to make her laugh. They wanted a few "bedroom eyes" shots, so they had her look at me just off camera doing my best to be seductive. Most of those ended with her laughing at my attempts at seduction, but once I reminded her I'd finally been cleared for activities better attempted in the privacy of our own home, she was able to give the faces they wanted and get through the shoot. We ate dinner in one corner of the wardrobe room, shoving various types of sushi in our mouths before she was called back in for more shots.As the shoot went on into the night, they started shifting the vibe to a quieter, more sultry look. It was incredibly attractive, but that meant they also lowered the music and the lights, and before I realized what had happened, I felt someone shaking me awake. Karlie was back in the outfit she'd been wearing when we arrived, the glam makeup stripped off her face, her hair still falling in soft curls to her shoulders. She insisted no one had been offended that I'd fallen asleep, they understood I was still recovering from surgery, even a week out. My nap had been an instagram story as soon as she'd noticed, but it was actually pretty cute. I told her we needed to make sure to take an awake photo soon, since her last two pictures of me had been sleeping, and she agreed.I think she expected me to be too tired to do anything when we got home, so I surprised her by pinning her back to the wall just inside the entry way, barely out of view of Jeff who'd driven us home. Initial surprise gave way to eagerly kissing me back before pushing us across the hall so that I was now the one with my back pressed up against the wall, her hand sliding authoritatively up my side. In between kisses I managed to pant 'bedroom' and we parted enough to get into the elevator and go up to the third floor and our room. As she started to pull my sweater over my head, I hesitated, suddenly shy of the slight but very real changes in my body in the aftermath of the surgery."We don't have to..." she began, unsure where to go since I'd been the one to initiate everything. She was so patient, listening to my explanation, before kissing my forehead and telling me there was so much more to me than a few pounds here or there. She told me she found me unbelievably sexy, and expected to feel the same no matter what I looked like, because it was still me, eight pounds or eighty. And then she told me my boobs looked fantastic, and we laughed, and the tension was broken and we could start anew. The kisses were gentler then, now that she knew I was feeling self-conscious, but no less passionate, and in no time at all I recovered the confidence I'd felt in the morning, hoping that we would be able to do exactly what we were doing. When we finally got ready to sleep, I got to listen to my favorite lullaby as Karlie's heart rate slowed, her breathing evened out, and just for a moment, everything was right in my world.

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It was a Sunday when I realized I didn't own pants that fit anymore. My skinniest jeans quit trying halfway up my thighs, and even my roomier pairs refused to button. Karlie was working out that morning, while I'd slept in, and I only just started trying to put on real clothes around the time I expected her home, so she found me lying on the bed, crying, eight or nine pairs of pants strewn around the room, one last pair still refusing to make it past half-mast. I had already had to go up a cup size in my bras, and shirts that were supposed to button over my boobs largely didn't anymore, but this was the first time an entire class of clothing had betrayed me. I'd been trying to stay off the scale, but if I had to guess I would have put my weight at maybe sixteen or seventeen pounds over where I usually was, and apparently I'd reached the point of not being able to finesse my way into clothes a size too small anymore.She knew right away what had happened, and I could see the wheels turning as she tried to figure out how to help me without accidentally making the situation worse. She finally decided that lying down on the bed with me and letting me cry was as good as she could do. She didn't have words to tell me because she was afraid they would sound patronizing, or offend me, so she decided not to use words at all. She listened to me whine about how nothing fit and I felt fat and I knew I shouldn't feel fat because I wasn't really, I was just fatter than usual but these goddamn pants didn't fit and I was going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe or just never leave the house because you have to wear pants to leave the house and I didn't have any pants. When I'd reached that stage of hysteria where you can't cry anymore but you kind of don't know how to stop and so you're just hiccupping and you can't breathe because although there's no more tears there are somehow gallons of snot, she grabbed me a box of tissues, pulled the offending jeans back down my legs and helped me sit up so I could try to clean up and blow my nose a gazillion times. I told her I was sorry, and it was stupid over and over, and she told me not to be and that it wasn't just as many times.Once she thought I was stable enough, she went into the closet and pulled out about five pairs of pants, one size up from my usual, but otherwise identical to other pairs I owned. There was a horrible moment when one of those also refused to button, though it did make it past my thighs, but she had a third pair in the closet that fit perfectly, and once they were on, I didn't think it was quite so obvious they were two sizes larger. She bought me fat pants. Which ordinarily wouldn't seem like a sweet thing to do for your wife, but was, in that moment, the perfect thing. She saw this moment coming, and she planned ahead, without saying a word. I knew it didn't matter to her. She thought I was beautiful the way I was, because I was her wife and she loved who I was and all that jazz. But it was hard not to let it matter to me. I spend so much time telling my fans they're amazing the way they are, and I mean it. It's just so much harder to see myself the way I see others. I guess we all go through that, but some days it hits harder than others, and the day pants betrayed me was one of those days.She made me brunch and asked if maybe I would go somewhere with her. The way she said it was so tentative, I thought for a moment that it was like an extra session with my therapist to discuss my body image issues or something, although I'd been keeping up with that too, though mostly over the phone – I could only take so much time in medical buildings. But that wasn't it at all. Instead, she bundled me into the car in the garage and drove out, just the two of us. A familiar car pulled in behind us as soon as we were on the road, but we had the illusion of being alone, just the two of us. She put on some music and I had to laugh, because it was all songs I loved that were maybe not so much her thing. Rap songs I knew all the words to, and had a tendency to get a little overinvolved in performing as she drove. I don't know if she timed the playlist to the minute or if she'd just been waiting for the right moment, but as we approached her family's place upstate, the music changed and instead it became sappy love songs. Stuff Ed wrote, our song, songs I'd written for her. Turning the mood from goofy and silly to very sweet and loving. As we pulled into her parents' driveway she turned to me and said, "she said let's get out of this town, drive out of the city, away from the crowd..."I burst out laughing and punched her in the shoulder. She's always throwing my own lyrics back at me, but that was definitely not what I expected after the musical love fest. I laughed out 'I love you too' and we kissed and I heard Kimby's voice from outside the car as she jokingly shrilled 'ewww...kissing.'Going home to the Klosses is like walking into comfortable chaos. There are only six people in the house when they're all there, only two more than in my family, but somehow it always feels like more. Just being in their house is like being in the middle of a hug, the whole time you're there. Kimby was the first to give us hugs as we emerged from the car, first her sister, then me. Dr. Kloss was next. I love Dr. Kloss, he's a lot like my dad, in that he's super supportive. I feel like if Karlie and I told him we were both quitting our jobs to have an alpaca farm in Canada, he'd buy us a bunch of books on alpacas and visit every week just to tell us how healthy our alpacas looked. Then came her mom, who told me she was really happy to have all five of her daughters in town. I was surprised but thrilled to find out that Kariann and Kristine were in town too until I noticed the happy birthday banner hanging over the mantle. I muttered a curse word in Karlie's direction as I realized she'd brought me here without reminding me that it was her mom's birthday. I was absolutely freaking out because I had totally forgotten, which is not like me at all. I actually thought I was going to have a panic attack right there in the Klosses living room until Karlie put her hands on my shoulders and told me to breathe. She told me she had cards and gifts in the trunk, I could look through and pick what I liked, and take some time later to write a note and wrap it and everything. She told me not to beat myself up about forgetting, I kind of had a lot on my mind.Tracy let me help in the kitchen, which made me feel a little less awful about having had no idea why we were upstate. Karlie had played it perfectly though, using the music in the car to help me transition from my pants-related meltdown into a good mood to celebrate with. She'd even, I realized later, picked rap songs for the early part of the trip because I still hadn't tested my singing voice yet, and she didn't want me to be self conscious about it. My voice rarely faded when I spoke anymore, so it was definitely improving, but as someone whose livelihood depends on her voice, it was still hard knowing it wasn't back to normal. She knows me better than I know myself, engineering the road trip music so I wouldn't have to think about it. Once we'd made snacks for the assembled crowd, Karlie, Kimby and I went for a hike in a park nearby, taking a few minutes to enjoy the gorgeous fall weather. We couldn't go very far because I still get tired easily, but it was nice to get outside for a while and do some physical activity.When we got back, Karlie hustled me up to a guestroom under the guise of needing a nap, which wasn't entirely incorrect, so that I could pick out a gift and card and we could wrap them. She promised me that we would shop together for everyone for Christmas, and once the gift I'd selected out of her stash was carefully enclosed in bright colored paper and tied with a bow, she headed back to spend some time with her sisters while I slept for a bit before dinner.
The moment I got back downstairs without Taylor, the family descended on me like locusts. I'd been texting them and talking to them all along as Tay recovered, of course, and she'd even chimed in on a couple of video chats, so they'd seen her and talked to her, but most of the time we'd been trying to keep things light and talk about things other than how she was doing. Now that we were actually in the house they wanted to know everything but didn't want to bombard her with questions. I was proud of them, actually, they'd spent the early part of the afternoon treating her like Taylor, like they always had. They'd asked how she was as a greeting but no one had taken it deeper than "pretty good, and you?" and I liked that. One of the things I've always loved about bringing her home is that after the initial fangirling, my family has treated her like a person, and not like "International Pop-Star Taylor Swift." But now that she was out of the room, they wanted details about how she was doing, and how I was too.

It's weird, how now that Taylor was feeling pretty good, I would sometimes, briefly forget that anything was going on, and just be living my life happily married and working at things I loved and going to class and then it would hit me, in the weirdest moments, that my wife had cancer. Like, I would go hours, or even a day, without really thinking about it. But then I would see someone wearing a breast cancer shirt and at first I would just be like, 'I wonder if they know someone or are a survivor, like my mom is' and then all of a sudden I would be on the verge of tears wondering if in ten years Taylor and I might be going somewhere wearing matching shirts to raise money for thyroid cancer research. Being October, it happened a lot. But it would also hit me in the middle of a shoot when a stylist would tie a choker around my neck, or seeing someone wearing a turtleneck, or even seeing Shake Shack cups. But then I would see those things and feel nothing out of the ordinary.

Taylor was feeling physically pretty good, other than a tendency to tire a lot faster than she did before the surgery, and the fact that she was gaining weight. And even then, it wasn't like she was fat, at all. But she was heavier than she'd ever been and even though it doesn't matter, because being healthy is what matters, I knew that a lifetime in the spotlight and hearing criticism of her appearance had made it almost impossible for her NOT to worry about it. And while I knew her fans wouldn't say anything, or would simply say she looked good, which she did, I also knew the media and haters could be cruel. My family thought she looked great. Not 'great for having gained twenty pounds' but just great. My Taylor is gorgeous, period. But I know it can sometimes be hard for her to see that, especially right now. The steri-strips had almost entirely peeled off, and without them I thought the scar was less noticeable, but I knew for her it was just another thing she was self-conscious about. I hoped that being here today would help her remember she's still Taylor to me and the people who love us, and that what she looks like doesn't determine if people love her or not.

I told my family we were both fine. I've been working, Taylor has been trying to keep herself occupied while coping with the after effects of the surgery. I haven't heard her writing since that morning I found her in the music room, but I've seen evidence she's been going in there when I'm not around. She hasn't sung yet, I think she's scared to try, but her voice is probably at eighty-percent and still improving, so I know she'll get there. It's getting harder to ignore the fact that in a little over a week, Taylor will start radioactive iodine treatment, but we're both still trying to move forward without dwelling on it. That's going to be the hardest part for both of us, because I can't be there for her. No one can. But we're planning to facetime whenever we're both home while she's stuck in her room, and for our three hours a day getting closer, we're going to try to enjoy ourselves. It's only a week. We've been separated by geography for much longer than that on occasion, so we can get through this too.
When I woke up, I was momentarily confused because I didn't recognize the room at all and had this fleeting thought that maybe I was in a hospital before I realized I was at the Klosses for Tracy's birthday and everything was fine. I wished we were in St. Louis, in Karlie's childhood home, because then I would have known right away because I would have been in her room. She's never actually lived in this house, so none of the rooms are personalized to her like they are there. Still, I was looking forward to a night of celebration with the Klosses, and by the smells wafting from downstairs I figured we were getting close to dinner time. After a quick check in the mirror to straighten out my hair and wipe a smear of mascara off my cheek, I headed downstairs to find Karlie, Kimby, Kariann and Kristine engaged in a fierce game of ping pong in the rec room. They hadn't noticed my approach so I sat on the stairs to watch the sisters play, and got to watch about ten minutes of unabashed sibling rivalry before I shifted my weight and made the stair squeak, causing four sets of eyes to focus on me, all four faces blushing red as they feared it might have been a parent who'd heard their trash talk get a little heated. I just laughed, having enjoyed the show.We gathered around the table as Tracy and Kurt dished up cookout favorites. I attacked corn on the cob with reckless abandon, for once not having to worry about who might be watching. I got to watch Kariann and Kristine stage an all out war over the last bratwurst, and even joined my wife in tormenting Kimby by tossing green beans at her whenever she wasn't paying attention, much to the amusement of the parental Klosses who I think sometimes missed seeing their girls act like little kids now that they're all grown up. After dinner we sat in the living room by the Happy Birthday banner and presented our gifts, finishing off by singing Happy Birthday and sharing cupcakes.I ended up driving home to the city, between messing around with her sisters and a couple of glasses of wine, Karlie wasn't up to it. She fell asleep halfway home, her head leaned against the window, fogging the cool glass with each breath. It was all I could do to focus on the road and not just watch her sleep, and I wished I hadn't sent security home hours before, confident we would be safe there and on the way home, because they could have driven and I could have enjoyed the view. Singing Happy Birthday to Tracy had proven that I could, so I sang softly along with the radio, looking forward to doing some writing in the coming week, now that I knew I could contribute sung melodies and lyrics to the guitar and piano I'd already recorded in my phone.
I was awake for more of the ride home than Taylor thought. I'd fallen asleep somewhere around halfway, but didn't stay asleep long, because I heard her voice. When I realized she was singing, softly, and just along with whatever was playing on the radio, but singing, for the first time in nearly two weeks since the surgery, I wanted to let her have her moment. It wasn't perfect, certainly nowhere near where she'd been at her best on the 1989 tour, lacking power and finesse, but beautiful and definitely Taylor Swift. It reminded me a bit of how she'd sung on her early albums, a little more tentative, softer, and with a slight raspy quality that was actually quite sexy. I didn't want to make her self-conscious about it, but I wanted more than anything to listen to her sing, so I may have left my eyes closed and my head against the window, just enjoying my own private concert. I made sure to act sleepy when she kissed my cheek to let me know we were home.
We wrapped our arms across each other's waists as we climbed the stairs to the bedroom, content after a day spent with family. I tried not to think about how much I would miss that once I started the radioactive iodine treatment. Anticipation can sometimes be worse than the actual event, and I think that was the case here. It was only going to be a week, and we'd had to deal with distance and separation and way worse crap than that. I think what was killing me was knowing that it wasn't a choice, or a work thing keeping us apart this time. It was being in the same house, in the next room, and not being able to spend much time face to face, or touch at all. When we've been apart in the past, we've been on opposite coasts, we've been busy, distracted. Even when we put each other through hell with beards and hiding it distracted us from the fact that we weren't physically together.Lying in bed that night we talked quietly. I remember noticing as a little girl at my earliest sleepovers how you could talk about anything in the dark, when the lights were off and you should be sleeping, and it allowed for a special kind of intimacy that never happened in the light. Twenty-six years old, lying in the dark with the permanent sleepover guest known as my wife, that special kind of intimacy still existed. We could talk about the day, how sweet I thought it was that she'd worked so hard to make it a good day for me, even though it started out so not good. She confessed how she'd been awake and listened to me sing the whole way home, and how she thought we could be married a hundred years and she would never get tired of that. We could say the words we couldn't say in the light, and know that each one was another way to say 'I love you.'* * *In the morning, Karlie made me oatmeal for breakfast, with bananas and blueberries and a little drizzle of honey. She'd carefully measured out one ounce of milk for my coffee, providing that alongside a steaming cup. She'd even put a couple flowers in a little vase as she brought breakfast to me in bed. She'd had the guidelines for what I could eat this week on the refrigerator since we got the treatment plan. I think she'd spent all that time planning a menu for me so I wouldn't get bored eating food with no salt, no seafood or anything remotely sea related, no soy, no nuts, almost no dairy, nothing with red food coloring, no spinach or broccoli, and only the whites of eggs, because for the next week, I couldn't eat anything with iodine in it, to make my body extra ready to accept the radioactive version next Monday. I couldn't believe how hard she'd worked to make sure we got it right.We spent that first day making homemade tomato sauce for egg-free pasta, sautéed veggies and chicken with a garlic sauce of her own invention, even a salt-free meatloaf for me to eat with baked sweet-potato which she'd removed from the skin for me since I couldn't eat the skin. The part that was the most amazing to me was all the meat she'd cooked for me. I'm usually the cook in the family anyway, with Kar taking on the baking if we're dividing jobs. And when I cook meat, I always do a separate batch for the two of us since Kar doesn't eat it. But she actually stuck her hands (okay, with gloves on) into raw beef for me. That's a sign of true love. By the end of the day, we'd made enough to get me through the whole week of restricted dining leading up to the treatment, since I would get to resume eating normally the day after. It was pretty fun to spend the day in the kitchen, working together, playing music and dancing around in between steps in the different recipes.I found myself thinking that was what being married was supposed to be like. When you picture yourself as a grown-up, married, you picture the wedding but I don't think you really think past that, as a kid, until you get to the part where you have kids. But being married before you have kids is about being a team and working together and the infinitesimal moments that are beautiful because they are ordinary. Like cooking together in the kitchen and the way you work together like a choreographed dance, anticipating where the other will move or what she'll need and doing it without actually thinking about it. Because you don't have to. And your wife, who doesn't eat meat, making meat-filled meal after meat-filled meal for you because she loves you. And the way when you have music playing while you cook, you both know the exact moment in the song that you need to lean in and sing into a wooden spoon, right in the middle of stirring the pasta sauce.We'd been sneaking tastes here and there all day as we cooked, so by dinner all we wanted was salad. Karlie made hers with spinach but mine without, mine with chicken and hers without. Both had fresh fruit on them since dried fruit might have salt and therefore iodine on it. I couldn't have salty salad dressings or any with dye, so Karlie ingeniously pureed raspberries and blueberries and combined them with a little vegetable oil and vinegar. The only thing I thought was missing was cheese, but I was really impressed with everything Karlie had come up with to make sure we could both eat and enjoy without feeling deprived. As a model she has better self-discipline than I do, but she was trying to make it easy on me. As a treat, she froze a couple bananas and made banana-cream and then because I am an actual five year old she put rainbow sprinkles on, but only after she picked out all the red and pink and orange and purple ones because I can't have red dye, so they were really just green and blue and yellow sprinkles, but she worked so hard it was adorable and I posted a picture of it on instagram. After that, we went to bed early, taking advantage of both the fact that we COULD have physical contact and the fact that a few days before my period I get especially frisky. That was one small miracle, expecting my period the week my wife couldn't touch me. I mean, there are ways to make it work during your period, but I was definitely not upset about that particular timing.* * *The next morning, she told me I had to get dressed in real clothes because someone was going to come over in a bit and she thought I wouldn't want to wear jammies, although she said it was possible that a onesie would be appropriate, which is a very ambiguous dress code. I decided against the onesie and went for yoga pants and a sweatshirt, not really in the mood to play the fight the pants game again when we weren't going out. If a onesie was appropriate, so were yoga pants. Turns out I should have gone for the onesie. Karlie had a shoot that day, something to do with jeans, maybe Express? so she'd invited someone over to keep me occupied and also feed me when appropriate. I knew who it was as soon as he opened his mouth coming up the stairs, I could identify that Suffolk accent anywhere."Teddy!" I squealed as I launched myself toward the stairwell, preparing to engulf my favorite redhead in a huge hug. "What are you doing here!?"He told me he'd had some label meetings in Nashville and when he'd gotten an excited text from Karlie that I was singing again, he had to come by and see me. We hadn't actually spoken since the wedding, though we'd texted a little so that he would know how I was doing. He really is like another brother to me. We understand each other on a visceral level as songwriters. When we get in the studio together we don't even really converse. We just start playing or singing and the other will join in until it's suddenly a whole song and we can't actually tell you who wrote what, it just kind of is. I'm really lucky that Karlie trusts us both, because it's really unique and sort of intimate, and if I was sharing that with a woman, I'm pretty sure no amount of trust would keep Karlie from getting at least a little jealous. I was thrilled that Karlie had invited him, it had been ages since we'd worked together or had time to just hang out since both of us were kind of taking time off from music, at least, to the extent that either one of us can.Karlie greeted him with a hug as well, offering him a serving of banana pancakes, which he accepted even though he'd already had breakfast. We got to spend about an hour the three of us, catching up on Ed and what he'd been working on, his girlfriend, and looking at pictures of his various godchildren. I could tell he wanted to know how I was, but was trying not to ask. I'd seen his eyes trail down to the scar at my throat, completely uncovered now, still pretty red and noticeable. My voice was pretty close to what it had been before surgery when I spoke, so I doubted he'd noticed a huge difference, not like he would have even a few days ago. I knew that as a musician, he could hear the same faint changes in tone that were still driving me nuts, but we really hadn't gone into detail about what my treatment entailed, so he was tiptoeing around the issue until he knew where I was and what I wanted to talk about. I planned to answer whatever questions he might have, but I wanted to let Karlie head off to work before we got into it. She'd just had to do the treatment summary with her family over the weekend, it was my turn to do it with Ed.She gave me a kiss that tasted like maple and headed upstairs to brush her teeth before heading out to work, leaving the two of us to catch up. I poured a bit more coffee into my cup, wanting the caffeine even though I wished I could add a little more cream. Ed and I found ourselves in the music room, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, coffee in hand, while Meredith cozied up to him because she loves everyone more than me. I had Dibbles in my lap, after she had literally tripped over her own paws trying to get there, which I think pretty much sums up Dibbles. I was the one to bring it up first, telling him it was okay to ask questions. The more I talked about it, the easier it was to do it, and the more I got used to the idea, which I thought was a good thing. It was my reality, and I had to live it for months to come. Shying away from it or trying to pretend it wasn't happening just wasn't realistic."So, the surgery. Is your voice?" He trailed off, hesitant to address the obvious elephant in the room, even though I'd given permission. I assured him it was temporary, a side effect of the fact that Dr. Goldsmith had literally brushed up against the nerves controlling my vocal chords while she removed the tumor. Preserving my voice was the reason behind the larger than usual scar, and I agreed she'd done the right thing. Karlie thought the slight raspiness was kinda sexy, but I wasn't inclined to agree. I explained the healing process was why I hadn't been singing for a while there, and why Kar was so excited when I tried it out in the car. Karlie had told him I was starting the next round of treatment on Monday, and that he had to be careful what he fed me because I had to follow a special diet to get ready for it, but not all the details. He promised to FaceTime with me while I was stuck in my room after the radioactive iodine after I'd explained what all it entailed, and it was his idea to have my guys move a treadmill in there so I could get some exercise, and to make sure I had warm stuff so I could go out on the terrace when I needed some space. He wanted to know about chemo too, what that would entail, and I had to say we hadn't gotten to that part yet, only that it was coming, along with a different kind of radiation.Once we'd covered those depressing topics, we pulled out our guitars. He had a line stuck in his head that wouldn't go anywhere, no matter what he tried to do with it, so we worked on that for a few hours, until my stomach started growling. We ended up going to town on that meatloaf Karlie and I had made the day before. I'd known Ed long enough to know that feeding him red meat was the best way to make him happy. After lunch we went on a walk to get coffee, smiling to ourselves that the fans would freak out to see the two of us together, even though we were nowhere near ready to release music, even if we WERE writing it. I had my scarf firmly in place, grateful that fall outerwear is forgiving when it comes to hiding weight gain. I wanted fans to see us out, since they wouldn't see me for a while, and we were getting close to the start of chemo, an I didn't know how I would feel once that started. We didn't call for paparazzi or anything, but a tall blonde and a slightly shorter redhead in my West Village neighborhood were bound to attract attention, and I was comfortable with the fact that the pictures would spread widely once a few fans picked up on them.In the later part of the afternoon we worked on adding lyrics to the song I'd started writing in the days after surgery. Using his loop technique, we were able to add different layers of sound, eventually ending with the two of us playing percussion on household objects, which is what we were doing when Karlie came home. We were being so loud we hadn't heard her come up the stairs, and she was able to watch us as we played a stirring rendition of the song that included such instruments as fork on coffee table, empty Folgers container, half-empty iced coffee cup, and butter knife on metal reading lamp. When the song ended Karlie applauded, then cracked up at the stunned looks on our faces, so I threw the iced coffee cup at her, which she dodged, resulting in ice all over the floor.Ed had planned to meet a few of his friends for drinks, and since they would be eating salty pub food, he was pretty sure we would have a hard time finding things I could eat. Instead, Karlie and I spent the evening snuggling on the couch, enjoying the chance to just chill together, not needing to go anywhere or do anything. She read a couple articles for Aesthetic Justice, and I played around on the iPad. Tree had gone through after Karlie and I got married and cleared out my follows on tumblr to get rid of anyone who didn't react well, and had finally let me add some of the Kaylor and Gaylor Swift blogs that she had deemed too obvious back when I was really active. I scrolled my dash for the first time in ages to see what was going on and was pleasantly surprised. There were still a lot of blogs talking about how cute we were together, sharing edits of our wedding pictures, going back through some of the moments of our relationship they'd picked up on before the wedding. Lots of my old Swiftie faves were still on my dash, which made me happy, because it meant they'd been accepting and happy for us after the wedding. There were some of the scar pictures going around, but mostly along with comments about how crappy it was of that guy to try to expose me while I was recovering from surgery, and largely the comments were that I looked pretty good for only a couple days out of surgery. Even the pics from the coffee trip with Ed largely had comments about how I looked happy, or healthy, or they hoped I was doing well. The only comment about how it looked like I'd put on weight got shut down pretty quickly, though the commenter wasn't wrong. I looked heavier in the recent pics, especially compared to the wedding day edits. But I was pleased to see that I didn't look BAD. Just softer, and rounder, less muscle, the bone structure of my face less obvious. Karlie happened to glance down as I was looking at one of the least flattering pictures of the day and just said 'I'd hit that' and then went back to reading like nothing happened, leaving me in stunned silence as I realized exactly what she'd said. I hadn't asked, but she needed me to know she still thought I was hot.* * *Austin came into town Wednesday to read for a part casting out of New York. Some kind of sitcom he was never going to get, but a good experience and a chance to show the East coast what he could do after spending most of his time since graduation on the West coast. I had to laugh a little as he explained that the character he was reading for was gay and suggested that maybe they'd agreed to see the wrong Swift. When I asked if he was nervous to kiss a guy since he wasn't into that, he turned it back on me, saying how many times I'd done it when I wasn't into it, and hadn't I argued it was just acting? And I'm just a songwriter, he's a certified actor, with a degree from Notre Dame to prove it. While we reignited our sibling rivalry, Karlie literally made popcorn and just sat there watching us like a tennis match, much like me with the Kloss sisters and ping pong. He had to be at the audition really early Thursday and then was flying back to LA, so we only got that night to hang out, but we took advantage of the pleasant fall weather to roast marshmallows on the terrace again. Kar and Austin had s'mores, but I had to skip the chocolate and graham crackers since both have iodine. Kar had this ludicrous idea that if she kissed me after each bite, then I could taste the s'more without actually eating the forbidden foods, which I'm not sure was a great strategy, but was definitely fun to attempt, especially with my poor baby brother third-wheeling it. He resorted to chucking marshmallows at us, and managed to bounce one square off my forehead. I think we both tried to pretend he didn't hug me just the slightest bit longer and harder when he went to bed.Karlie and I weren't far behind, falling into bed fairly early for us. We didn't really have anything planned for Thursday, but we had the appointment with the nuclear medicine specialists on Friday, and then it was just the weekend before treatment began again on Monday. We didn't stay asleep long. In the early hours of the morning I heard Karlie calling my name and shot awake, only to find she was asleep, clearly distraught, but dreaming. I thought back on three years worth of nights together and could only think of one other nightmare, in the immediate aftermath of the 1975 concert, when we didn't know what footage might be out there and we didn't know how it was going to turn out, whether we were going to be shoved unceremoniously out of the closet or allowed to maintain the status quo. It is usually me being comforted by strong arms in the middle of the night, when waking anxiety spills over into terrifying images in the dead of night. But that night, actual tears streamed down her cheek as she sobbed my name.I was trying to gently awaken her when Austin tapped timidly on the door. I could guess why. Outside the room, Karlie's calls could have been the throes of passion, but he wasn't about to allow some nefarious intruder to attack us with him in the house if that wasn't the case. I think he must have decided we probably weren't having sleep sex, because he burst into the room in his underwear, one of my moonmen in hand, ready to clobber anyone who was hurting his sisters. His less than graceful entrance was enough to shake Karlie out of the nightmare, and she looked slightly startled to find both Austin and I peering worriedly at her, Austin still clutching the moonman. As soon as she was awake enough to really register what she was looking at, she latched onto me, full koala mode, burying her face in my chest. I was really, really glad we'd worn pyjamas to sleep in. Austin helpfully handed me my glasses off the nightstand, placing the moonman where they'd been. He sat down next to me on the bed, hesitant to leave if something was wrong, but also unsure of his place in this moment, suddenly finding himself in a bedroom with his married sister and her wife. As Karlie continued to cling to me, he settled for running a comforting hand across her back, a gesture she seemed to appreciate, as her breathing evened out. I handed her the same box of tissues I'd used on Sunday to let her mop up a little, and she found herself able to pull back."Thagks Austib," she began, giving him a small smile and a hug "big brother to the rescue.""Everything okay here?" he inquired, looking between the two of us."Yeah, Austin, I think we're good here," I smiled ruefully, "Go get some sleep, you've got a big day tomorrow." As he reached the door, I stopped him with "hey, Austin?" and when he paused, added "thanks for coming to save us, even if we didn't need saving."He replied "anytime, sis" and let himself out, leaving Karlie and I to talk about what just happened.It was the worst nightmare I'd ever had. Not like the 'I'm naked at school' or 'zombies are real' kind of nightmares where you sort of suspect something is wrong that lets you know it isn't reality. Instead, what made the dream so awful was its hyper-reality. In the dream, I was sitting on the edge of the bed in the master bedroom, wearing a black lace dress. The bed was made, perfectly, which was odd because neither Taylor nor I make the bed if we plan to return the same night. Kimby came in and sat down next to me, wrapping her arm across my shoulder and pulling me into a hug. 'Mom says it's time to go,' she said, pulling me to my feet. 'C'mon Karls, Tay wouldn't want to see you like this.' And that's when I realized. The diamond on my finger suddenly weighed a thousand pounds as I understood exactly where we were going. A cold stone cathedral filled with somber people, all murmuring about how it was such a shame, she was so young, all glancing away from me as soon as they realized I was listening. A few were clearly talking about me, I heard the word widow more than once. At the front of the church, a huge portrait of Taylor hung, surrounded by white roses and lilies and I felt like I was wading through quicksand to make my way to the altar. Scott and Andrea and Austin stood by the open casket. I broke down as I looked in to see my Taylor, makeup perfectly done, her red dress the only color in the room. As I began to sob her name, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and someone repeating my name, and then I heard a banging noise that finally broke me out of the horrible world of the nightmare.
As soon as I realized I was back in our room, with Taylor and Austin, who was bizarrely holding one of her awards, I couldn't help myself, I had to hold her tight, listen to the beating of her heart and feel the rise and fall of her chest, secure in the knowledge that my wife was alive and well. It had felt so real. The emotions behind it. My mind had tortured me with a taste of what it would feel like to lose my wife, and I never wanted to feel that ever, ever again. I couldn't stop crying, the relief that she was fine crashing up against the grief from the dream and coming out in the worst sobbing fit I could remember. It took the solid warmth of Austin's hand, added to Taylor's arms to ground me enough to calm down. Of course, then I became super conscious of the fact that my brother-in-law was sitting on the bed in his underwear and also of the fact that I must have been yelling in my sleep, and of the fact that he was planning to save Taylor and I from whatever psycho was attacking us by clobbering them with one of Tay's VMAs, and I was almost beset by a hysterical urge to giggle because I wondered if maybe it was THAT VMA, but instead I just thanked Austin for trying to rescue me.

I was kinda disappointed when he left, because it meant I was going to have to explain my dream to Taylor, and I really didn't want to. The one thing we tried to keep sight of was the fact that even as a rare and aggressive, treatment resistant type of cancer, it was still treatable, and there was a really good chance she was going to be just fine. We tried not to let ourselves get caught up in questions of life and death. We refused, most of the time, to even consider the possibility that this might not end the way we wanted it to. But tonight, my brain had forced me to look at the potential of a life without Taylor, and I didn't like it at all.
I knew, just from her reaction, that I'd been dead in the dream. It was the only thing that made sense. The way she cried, the way she held me when she woke up. I was somewhat surprised we'd made it almost two months without a breakdown like this. I'd had a few, but this was by far the worst for Karlie, and I was sure if she'd been awake, she never would have succumbed like this. Her inherent sunshine doesn't let her worry about things like this, like the possibility that I might die. But now that her subconscious had forced her into considering it, I wondered if it would dim her sunshine at all. Because I could, I knew, die. Anyone can die any day at any time, but I had a slightly higher than average chance as long as I was sick. I could tell she didn't really want to talk about it with me. She didn't want to let me know that she'd even thought it, but I knew.It was a hard conversation. Me poking and prodding to get her to say the words out loud. We lay together in the dark, holding each other tight, saying all the things we'd kept inside, all the fears we didn't want to say, lest they become real. But it was cleansing, in a way, giving voice to the things we kept hidden. The little fears, that my head would turn out to have a weird shape, that I wouldn't tolerate chemo well and be sick all the time, that I would slowly lose my mind alone in my room for a week. The big fears. That treatment would work for now but cause secondary cancer later. That I might be thrown into menopause by the chemo and not only be unable to have kids, but have to deal with other health risks caused by it happening so young. For Karlie there was only one fear. None of the other stuff mattered to her, as long as I was okay. But once we'd cried our way through the fear, there was peace. Letting the fears out seemed to let them take up less space in our hearts. By the time we finally fell asleep, it was nearly dawn, and I knew our Thursday would probably be spent at home, recovering from a rough night.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Friday morning found us once again in the waiting area at the Cancer Institute. I was due for another round of blood tests, to see where my hormone levels were in preparation for the treatment on Monday. If they still weren't high enough, I would have to give myself two shots of a medicine that mimics the thyroid stimulating hormone to make my body as ready as possible to absorb the radioactive iodine. I wasn't exactly excited about the possibility, and I know Karlie was dreading it, because she knew if it came to that, she would actually be the one giving me the shots. I wasn't too worried though, I was definitely noticing more symptoms of being hypothyroid after three weeks, so I was fairly confident my levels were up. I was also going to meet with a nuclear medicine doctor who would give me instructions on what to do the day of treatment, and what I had to do at home to make sure Karlie was safe. Dr. Miller was going to be part of the appointment as well, as my oncologist. She was the one who prescribed the dose of radioactive iodine, so she wanted to be part of the process.Karlie and I laughed when the nurse handed me a pregnancy test to take. I mean, it makes sense, that they would just blanket test anyone female and not post-menopausal, but as a lesbian whose last failed attempt to be with a guy was seven years ago, and didn't involve anything that could have led to pregnancy, I found it pretty funny. I mean, over the last decade, I've probably been rumored to be pregnant at least once a year, despite the fact that anyone who knew me at all could have told you that wasn't possible. For the record, once again, I wasn't pregnant. I had to slip off my sweater once again for the blood draw, there's no easy way to dress for both fall in New York and access to bare arms, but at least this time the room wasn't freezing. I still hated needles. Two months in, hundreds of needle sticks to go, and I wasn't getting used to it.The nurse saw me flinch as I put my arm out for the blood draw and asked if I'd considered getting a port. I had, but I thought you only got those for chemo, and I didn't really know much about it. The nurse explained that I could get one at any time to make it easier to have blood drawn, start IVs and get injections. It would sit just under the skin of my chest and make vein access virtually painless. Way less uncomfortable for me, and it would leave my hands free while I was hooked up to an IV. It definitely sounded promising, but I'd had coffee that morning, so they would've had to do it with just local anesthesia, no sedation or anything, and if I couldn't handle a single needle for a blood draw, there was no way I was going to be able to have them do a minor surgical procedure while I was fully conscious. The nurse suggested that I could get it implanted on Monday before the radioactive iodine. It's a short surgery, they could do it in the morning, let me go home for lunch and then admit me for the treatment in the afternoon, making use of my new port right away for the IV during treatment, which sounded like a good plan. I would be able to use it for blood tests, imaging, everything, without the nurses having to find veins all the time. Dr. Miller came in just as he was finishing up the blood draw, and she agreed that it might be time to get a port, just to make my life easier, if that was what I wanted. She helped me set up the appointment with the interventional radiologist, yet another specialist in the long list of new doctors I saw for each new procedure.The nuclear medicine specialist came in next to talk to me about just what to expect from the treatment. He agreed that getting a port put in in the morning would be no problem for the treatment in the afternoon and might even actually help, at least when it came to making me more comfortable. I got a whole list of dos and don'ts for the day of the treatment, and the days after. That first day, I couldn't bring anything electronic with me to the hospital, but I could bring anything else that I wanted to entertain myself with during the three hour isolation phase. I would go into the isolation room and find that everything was covered in plastic or disposable. Whatever I wore those first three hours would be trashed, so I could either put on old clothes of my own that I didn't have any problem with throwing out, or I could wear a hospital gown. Even the floor would be covered in disposable pads so I wouldn't touch it with my bare feet. I would take the radioactive iodine as three pills, and they probably wouldn't make me feel any different, right away, but they would be doing most of their work right then. Before I could leave I would have to take a shower and drink a bunch of water to flush some of it out of my system. As long as my radiation level went down like they thought, after those three hours it would be safe for Mike to drive me home.After that, the first three days would be the worst, for the next four, although Karlie and I couldn't share a room or a bed, we would be able to be closer for more time each day. It sounded doable, and less scary than it had seemed before. They suggested we get some boxes of gloves to keep around, both for this treatment and for chemo, because if I did need help with something, it wouldn't be a disaster for Karlie to help me, but it would be best if she didn't make direct skin to skin contact, or even touch my clothes or bedding. Gloves would help create a barrier between us. At the end of the isolation week, I would come back to the hospital and have another radiation level test, and hopefully it would be low enough that I could go back to normal life, for a little while at least. Over the course of the week after I was cleared to sleep with Karlie again, and be around the cats, I would just get to do my regular activities. Then I would have another PET scan to see where in my body cancer cells remained, so they could target them with the next type of radiation, and I would meet with Dr. Miller to talk about the plan for chemoradiation. We couldn't go into it sooner, because there was no predicting how I would respond to the radioactive iodine, and my response to this round of treatment would determine how we handled the next round.* * *I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the weekend, now that I was approaching treatment Monday. Part of me wanted to go out with friends and kind of party, but part of me just wanted to curl up in bed with Karlie. So Karlie helped me do both. Saturday, we had a bunch of friends over. We talked about ordering food, but Karlie had the idea to just make it pot-luck. She made sure to tell everyone not to be offended if I didn't eat whatever they brought since I was still on restricted diet, but to feel free to bring wine or beer, because I could actually enjoy those. As a result, I didn't eat much, but I did have quite a bit to drink. I was pretty buzzed, sitting on the terrace with a bunch of our friends, and I'll admit I don't remember much of the party. I didn't mean to get that drunk, but it was an oddly fitting send off to cancer treatment to spend part of the night with Karlie holding my hair back. I must have apologized a thousand times, but of course she insisted it was okay, it was good practice for later. I felt so guilty, inviting people over and then getting totally wasted, but a string of texts the next morning insisted they'd had a good time and hoped I wasn't too horribly hungover. There were plenty of entertaining photos to scroll through the next morning to bring back some of the memories, once I stopped feeling so horrible.
I really didn't anticipate how much Taylor would drink that night. We had over a bunch of our girl friends, mostly Angels past and present, with a few of Taylor's music friends, really anyone who was in town. I don't think she planned to get drunk either. I think she just wanted to have fun, hanging out with the girls, and I think the restrictions of the low-iodine diet may have kept her from eating as much as she should have with the amount of alcohol she was drinking. I don't think either one of us realized just how bad off she was while she was sitting on the couch talking to the others. We thought she was buzzed, maybe a little drunk. As soon as she went to stand though, it was clear she'd found her limit and blown right by it. I'm sure she doesn't remember it, but she threw up in one of the potted plants on the terrace, then patted it like it was one of the cats and told it she was sorry. Fortunately for everyone involved, Gigi got that on video and texted it to me, so I'm never going to let her live it down. Once everyone realized how drunk Taylor actually was, the party shut down pretty quickly. I was busy taking care of her, but I know Martha poked her head into the bedroom to let me know they'd done their best to clean up after the party before they left so Taylor and I wouldn't have to deal with it in the morning. Neither one of us got a whole lot of sleep. She thankfully wasn't so drunk she passed out completely, so she would wake up periodically to puke some more, which would wake me up too. I think it was around five in the morning that I had to put her in the shower to get the puke out of her hair, but I could be wrong. It was a long night.
Sunday was spent recovering from my own stupidity, but Karlie was perfectly happy to just cuddle me on the couch and watch TV. By mid-afternoon, I felt a lot better, but I still didn't want to go anywhere. Karlie insisted that we go for a walk before dinner, just to get out of the house and get some physical activity together before I had to spend quite a bit of time at home. I told her we were going to get plenty of physical activity later, since it was going to be a week before we could have physical contact, and she laughed, but insisted. It was probably the right choice though, and I did feel better after our walk, even if I did spend half of it looking down, trying not to be noticed. I felt bad, having Mike and Jeff turn away fans who wanted autographs and pictures, but my head and my heart weren't in that place. I was still, quite frankly, hella hungover, and I just wanted to have some time with my wife. One of the few times I wished I was just Taylor Kloss, and not 'Ten-Time Grammy Winner Taylor Swift.' The guys had their work cut out for them, trying to keep our walk as private as possible in a busy place like New York, but even I wasn't going to fly us to someplace more private, just for a half-hour walk. After dinner, it was all about the two of us, just enjoying some quality time together.* * *The next morning came way too early. I had the intense joy of waking up to cramps, right on schedule. Karlie filled me a hot water bottle while I threw on sweats, not seeing the point of really getting dressed up since I was just going to change right into a surgical gown. I couldn't take anything for the pain first thing, but I figured all the drugs they were going to give me when I got to the hospital would probably take care of it, if I could just hold out until then. Unlike when I had my thyroid removed, this surgery was still going to happen in the same building as the Cancer Institute, since it was outpatient, but this time I had to report to the surgical floor instead of my usual waiting area. I got my usual two hospital bracelets, the surgical green and red allergy alert, and this time I didn't even hardly sit down in the waiting area before they called me back.The nurse who escorted me to the room asked me to leave my bra on under the gown, even though I would have to remove it for the actual procedure, which was something of a problem because I wasn't wearing one. Karlie donated hers to the cause, slipping on my hoodie so it wouldn't be obvious. It didn't exactly fit like it might have a month ago when we wore the same size, but the straps rested in the usual place, which was the point of having one on for pre-op. The most common placement for a port is on the upper right chest, about an inch below the collar bone, but the biggest complaint about them for women comes from when they rest too far to the right and end up under the bra strap, so they've started actually drawing with a special sterile marker right on the skin to mark where to avoid during the procedure. My nurse this time was really young, about our age, so once she'd made the marks I needed to map out the surgical placement, I just slipped the bra back off and handed it to Karlie, saying "here you go babe, I think this is yours," making the nurse laugh. She laughed even harder when Karlie went ahead and put it right back on without missing a beat.Things got less funny after that as she started the IV, though it was nice to know this would be the last one like this, since after this, all of them would go in through my port rather than my arm. They confirmed three times that the IV antibiotic they were giving me was doxycycline and not from the penicillin family, since I'm allergic. They gave me some drugs after that that were supposed to make me pretty loopy, maybe even go to sleep, while they did the port placement. It was interesting. I was fully aware of what was going on the whole time, and I remember it all, which I don't think is how it was supposed to work. I remember the guy doing the placement introducing himself to me and Karlie, kissing my wife goodbye and giving her my ring to keep safe for me. I remember being wheeled to the procedure room, being asked to confirm that I was getting a port and that I needed them to seat an IV needle in it for the afternoon. I remember them telling me to lie still while they took x-rays, although I don't really remember why they needed them. I remember the doctor using an ultrasound to find the right place to insert the catheter into my vein, and joking that I thought the first time I got one of those, I'd be pregnant, and the doctor saying he heard that a lot. I remember the burn of the lidocaine injections, and the surgeon asking me over and over if I could feel what he was doing. And the thing was, I could. The drugs just made it so I didn't care. I mean, it didn't hurt. Neither did the cramps, which was nice. But I could totally feel that he was making cuts in my skin, and feeding things in there. I could feel him fishing the end of the catheter under my collarbone, and opening up a pocket to put the port into. I just couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.He sealed the two incisions with some kind of special glue, which made me giggle, because that's exactly how he explained it, and he had to wait a second for me to get it under control so he wouldn't get glue everywhere. Then he placed an IV into the port and since the area was still numb from the local anesthetic, I didn't even really realize he was done until he plastered the area with some kind of sticky plastic to seal the area so I would be able to shower with the IV line still attached, and so the line wouldn't get pulled out by accident. Since I still had the IV in my arm, he just capped the tubing so it would be able to hang under my shirt between the placement and actually getting the radioactive iodine in the afternoon. The whole thing took maybe fifteen minutes once he got started. Then I spent an hour hanging out in a recovery room with Karlie, drinking ginger ale and giggling uncontrollably, at least at first. At one point I texted Ed to tell him he had to try what I was on. When he didn't respond right away, I texted Cara too, while Karlie tried to take my phone away before I texted someone important that message. By the end of the hour I was mostly back to normal, although I still felt unusually mellow, but I had at least stopped occasionally turning to Karlie to whisper "I'm so high right now."
I wasn't there any of the times Tay and Ed shared a little mary jane, not that there have been many, but I think this was pretty close. It was interesting. She was so giggly, and chill, and yet very aware of what was going on. She could tell me every detail of the procedure she'd just had, it was just like she didn't care. They came in to take the needle out of her arm, for probably the last time ever, and she just giggled. I have never seen her so chill. It started to wear off as the hour in recovery progressed, though she spent most of that hour acting half drunk – draped all over me, giggling like a nut, trying to send incoherent texts to people, half forgetting where we were or why we were there and asking how she got ginger ale and why there was plastic on her chest. The other half, she would describe in detail how the port was purple, and that the doctor had to feed the 'tubey-thingy' under her collar bone, and that there was a needle in it but it didn't hurt at all and wasn't that nice. Once it wore off enough for her to make sense most of the time, and tell me she needed to use the restroom instead of 'go potty' they let her get changed back into her sweats and head home for a bit.
We had plenty of time to go home and cuddle for a couple hours after the first procedure of the day. Whatever they'd given me wore off but left enough of an effect to keep the cramps under control. It also left me ravenous. At about eleven-thirty I ate my second to last low-iodine meal ever, which was definitely a positive milestone. I was due to check back in at the hospital at one, which suddenly seemed like it was racing closer and closer. Karls handed me a little bag with a novel, a crossword puzzle book, a book of sudokus, and some snacks in it so that I would have something to do while I waited for enough radiation to clear my system so I could come home. She also helped me gather my toiletries, because one of the things I had to do at the end of my three hours in the isolation room was shower to rinse off some of the radiation, and helped me pack some comfortable clothes to put on when I was ready to leave. We made sure everything was ready in the guest room I was going to stay in for the week. It was on the same floor with the master, the one Austin had stayed in a few days before, so if I needed something, Karlie would be able to hear me yell from our room. It had its own terrace for the moments I needed air, and was pretty close to the roof-deck access as well if I really needed space. We made sure I had everything I would need all set up, including plenty of tampons. I usually use them anyway, but I was absolutely not allowed to use pads because they would be contaminated by the radiation and I couldn't throw them out with the normal trash. The glamorous side of cancer, getting told what kind of feminine hygiene products to use.We took the cats to Martha's. They're just too used to being able to go anywhere they like, and both Karlie and I would feel better having the doors to our rooms open while we had to sleep apart, so we couldn't have them in the house where they might wander into my room. Their safety matters too. I knew we would miss them, but they'd be okay with Mar for a few days. She pulled me into a hug as we dropped them off, promising to take good care of them and send me texts full of pictures and videos of my girls. Then it was off to the hospital for Karlie and I. It was all I could do to act like an adult and not drag my feet. I wanted to have as much time with Karlie as humanly possible, knowing that once I took those pills, we would have to be apart for a whole week, even though she would be right in the next room.We had to report to yet another new floor, another new waiting area. As we sat in the corner she held me tight, stealing little moments to kiss my forehead, my temple, the tip of my nose. This floor featured nuclear medicine, and the radiation isolation rooms, so there were fortunately not a lot of waiters. Mike sat off to the side making sure we had space while we waited, but thanks to the lack of people, it wasn't much of an issue. The drugs from the morning procedure were starting to wear off, letting my cramps come back with a vengeance, and I was starting to actually look forward to getting called back, with the hope that they might give me something for the pain as well as hooking me up to an IV for hydration and delivery of anti-nausea meds. But when a nurse in lavender scrubs called my name, I had a hard time pulling myself out of my wife's arms. She was allowed to go with me into the prep room, where I changed into an old pair of workout pants that actually used to be Karlie's from when she used to work with Nike and a shelf-bra tank top, minimizing the amount of stuff I would have to trash on the other side. They hooked an IV to the tube left over from my port insertion in the morning, and I had to admit it was easier, though the next time they would have to use a new needle. I got three bracelets this time, blue ID, red allergy alert and a new one, yellow with the black radiation symbol, ensuring that once I'd been treated, no one would dare come near me.Along with my bag of entertainment, Karlie had also brought me snacks, in case I got hungry. She tries so hard to think of everything for me, before I even know I need it. I know right now the balance of that has shifted in the direction of me being the needy one and Karlie taking care of me, but I hope one day I can return the favor, getting things ready for her, making sure her needs are met before she knows what they are. I am constantly reminded that I don't deserve her, but I plan to do my best to make up for it a thousand different ways when I can. When the time came for us to part, it was all I could do not to cry. I felt like I was being led to my execution, rather than a treatment that was intended to prevent my death. She kept her face neutral as she gave me a kiss, the kind you usually would reserve for behind closed doors, then pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose, and planted her lips on my forehead, wrapping her arms around me. After a hug that lasted forever but ended too fast, she turned me around and kissed the back of my bare shoulder. Before I could process what she was doing, she had the nurse hand her a wet rag, and I realized she was placing another temporary tattoo in the same spot as the last one."Giraffe again?" I asked, wishing the room was equipped with a mirror."Nope," she grinned at me, smirking before she stuck out her tongue. "This time it's a panther, because they're fierce and deadly, and kick ass, just like this treatment is going to kick cancer's ass. But I've still got your back. Always." She gave me one last kiss, and then I had to go.The nurse didn't even come into the room with me, merely pointing the way inside. Before I entered, she injected some pain meds and my anti-nausea meds into the IV, hoping to make treatment as painless as possible. As I had been told, literally everything in the room was covered with plastic or disposable pads. I did get a number of blankets and sheets, so that I didn't have to lay directly on a plastic covered bed, or sit on the plastic covering the chair. I hung my extra clothes in the closet and shut the door, keeping them safe from myself until after my post-treatment shower, so I would have something to wear home. I had my own bathroom, complete with instructions on how to flush the toilet three times after I used it, and to carefully rinse the sink after I washed my hands. Even the shower had plastic covered instructions, like I would somehow forget, even for a second, that I was full of dangerous radiation, or would be, once I'd taken the pills. They were delivered to me in a special lead container, that felt like it weighed ten pounds at least. I had to steel myself to even unscrew the lid, once the nuclear medicine tech that had delivered them left.They looked so innocuous, sitting in the well within the container. Like any three pills. They could have been Tylenol. My hands shook a little as I tried to pour water from the pitcher on the table into the cup they'd given me, so I had to take a few extra moments to clean up the spill, before I could finally pop the first pill into my mouth. Of course, I felt exactly the same after I took it, and the second and third as well. I was kinda hoping maybe I would develop super powers, but I didn't. That's not a real thing, but I could've been the first. Karlie would have totally geeked out over it if I had. The only thing I developed was severe nausea, about an hour after I took them. They'd given me Zofran before I went into the room, but they'd warned me that since I was taking an extra high dose, it was possible that it wouldn't be enough. I laid down on the bed, feeling pretty miserable, but hoping that if I took deep breaths, maybe I could avoid actually throwing up. No such luck. I managed to stave it off for ten minutes at the most before I found myself re-enacting my hangover from the other day. I wished more than anything that I could have Karlie with me to hold my hair and rub my back, instead of being all alone.I had to use the room intercom to contact the nurse's station, and I was worried that having thrown-up so soon after treatment, I might need more, but the nurse was only concerned about how I was feeling and getting the vomiting under control so I would be able to go home in a couple hours as planned. If I couldn't stop, I couldn't leave. The only difficulty is that taking oral anti-nausea meds seemed pretty impractical, as I would have to keep them down long enough for them to get into my system, so I had to choose between giving myself an injection in my IV, since no nurse could come close enough to do it for me, or suppositories, which go, um, in where things usually come out. A decision I had to make with my stomach inside out and my face inches from toilet water. I finally decided that while neither option was appealing, I actually thought I might be more comfortable with the syringe rather than trying to contort myself to get the others where they belonged in-between bouts of puking.The nurse finally agreed to deliver both options outside my room and let me figure it out from there. I had to wait for a count of sixty after I heard a knock at my door to go get the meds and bring them in. The syringe was pre-filled and ready to go, and even came with self-delivery instructions. There was a little branch coming off the IV tube where I'd seen the nurses inject my pain meds and the initial dose of Zofran. The needle they gave me was actually blunt, so I couldn't slip and puncture the tubing or anything, I just had to get it into the self healing rubber bit of the cap on the branch and push in the plunger. After another round of dry-heaves, I was able to hold the tube with my left hand and insert it with the right, with a minimum of hand shaking. I still didn't feel totally better, but the drugs made me stop feeling like I couldn't even step away from the bathroom, and was able to start following their advice to drink tons of water. I swear over the rest of the time I spent in there, I must have peed like four times, and the whole thing only took four hours.The time actually passed faster than I expected, though I felt absolutely no desire to eat anything. Even drinking the water felt like a bit of an adventure, but the one thing that kept me going was the fact that it was actually better to have something to throw up than to just dry heave with nothing in my stomach. I was only supposed to spend three hours in the isolation room, but they couldn't release me until I'd gone a full hour without vomiting, because I had to be able to get home without anything coming out of me. I ended up using none of the things Karlie had gotten ready for me, which I felt bad about, but I knew I would use them during the rest of my isolation in my room. I just needed to feel a little better to concentrate on things like books and puzzles. Instead I had spent the time lying on the bed and watching Netflix on the TV in the room.I was surprised when they came on the intercom to tell me to take my shower. I had to peel off what I was wearing, avoiding the IV tubing, and put the clothes in a plastic trash bag, then put that bag in another trash bag for safety. The shower itself kind of sucked. There was very little water pressure, and it was hard to get the hand held shower head to actually spray all of me at the same time, meaning there was usually at least one bit of me that was freezing cold. The room came with one of those built in hair dryers that they have in hotels, and I was really glad there wasn't anyone to impress when I left, because my hair was, well, a disaster after trying to use their dryer, but it was slightly better than going home with it wet. Once I'd bagged up all the towels I'd used to dry off, put on my going home clothes, and spread an unused blanket over the chair so I would have someplace to sit, the radiation safety tech was standing outside my door ready to scan me for radiation. The scan revealed I had reached a safe level to go home, but also, fortunately, that the level was high enough for therapeutic levels and I wouldn't need any extra doses. They carefully removed the dressing and needle from my port, and I was astounded that there wasn't any blood or anything.Then they led me to the exit door where I met Mike. He'd driven Karlie home after they took me back to the isolation room, so she could finish things up in my room and pick up my prescriptions for anti-emetics and, finally, my Synthroid, the medication that would, for the rest of my life, replace my thyroid hormones. I was really excited to get to start it, because it would help me get my energy back, and also start to lose some of the weight I'd gained without it. Most importantly, I would be able to back off the antidepressants I'd been taking, and it would probably help stabilize my moods in their place. I know antidepressants can be super important, but I was definitely hopeful that I didn't really need them. I had gone in to get them and come out with a diagnosis of cancer, so I was hoping that at least, in the end, treating the cancer and fixing my thyroid hormone levels would put my brain back where it belonged. It wouldn't happen right away, since the process of getting the right dose of Synthroid is pretty trial and error, but at least we would be on the right track.I sat in the far back corner of the SUV on the way home, trying to be as far from Mike as possible. He was really sweet, making sure I was okay on the drive, even though it was only about seven minutes that we were in the car. I still felt some low-level nausea, but it was weird. Like, I felt nauseous, but not like I was going to actually throw up. I guess that's what they call feeling queasy? Still, I held a bucket in my lap on the way, so they wouldn't have to have the car decontaminated after I exited. Anything that came out of me would be pretty radioactive, so I didn't want anyone who was part of my life to have to deal with it. I was really relieved to get home, all I wanted to do was lie down. I still had to keep drinking water, as much as I could stand, and the doctors really wanted to see me eat dinner, plus, I was due to start sucking on sour candies to keep my salivary glands going and prevent radiation related dry mouth. There was nothing I could do to prevent my eyes from being dry other than not wearing my contacts, but they were really insistent about the candies, so I planned to follow directions. They said doing that would also probably help avoid changes to the way things taste, which I very much wanted to avoid."Welcome home, Tay!" Karlie called brightly from the door to our room as I emerged from the elevator. "How are you?"I waved her off, saying I was fine, just tired, because I didn't want her to suffer knowing I didn't feel good and she couldn't come comfort me. She blew me a kiss and I caught it and blew her one of my own before heading into my room and closing the door. She had my laptop, iPad and phone all laid out on the dresser, charging and waiting for me to come get them. There was a whole basket of assorted flavor Atomic Warheads, which I hadn't seen or even thought about since middle school, because she knew I needed something sour and that certainly fit the bill. There were also Lemonheads and Sour Patch Kids and sour Skittles and also Jolly Ranchers with a note that said 'in case you can't stand sour anymore.' I sent her a text saying I was going to take a nap so she wouldn't worry about me and lay down on the bed, hugging a pillow to my stomach.I guess I actually did fall asleep, because I woke up to my phone pinging. Karlie, wanting to know if I wanted dinner yet. I felt pretty lousy still, but it was nearly seven, and I knew I needed to eat something, so I told her I could eat, but to pick something light, because my stomach was a little upset from the treatment. She brought me a plate of noodles, tossed with sautéed veggies and chicken, and a little olive oil. It was good, and actually helped settle my stomach a bit, so I felt like I could sit up and maybe read. There was a keyboard and a guitar in the corner that hadn't been there when I'd left, more of Karlie's work anticipating what I would need. I grabbed the iPad off the dresser and set it up to FaceTime her. It felt weird, getting ready to do that from just feet away; I wanted her to be safe, but also to know just how much I loved all the little things she'd done for me. I popped a blue raspberry Warhead in my mouth and hit the button to call.* * *I didn't go crazy in there, over the course of that week. I spent a lot of time talking to friends and family. Abigail, Selena, Austin, my parents, Brit, Lily, Ed, Jack, Ella, the list could go on and on. Ed and I even did a little writing long distance. I fell into a sort of a routine, that included finally getting back on the treadmill. I didn't feel back to my old self yet, but I had more energy than I had since the surgery, so I was pretty excited to get back into working out. I used the laptop to find yoga and pilates videos I could do at home. After the first three days, Karlie and I met in the living room to do them together, albeit with a six foot gap between us. We used our hour a day within a three foot radius of each other to share dinner every night. She had to make it, because I couldn't touch anything she was going to eat, but I could sit in the living room in the chair we'd designated 'mine' and talk to her while she cooked. I had been so looking forward to eating normal food again, after the week of low-iodine food, but nothing tasted right. Strong flavors like garlic could cut through, but it was like everything was muted. Plain water tasted like metal, but I could drink flavored things like soda and VitaminWater.After the first three days, when Karlie was out at work, I took everything I'd been using in my room, all my towels, sheets, clothes I'd worn and washed them, twice. Then I ran the washer empty with nothing but soap to clear out all the extra radiation and put my room back together. I washed all the plates and cups she'd been bringing me, again twice, and cleaned the sink out. I even cleaned my bathroom, figuring that the more I could get rid of, the more likely I would be able to lower my radiation level and get back to spending time with my wife. I was fortunate, after that first night, the nausea went away. I read online that most people who get it, are stuck with it for a while. I did have some soreness in my throat and along my jawline, as the remaining cells died out, but with the Synthroid in my system, I felt better than I had in weeks. All those chores I did would have exhausted me completely after surgery, with the combination of recovery and being hypothyroid. Dr. Fry and Dr. Miller had been right, getting back to the right level of thyroid hormones did make me feel a lot better. By the last day of isolation, I was having a hard time feeling like I was still sick. I felt good. Good enough to clean everything from top to bottom the morning of the post-radiation follow up visit. Even good enough to put on something sexy under my skirt and sweater outfit. I'd only lost about six of the extra pounds I'd gained, so a lot of my clothes were still too small, but for the first time in a while I felt confident, and if they cleared me, I intended to make good use of that clearance.I still made Karlie ride up front with Sean while he drove us to the hospital for the follow-up scan. It was super short though, literally a nuclear medicine specialist scanning me with a device and pronouncing my levels 'negligible.' Karlie and I celebrated by falling into a tight hug, while the bemused doctor tried not to intrude on our private moment. We kissed, a bit longer and a bit deeper than was probably appropriate, but the doctor just said we weren't the first and wouldn't be the last. He also suggested that maybe we take it home before letting things get too involved, winked, and walked out of the exam room, making a show of closing the door behind him. I know there are those who would love to hear we did it, right there in a hospital room, but we're grown adults. We even managed to keep our hands to ourselves on the car ride home. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to hear Karlie compliment my improved stamina since the last time we'd been able to be intimate. But the best part was after, when I got to finally get a good night's sleep, wrapped securely in my wife's arms, legs intertwined, like they were meant to be.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I realized that I'd missed Halloween when I woke up November first to tons of messages on tumblr about how it was the first time in ten years they hadn't seen my costume. I'd been so caught up in getting cleared to be with Karlie that I'd lost complete track of the date. I hadn't even thought up a costume, so I guessed we were just going to have to wait for the next year to come up with a cute couples' costume, but Karlie pulled out a pair of fox onesies she bought on clearance at Target, so I gamely put one on so we could snap a couple selfies lying on the bed. She posted the one where we were both cracking up and captioned it "Turns out the fox says  HAHAHAHAHA." Which was adorably like three years too late, but kinda fitting since our three year anniversary is this month. I posted one where we were cuddled up and it looked like Karlie was sleeping with the captions "We are the foxes, and we...nap." Next year we'll be creative, maybe a superhero couple or something. This year, I was lucky to have any photos to even pretend we'd done Halloween.Now that I knew what the date was, I realized that unless we wanted to go to Nashville on election day to vote, we needed to figure out if early voting was still going on. We'd both registered when we got our licenses, but we hadn't thought to get absentee ballots sent. It turned out there were only three days left, so for the first time since the wedding, I called my pilot and requested the plane be brought into the New York area so we could fly into Nashville and vote. Then I called my mom to tell her we were coming and see if she wanted to do dinner with us that night, and if maybe we could stay with her. She was thrilled to hear from me, and absolutely ecstatic that we were coming. She said she wanted to cook for us, since we were only going to be in town for one night. Once those plans were made, I called Dad to see if he was also in Nashville or if he'd gone back to Tampa. The flights aren't that different to get to New York, so I wasn't sure. He was staying at his Nashville place, so I asked if he wanted to get brunch with us the next morning before we left for New York. he made a show of pretending to be offended that we'd asked it as a question instead of just telling him he was getting brunch with us since he for sure wanted to see his daughters if they were in town.We grabbed some casual clothes and tossed them in a bag along with basics – toiletries, phone chargers, my meds. It was weird not packing contact stuff, but I wasn't allowed to even try to wear them for at least another week. Karlie remembered that I needed my medical card. Flying private isn't the same as taking a commercial flight, but on the off chance I had to deal with security the last thing we needed was me setting off radiation detectors. I realized that we should probably pack pajamas since we were staying at Mom's. I mean, we're married, so it's not like she doesn't know we have sex, but still, it's my mom's house. There's something kind of weird about thinking about having sex there, even now. Maybe if she hadn't walked in on me when I was seventeen with my girlfriend, but that's neither here nor there. I know she loves Karlie and I together, she's loved Karlie from the very first time I introduced them. She didn't tell me until later, but she got the feeling Karlie was the one, and for the first time, she actually liked someone I was dating, even though she knew the risks involved. I know she's not happy about the circumstances, but she's thrilled that Karlie and I are married, and that I have her to support me.Karlie spent most of the flight working on business e-mails and submitting some code she'd written for Data Systems, while I got to just sit back and read a little, sneaking glances at my wife as she worked. She's so cute when she concentrates. I tried to read my book, but there are few things in the world more compelling than Karlie. Even a good book pales in comparison. I'd done something a little reckless with this trip. I'd left security at home. My guys all have lives and families, but it's easy to lose sight of that since they're with me almost all the time. All I was doing with this trip was visiting my parents, voting, and going home. Since the announcements that I'd gotten married and had cancer, the threats had gotten much less scary, and my team had agreed that I would probably be just fine, as long as I did exactly what I said I would. It was incredibly bizarre to walk off the plane and get into my own car, with my wife, and drive to Mom's. I realized even in the moment how weird my life is that that was an odd and slightly uncomfortable experience to drive my wife to my mom's house, myself.Pulling into Mom's driveway, I was pleased to see only her car besides my own. I couldn't actually remember the last time I'd driven my car in Nashville, but I was happy to see I could still do it. I'd worried that I might have to have Karls drive, but right in that moment, I was feeling pretty good. The meds were doing what they were supposed to, I was starting to get flavors back, I had more energy than I had in a long time, and although I was still wearing larger clothes than I was used to, they were starting to get a tiny bit loose. If I wore a really loose necked shirt sometimes it would shift so my port was visible, but most of the time, I forgot it was there, until I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Three scars and counting, the big one on my neck from surgery, and the two shorter ones from the port placement, each one a reminder of the steps so far to get me healthy again. The thing that surprised me the most was the way there was downtime between each step, like the way I was having a week off from treatment to go vote and see my family before even discussing what came next. I felt like having an aggressive form of cancer meant we should be constantly doing something to aggressively combat it, but that just isn't how it works. Doing too much too fast can be detrimental because it breaks your body down so it can't help fight. So having days that I felt good, and relatively normal, were good too, even if it seemed odd.Mom was in the kitchen when we let ourselves in the door, alerted to our presence by her two dogs. "Are those my girls?" she yelled, not pausing in her quest to stuff ricotta cheese into pasta shells. "I'm in the kitchen!"Her hands were covered in cheese, so we each took a chance to wrap her in a hug and kiss her cheek, before settling down at the kitchen island to let her finish up the stuffing process before dousing them with marinara sauce. We weren't going to eat them until dinner time, but getting them done early is best, they cook better if they get a little time to chill in the fridge and firm up the cheese. I love her shells. It's the kind of thing you can't eat everyday, and I probably shouldn't since I'm still working on getting back to my normal weight, but they're so delicious, and Mom just wanted to make one of my favorites. Plus, going into chemo, who knows when I'm going to feel like eating again. Right now, I feel good, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can.Mom was shocked that we'd come without any security. Like me, she had a hard time remembering the last time we'd done that, but she trusts my team, and if they said it was okay, she believed them. We covered the expected 'how are you doing?' discussion, but it wasn't too bad since we've talked on the phone a lot, especially when I was stuck in my room most of the time. She knew the hardest part for me was being away from Karlie, not the treatment itself, but having been through treatment herself, she also knew that chemo coming up wasn't likely to be a pleasant experience. She'd been fortunate enough to have a low side-effect experience, but we all knew once we heard the diagnosis of a rare, aggressive and deadly sub-type, I wasn't probably going to get that lucky. We talked a little about the fact that I was more anxious to find out exactly what I was in for, than I probably would be once I got started. Not knowing how I would react to the treatment regimen was more worrying than the actual reaction probably would be. The waiting was the hard part, anticipating what it might be like without knowing.We ate sandwiches sitting at the island, discussing Karlie's classes, and her plans with Adidas, a meeting she had coming up to look at actual prototypes of the designs they'd discussed. I was so proud, seeing how her eyes lit up as she talked about the project, something she was really passionate about. I could tell how much it meant to her, and as weird as it was to know that I'd inspired it, I was just overwhelmingly proud of the work she was doing. Watching her tell my mom all about it just reminded me how much I love her. She talked a bit about her school work as well, and a couple of shoots she'd done and had coming up. Some of the stories were ones I hadn't heard, and it was fun to have a moment to be the proud wife celebrating her success. She's spent a lot of time over the course of the 1989 era celebrating mine, I love the opportunity to return the favor. I always planned to take a break right now, I just planned to do a lot more fun things and fewer hospital related things.After lunch, we headed to the Sumner County Administration Building to vote, snapping pictures of each other standing by the "vote here" sign. We didn't plan to post them until election day, not wanting to advertise our presence in Tennessee without security around. I couldn't believe it, but not one person in line to vote seemed to even notice us, other than one guy who looked at us and asked if we played on the Vanderbilt women's basketball team. Obviously, the poll workers who checked our IDs before letting us vote knew who we were, but because of voter confidentiality, they wouldn't say anything. Once we'd cast our ballots, we still had some time before dinner, so I texted Abigail to see if she was able to sneak away from work early and come join us for a hike. We ran back to Mom's to put on workout clothes and met up with her near Barton's Creek. The area was pretty deserted, since it was the middle of the work week, perfect for the three of us.We ran into three girls on the trail, but they were really cautious about approaching us, and were really respectful, asking if they could get a picture, and asking me how I was doing. I felt really good about letting them have one because they were so nice about it. I realized these were the first pictures I'd taken with fans in months, and it made me remember how much I love my fans, the real ones. They were really understanding about us not wanting the pictures posted until the next day, so that no one would know where we were. They'd seen the video of me walking a trail backwards from a few years before. They were excited to get pictures with all three of us, among my fans, Abigail is almost as much of a legend as I am, and they were pretty proud to be the first fans to get pictures with Mrs. and Mrs. Swift-Kloss. They reminded me that I hadn't updated the fans since the surgery, and that people were starting to wonder how treatment was going, if I was getting any better, and what came next for me. I promised them a video as soon as I knew what the next steps would look like.The rest of the hike was pretty uneventful, just the three of us catching up, talking Abigail and Matt's wedding, and Karlie's classes, and the fact that I'd been doing some writing with Ed over Skype. Abigail shot some photos of us with pretty fall leaves in the background, and some shots of the creek. I think it's a known fact that Karlie likes to throw my lyrics back at me as often as humanly possible, but she really got me with this one. Somehow, she tossed out at me "Ohmigod! Wait, is this 'Wilson County Creek!?' Do you want to go lie on the green grass watching clouds pass?" I was so stunned. I mean, she obviously knew all my songs, she was a fan before we even met. But that one wasn't ever released. Once I figured out how to speak again, that's basically what I said."Where the hell did you even hear that?" I demanded, swatting her playfully. She swatted back shouting at Abigail to get this on video because it was spousal abuse, though it seemed to me that she was the one doing the abusing as she lifted me up over one shoulder so that I was basically looking at her butt. Not that I minded the view. I was slightly astounded that she could still pick me up like I was a little kid, but we were both laughing like hyenas, so hard I could barely gasp out pleas not to drop me, while Karlie swatted my ass. By the time she put me down on a nearby boulder, tears were running down our faces and Abigail was doubled over with laughter. It was the hardest I'd laughed in recent memory, and I was so happy to be sharing it with two of my favorite women.I was in a fantastic mood when we got back to Mom's, and sharing one of my favorite meals with Mom and Karlie definitely kept it going. While we'd been voting and hiking, Mom had added garlic knots and salad to the menu, and uncorked one of my favorite wines, and if we had room after all that, she had everything you could possibly want to put on ice cream sundaes for dessert. I was pretty sure we weren't going to make it to sundaes though. It was amazing that we found tons of things to talk about, without ever talking about my health or treatment plans. I felt like I hadn't been doing much, but between Mom and Karlie there were plenty of things happening in their lives to talk about, and I just talked about how excited I was to see the cats. We stuffed ourselves full of salad and carbs, even Karlie gave herself a free night to just eat and enjoy. Karlie and I ended up splitting a hot fudge sundae with lots of whipped cream and sprinkles, which was the kind of mistake that was totally worth it. Mom put us in the guest room furthest from her own, and then made a big show of saying she was going to put the TV on in her room so we didn't have to worry about making noise or anything during 'vigorous physical activity' and then legitimately winked at us, which effectively ensured that we actually wore jammies to bed, although we did collapse into giggles the second we got into our room with the door closed.Brunch with Dad the next morning was fun too. Dad has always been my biggest champion, he's the kind of dad that if I'd told him as a kid that I wanted to grow up to be a dinosaur would have tried his best to help me get there. The stereotype of stockbrokers is that they're all high-strung and run around yelling and screaming about buying and selling, or that they're incredibly stuffy and sit ramrod straight at desks all day crunching numbers. Neither remotely fits my dad, who likes to make bad puns and dad jokes, actually named his boat after my first Album of the Year Grammy album, and once spent all of my preschool Father's Day actually wearing the construction paper tie I made him, even though the glue was dripping off of it and stained his shirt with a large rainbow splotch. He wanted to hear all about Karlie's line with Adidas, just like mom had, and about her classes, and some of her business ideas because that's kind of his thing. He's just such a proud dad, he told everyone who came near our table that he was so proud of his daughters. He actually gushed to a poor unsuspecting guy who happened to walk by wearing Adidas shoes how his daughter Karlie was designing a line for them. The guy just looked at him like he'd lost his mind, but at least he was so stunned he barely even looked at Karlie and I.After brunch, we headed back to the airport to go home, Karlie had to turn in her midterm projects for both her classes, then she had the Adidas meeting, and then on Friday I had to go back for another PET scan to see how much of the cancer had been knocked out by the radioiodine and how much I still had left to beat. They wouldn't be reading it that day, I would be getting the results on Monday. The past couple days had been lovely, feeling good, seeing family, even greeting some fans. But now, getting back on the plane was a bit like going back to reality. I hadn't realized that I'd used the trip to Nashville to escape, but that was exactly what had happened. And now that it was over, I was flooded with all the things I'd left behind, and the shadow of cancer started to loom overhead again. I thought Karls was oblivious, happily tapping away at the keys of her laptop while I stared out the window and tried to tell myself that the gray clouds over the city weren't omens of the storm to come, until I felt her arms snake around my waist, her chin resting on my shoulder.She didn't say anything, just held me for a while as we descended to the runway. Once we'd come to a stop, my security team visible on the tarmac, she kissed the top of my head and tugged me up out of my seat. "Let's go get the cats, and then watch old episodes of SVU while eating Halo Top right out of the carton." She always knows the right thing to say, or do, to make me feel loved, and happy, and snap me out of it when I'm struggling. I find it hard to imagine I will ever be able to return the favor, supporting her the way she supports me, but I'm sure going to try.*          *          *
My meeting with Adidas went amazing. They showed me some renderings of different items they'd developed based on my ideas at the previous meeting. The colors for thyroid cancer awareness are teal, pink and blue, so they'd made a bunch of items featuring those three colors on the iconic three stripes. Shoes, and leggings, and loose-necked workout tops, and a sports bra that had the shoulder zipper I'd asked for to let the wearer peel it down for port access without having to fully undress. An incredibly soft zip up jacket that was more warmth than workout, but super cute and easy to put on and take off. We'd been emailing back and forth since the first meeting, and they'd fully embraced my logo idea, the same one I'd doodled on Taylor's ring finger the day of her surgery: KSK with the Klossy heart after. They told me they planned to offer a few of the items with specific cancers in mind, like breast cancer pink and childhood cancer gold, and multi-color which had the odd effect of looking fairly Pride-ish which was rather fitting and very cool, but also offer some items that were customizable, either just because the buyer liked the color, or because they wanted to bring awareness to a cause particularly close to their heart. Each item from my line would feature the KSK<3 logo somewhere, the Adidas three-stripe logo somewhere, and the familiar looping ribbon. They brought fabric samples for me to feel, since I'd specifically requested extra soft fabrics for patients whose skin might be sensitive after radiation or chemo. Their hope was to have actual prototypes available to try on and wear at the next meeting in early December, and to maybe even use some of those to shoot print ads to debut in the new year.

I was super excited to show Taylor all the designs they'd made for me, and they even let me keep the fabric samples so I could let her feel them and see what she thought. I'd left early in the morning, long before she was awake, trying to get in a hard workout before the meeting, take the meeting and still get home in time to spend the afternoon with my girl. We were talking about going to the Central Park Zoo, or maybe bowling. We hadn't decided yet. I knew Taylor would be just starting to get ready for the day when I got home, I'd deliberately told her I wouldn't be home until after lunch, even though I was hopeful to be home a little earlier. I wanted to surprise her, maybe even join her in the shower for a bit of fun before we went out. She had her PET scan the next day, and I didn't want her to have much time alone to dwell on it. The results would be what they would be, and the treatment plan that resulted would be the best one for Taylor. It was going to be hard, and suck sometimes, but the prize on the other side was the rest of our lives together.
I was already awake when Karlie left. I'd seen her phone notifications while she was brushing her teeth, and I knew her schedule. She'd worked so hard to plan around me, so that we could spend the day together. I didn't want to ruin that with anxiety, which was what had me up at five-thirty with her, so I pretended to sleep until she left. I wanted to go back to sleep, but my brain wouldn't shut off. I knew I should call my therapist, and I planned to, once I thought she'd be awake. Calling your therapist at five-thirty in the morning is grounds for a well-being check, and the opportunity to show ordinarily hidden skin to prove there aren't marks where they don't belong. It's been years since I've done that. The scars are faded, many so much that I can't find them myself anymore. But I'll never forget the time I called my therapist, at that time based in LA, at what I thought was a perfectly reasonable time of morning in Nashville, only to have my Mom nearly bust down my door. You only make that mistake once. The office opened at eight, and that would be plenty early to talk through the anxieties that had me up early.Once Karlie was out the door on the way to the gym, I went ahead and showered, knowing I wasn't going back to bed anytime soon. I fed the cats and grabbed a pop tart for myself, and then I realized I knew exactly what was freaking me out. Fear of the unknown. In a few days, I would find out exactly what my chemo regimen would look like, but I still didn't know how my body would react. I was scared of the nausea. Of being unable to keep anything down. Of losing my hair, and having yet another change in my appearance to remind me how fragile everything I'd built was.The first ten years of my career I'd spent in a constant state of fear that the skeletons in my closet would pop out and ruin it before it even got started. That someone from high school would go on the record that the rumors about me weren't rumors. That an ex-girlfriend would pop out of the woodwork with personal photos. I mean, there's a reason I always use polaroids, but that doesn't mean I got custody of all of them in the splits. That one of the guys I spent time with would come clean that our time together consisted of Friends marathons on opposite couches, and that we often loved each other's pets more than each other. I was fully cognizant of the fact that hiding who I was had a lot of potential to end very, very badly for me and my career. But as my career grew, I realized that the best way to help whoever came after me get to do this openly, from the beginning, was to build the biggest, highest platform I could, with the best foundation I could come up with, so that when I did, finally, reveal my secret, they couldn't knock me down.I never saw this coming. This was a totally different kind of precarious. This wasn't my career. This was my life. I finally had it where I wanted it. A loving wife I didn't deserve. Carte blanche to do whatever I wanted with my next album, no questions asked. The possibility of the album after that being on my own label, something I'd been in talks about before all this happened. Something even Karlie hadn't known, because I didn't want to get ahead of myself. And now it could all fall apart, not because of the music, but because my own body had betrayed me. The scar on my neck reminded me every time I looked in the mirror. The lump on my chest from my port, the scars from its installation, they all just pointed out that just as I had finally seized control of my life, it was yanked away from me. And now, with chemo, the ultimate reminder. Like it or not, when you see a bald woman in public, your mind goes to a particular place of sadness and pity. It just does. The only thing sadder is seeing a little kid in the same place. Scarves and hats do almost nothing to change the perception. Now imagine feeling that whenever you look at yourself. That's what I was really afraid of.So I decided to take charge of it, no therapist needed.
I could hear a voice coming from the bedroom that I didn't recognize as I came up the stairs, a British woman, I thought, though I couldn't make out what she was saying. I don't think anything could have prepared me for the view when I stepped to the bedroom door. Taylor had braided her hair back in French braids, incorporating her bangs so they were off her forehead, and as I watched, she took a large silk scarf and wrapped it over her hair, tugging and pulling so it covered it all. The voice instructed her on how to gather it in the back as if it were a ponytail or a messy bun. I'm sure she looked beautiful. I had to step away, taking myself back down to the main floor as tears sprang to my eyes. She couldn't see me cry. Not over this. I was going to have to be the strong one when her hair started to fall out. I'd thought about shaving my own head with her, but I wasn't sure she would actually want that. If she did though, I totally would. I've worn wigs for shoots before, and I would again, for her, if it made this easier at all. I wished she would want it. It would make me feel better, to think I was actually DOING something.

I knew she wasn't expecting me home, so I let myself have a cry, downstairs in the music room, chosen because the soundproofing meant she wouldn't hear me. When I'd wiped the last of my mascara from under my eyes, I called my mom. I was four when she was diagnosed, so there's a lot I don't remember. My parents couldn't shield us completely of course, but a four-year old's understanding of cancer, and everything that comes with it is very different than a twenty-four year old's. She listened to all my fears and concerns, but all she could tell me was that chemo, and hair loss, affect everyone differently. She gave me the same advice she'd given me in the early days of the relationship, when I called to say I was falling for this girl, but I wasn't sure if she was even gay, and if she was, who knew if she would like me. She told me to talk to her. To ask questions. And to tell her how I felt. She told me I was wrong. I didn't have to be strong all the time for Taylor. That Taylor was strong enough on her own.
I'd just finished my third wrap style when I heard noise on the stairs. I'd found a tutorial on how to do scarf wraps online, and I'd been practicing. One of the vloggers I'd found said that the more confident you felt, the more comfortable everyone around you would be, and I thought she was right. If I could get to a place where I was comfortable with how I looked, it would help my family and friends and fans adjust too. And the easiest way to get used to something is to do it, so I'd started trying out some of the techniques. This one girl from the UK had helped a lot, because she made it really easy to understand by relating how you did the scarf to doing your hair. It made it so simple, instead of seeming like this really complex thing, it was just like doing my hair. And actually, they did turn out really pretty, I thought.The noises on the stairs turned out to be Karlie coming home from her meetings. I'd gotten caught up in the videos, it had been my plan to be totally done with my experiments before she got home, and I kind of wished I'd gotten done before she got there, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. She came up behind me and wrapped her arms around me, and I could see in the mirror that her eyes were rimmed with red and puffy, and I hoped it wasn't that things had gone wrong in her meeting. Then I realized I still had a red silk scarf on my head totally covering my hair and I realized I was the one who had made her cry, and I felt really bad about it, not so much because it was my fault, but because she was hurting and although I could try to reassure her, I was doing this to prepare myself for my new reality, so in a weird way, I was preparing her too. It was inevitable. Might as well get used to it.We didn't end up going out after all. Instead, we put on comfy clothes and cuddled up in bed to talk and share some wine. She told me she'd been talking to her mom, and that her mom had encouraged her to work on communication, so that's how we spent our afternoon, talking through the events of the morning, the awesome ones, like her designs coming to life, and the way Adidas was really accepting of her input and ideas, and how appreciative she was that they'd deliberately made beautiful designs that incorporated thyroid cancer awareness while still making them accessible and attractive to anyone who might buy their clothes and shoes, not just people like us for whom it was a personal cause. We also talked through how she felt, the things that were scaring her and making her anxious, and the fact that she DIDN'T have to try to be strong for me all the time. Because we're partners in everything we do, so she could lean on me too. Support didn't all have to come from her, we could hold each other up. And we talked about what she'd walked in on. She admitted to having actually come up earlier, and having felt like she couldn't cry in front of me. It wasn't at all how we thought we would spend the afternoon, but it was the right thing for us. I had my PET scan in the morning, which I realized I probably shouldn't have had the wine before, but then we would have the next afternoon to do whatever we wanted to do outside the house. The most important thing was that we worked through our anxieties together, and I knew that meant we'd added a few more bricks to the foundation of our marriage, and that made me happy, even if we'd had to talk through some of the tough stuff.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

My second PET scan was pretty uneventful. Having done it once, I knew it wasn't a bad test to take, and fairly painless. I still had to let them test my blood sugar using a finger prick, the test using blood from my port took hours to process in a lab instead of a few seconds using the kind of glucose monitor they use for diabetes. It was worth the poke to save hours sitting in an exam room. The fact that I even had that thought was pretty surprising, as the girl whose hands usually shake at the very idea of needle sticks. They hooked up the IV to my port this time, and thanks to the use of a little numbing cream, the port access didn't hurt at all. Feeling the cold from the tracer spread through my chest was a little disconcerting, but not unexpected, since I'd felt it in my arm when I had the first one. Karlie was once again able to talk to me from the booth with the radiologist, and this time my radiologist was musically inclined, so I could hear him singing along with Karlie's playlist. She'd spent a lot of time on it, I could tell, because the songs were clearly themed, and chosen so I could listen without feeling compelled to air piano or air guitar along.We were so much better prepared this time, for how the test worked, what it would feel like. I didn't even change into a gown this time, instead opting for soft fleece pants and a loose necked shirt so they could access my port. And really warm socks. I remembered how many blankets they'd had to pile on top of me last time. I hadn't worn any jewelry other than my wedding rings since Karlie and I had date night at the steakhouse, so it wasn't too difficult to pass those off to her for safekeeping. I noticed as she bent down to give me a kiss before the scan that she was wearing both of our pendants, her K and my T. I hadn't worn a necklace since before the surgery, letting it heal, not wanting to irritate the skin. I hadn't realized how much I missed it until I saw her wearing it. She's always changing up her jewelry, often picking pieces because they came from her big contracts. But she'll usually throw in at least one piece besides her wedding rings that has sentimental value, rather than monetary. The pendants are like that.After the test, she'd slipped my ring back on my finger, and then took one pendant from her neck and clipped it around mine. We walked to lunch a few blocks away, enjoying some fall sunshine, Jeff following discreetly behind us, just in case. I spotted a girl not far from our age wearing one of Karlie's Like a Kloss shirts down the block and urged my girl to go say hey. I always try to stop for people wearing my tour shirts when I can, so I figured that girl would be happy to meet someone she admired, and I was totally right. She stood on the corner, waiting for the light to change so she could cross, and Karlie approached from behind, stopping to stand just next to her at the light, like she wanted to cross too. The girl wasn't noticing, so I thought I'd give her a little poke. Pulling out my phone, I dialed Karls, smiling when her phone started playing the chorus to You Are In Love. She looked at the phone, a look of confusion crossing her face until she realized, and picked up. Hearing her voice was the nudge the girl on the corner needed to realize Karlie was standing there, and considering I'd hung up the second Karlie said 'Hey, babe,' Karlie was able to fully appreciate the squeal and huge grin she was gifted. They hugged and took pictures, and I got to take a moment to see what some of my fan interactions looked like from the outside.When I saw the pictures on Instagram later, I was forced to look at the pendant around my neck. The one Karlie was wearing in the picture had a T on it, so I had to check mine, and sure enough, it was a K. She was out on a run with Sean, so I had time to wonder if she knew. Maybe she'd grabbed the wrong chain or something. But if she did know, if she did it on purpose, why? Another little piece of her that was with me even when she wasn't? She's always worn K jewelry, since long before I met her. Her sisters do the same, and they often have matching pieces. So probably she meant to take the K and simply mixed up which one went where. But a small part of me hoped it was a meaningful gesture, and not just a twist of happenstance. I forgot to ask. She got home from the run all glistening with sweat and rosy cheeked from the cold and suddenly I didn't care what she was wearing, jewelry or otherwise, as long as I got to help her take it off.* * *Monday morning I'd scheduled the appointment with Dr. Miller pretty early. I wanted to get it over with for the day, knowing that after that, everything would change. I really didn't know what to expect, or what the timeline would look like. I'd done some research online, while I was avoiding contaminating Karlie, and I knew what came next was a bit of a mystery. The kind of thyroid cancer I had was really rare, and resistant to the traditional treatments, which meant that Dr. Miller was going to have to look outside the traditional treatments. Unfortunately, the rare nature of the diffuse sclerosing variant of papillary thyroid cancer meant I couldn't find a whole lot of information about treating it. Regular papillary thyroid cancer isn't usually treated with chemo at all. They usually just do the thyroidectomy, then radioactive iodine and call it a day. But regular papillary thyroid cancer generally isn't as aggressive or prone to metastasis as the type I'd been diagnosed with. Dr. Miller had said we would do chemo from the beginning, so I hoped that meant she had a plan for something that would work for me. I guessed having a rare type meant I would have to follow an unusual plan to get healthy again.I didn't sleep much Sunday night. I think Karlie knew I wasn't sleeping, but ever since our talk about not keeping things in that needed to be said, she knew I would tell her if there was anything she could do to help, other than just being there, and there really wasn't. She could tell me it was going to be okay, and that I could handle whatever came next, but I already knew she thought that. She could tell me she was going to be with me every step of the way, but she knew I already knew that too. So she just held me and tried to sleep so at least one of us would be fully awake for the appointment.I did fall asleep, because Karlie kissed me awake early Monday morning. With the time change, it was already getting light outside, but that didn't make me any more excited to start my day. I shouldn't have been nervous, but my stomach was in knots. It was all I could do to eat the banana Karlie pressed into my hand, peeling it unsteadily, able to drink only a few sips of coffee. I wondered how I would handle the first day of treatment, if I had that hard a time sleeping before the appointment to find out what treatment would entail. Karlie had cleared her schedule for the day, and had in fact cleared it for most of the week. We were thinking about going out to LA for a bit, and enjoying that it was warmer out there. We'd also considered just holing up at home in New York. I really wasn't sure how quickly we could get started with chemo. Part of me wanted to just get it going right away. Waiting was hard. Worrying about what would come, rather than just facing it.I'd talked to Mom about joining us for this part, since she'd been there to learn about the early plan for treatment. It was hard to believe I'd been diagnosed two months before. It seemed both to have flown by but also dragged, in that weird way that time does. Over two months, I'd been told I had cancer, gotten engaged and married, had surgery and radiation, and now was about to start the next, longest phase of treatment. From what I'd read, chemo usually took months to complete, but the biggest thing I'd learned from searching was that I had no idea how it was going to be for me, because everyone experienced it differently. The majority of the websites talked about chemo for breast cancer, which was helpful for generic things like deciding if I wanted to wear wigs, or just scarves, and advice for dealing with the nausea, and how to keep yourself safe from infection if chemo lowered your immune system. But no one could tell me how many rounds I would do, or how long each round would be, or which side effects I would get because I didn't even know what drug they might use, since none of them are really used for my kind of cancer. After a lot of discussion, Mom and I had decided Karlie and I would start this journey just the two of us. Mom insisted that we take responsibility for asking for help once things got going, and suggested we reach out to friends as well as family to ensure we had people we could count on when we needed them, and not just at the beginning, but weeks and months in.I could tell Mike was struggling not to make a big deal out of driving us to the appointment. Everyone felt the tension, but everyone also wanted to make it just a normal doctor's appointment. Over the next few months, depending on the treatment prescribed, it was possible we would make this trip weekly, or even daily. And I had to stop building it up in my head, into this colossal thing. I needed to figure out how to take this one day at a time, rather than trying to see the future, but it was hard. Karlie was really quiet that morning, I think it was hitting her too. Trying not to make this bigger than it was. The scary part was over, I'd gotten the diagnosis, it wasn't going to change now, it wasn't getting worse. I'd survived surgery and radioiodine and isolation, and now I just had to get a prescription for medication to get me the rest of the way to healthy.I met Dr. Miller in her office, a space I realized I had never visited in all the times I'd been to the Institute. We'd met in Dr. Frye's office, and in different exam rooms and prep rooms and one results room where we'd viewed my first PET scan, but never in her own office. The room was warmly decorated, with a comfortable sitting area, and crayon drawings stuck to the walls with scotch tape. She had an array of photos on the bookcase behind her desk, mostly featuring an athletic looking man with an elementary school aged little girl, and a little toddler boy, both with blond hair and blue eyes, just like their mother's. She'd hung her degrees on the wall, from her undergraduate and medical schools, right next to her wedding photo, and a picture of a grinning college basketball team in championship t-shirts with the year 2001 on them, confirming my impression she was in her mid-thirties. In all the appointments I'd had with her, I realized that although she had taken the time to get to know Karlie and I and celebrate our marriage, I hadn't taken the time to get to know her or her life. Her photos indicated a marriage and two kids, a history of playing basketball, which made sense since she's about my height and people always ask if Karlie and I play or played. She caught me staring at what appeared to be the most recent family portrait, taken at Christmas time, the little girl dressed in a white robed angel costume, the little boy clutching a stuffed sheep and dressed as a shepherd, both parents grinning proudly behind them."That's my husband Ryan" her voice cut across the office, startling both Karlie and I into turning guiltily to face the door. "And that's Anna and Jamie." We spent a few minutes talking about her family, and she reveals it was her own father's cancer battle that inspired her to go into oncology, though endocrine oncology had been a slight shift in direction in residency after she realized that the cancer her father had beaten was well studied, while treatments for cancers like mine were still being developed and studied, and that was her passion. Finding treatments for the orphan cancers that didn't get their own races, and t-shirts and huge fundraising campaigns.Eventually, though, we had to talk about my treatment. My cancer.She showed us the PET scan, which showed that there was definitely less red, but not nearly as little as I hoped. The huge red spot for my thyroid itself was gone, as were the spots in my neck. It seemed the nodes closest to my thyroid had remained the most similar to thyroid cells, while those that had traveled had mutated into something different and less susceptible to radioactive iodine. In a weird way, it was good, seeing that, because it made it clear that the next step was very necessary. Rather than scaring me, it made me feel a sense of resolve, that if that much cancer remained, then the fight was necessary, and each nasty side effect was just a sign that it was fighting hard. Karlie held my hand as we discussed what came next, and I could see that the same steely resolve I was forming was written all over her face. We were both resigned, that this was the only possible next step. We could choose between different chemo agents, and different schedules of treatment, but there was no doubt in either of our minds in that moment that chemoradiation was absolutely necessary.
I couldn't understand how Taylor could be so passive, just accepting all the red spots on her scan, like that was what she expected. I expected one or two lymph nodes to still contain cancer cells, not nearly all of them. I was totally leveled by the scan, and Taylor just kept talking to Dr. Miller about drug choices and pre-treatment and blood counts and radiation and all I could see in my mind were those red nodes, all over her body, meaning that despite everything she'd been through, the surgery and the radioactive iodine and the isolation, she was still not really all that much better. I did more research than Tay did, in the early days, so maybe that's why I thought she'd be 'better' by then. The first two steps are usually the whole treatment for thyroid cancer. The ones that we'd already finished. She should have, in my mind, been cured by then and instead there was this glaring red reminder that she was sick. Really sick. And that they didn't really know what to do next because most thyroid cancer patients don't reach that place. It scared me to know that we were moving into uncharted territory and that it was something of a trial and error process to try to make her healthy again. And for the first time since the diagnosis, my conscious mind had to face what my subconscious already had...the reality that maybe Taylor couldn't beat this. It was all I could do not to start sobbing, right there in the office. To try to pay attention as they detailed which specific poisons they planned to pump into her to hopefully kill more bad cells than good. To make her sicker and weaker before hopefully putting her back together. To dutifully hold my wife's hand and walk with her to the floor where they planned to shoot her with radioactive beams and deliberately destroy her cells. I'm no actress, so I just tried to do nothing. Taylor seemed to be handling everything so well, I didn't want to fall apart until she'd absorbed all the information they were giving us. One of us needed to remember what they said and I knew this time it wasn't going to be me. The words swirled around me like leaves in the wind, and I knew they were important but I couldn't make them make sense, while Taylor nodded earnestly, like she was comprehending every word.
She gave us options, of course. When it comes to cancer treatments, especially chemotherapy, there are a myriad of drugs and protocols to try. Ultimately we decided on a particular cocktail of drugs, chosen because it carried lower risks to fertility than some of the other drugs, and because it was used for other head and neck cancers. The typical treatment protocol was to get a near-double loading dose the first time, with just chemo, then weekly infusions of the drugs through an IV with radiation starting the same day as that second chemo dose. Each cycle would be four weeks long, with two week breaks in-between, for four or five cycles, depending on how I responded to treatment. The infusions would happen once a week, but radiation would happen every weekday. Because both the drugs and radiation came with an increased risk of neutropenia, a fancy word that means not enough white blood cells to fight infection, I would need another drug to help boost my white blood cell counts and keep me from getting sick. Each infusion would come with what they called pre-medication which included anti-nausea drugs and antihistamines to prevent allergic reactions, plus saline for hydration.For radiotherapy, especially proton therapy, it is essential that the dose is targeted to the right place on your body, even the right depth. The advantage of it is it causes less damage to surrounding tissue, but the disadvantage is that if you're in the wrong position during treatment, even by a tiny bit, then it can mess up the aim of the beam, and end up completely missing the cancerous cells and destroying perfectly healthy cells nearby. I would have to go to the hospital for radiation five days a week, but the longest part would be making sure I was in the right position. The treatment itself would only take like a few seconds per cluster of cancer cells, but positioning and pre-testing to make sure they were targeting the right spot would take ten or fifteen minutes.Dr. Miller had already scheduled me to go from this meeting to a proton therapy planning meeting, where I would meet with the radiation oncologist to begin setting up the treatments, since the goal was to have the first chemo dose the next Monday and the first radiation the Monday after that. In order to make sure I was in the right place each time, they would have to set up an immobilizing device to hold me steady and that could be precisely positioned on the table for each treatment, so during the planning phase they would take a foam mold of my body so that I would lay in exactly the same place and position, so that the computer could send the protons the exact right place. They would also use precision laser beams, CT scan results, and tiny freckle-like tattoos to ensure I was properly aligned before each treatment. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of leaving with yet more permanent reminders of this part of my life, or being jabbed with yet more needles, but the reasoning behind them made perfect sense, and I could always get them removed when this was all over. The whole thing was a little overwhelming, realizing that I would go to the hospital five times each week, and finding myself trying to do the math in my head. Six weeks for the four week cycle plus two week break, times four cycles was twenty four weeks. Half a year is twenty six weeks. If it went five cycles, that would be more than half a year. The radiation phase would probably only last one or two cycles, but had to begin after the chemo, because the chemo makes the cells more susceptible to the radiation.Dr. Miller walked us to the nuclear medicine floor, which we'd been to a few times before in planning for and receiving the radioiodine treatment, but this time we went to a different part of the floor, where she introduced me to Dr. Park, my radiation oncologist. Dr. Park was quieter than any of the doctors I'd worked with so far, but seemed to be the kind of quiet that means he's always thinking. He explained that today's meeting would consist of setting up the molds and tattoos, and taking a CT scan, which would generate the images that he and other radiation specialists would use to set up the proton therapy machine to target the affected lymph nodes, while avoiding as much healthy tissue as possible. The machine, he explained, could move around me to direct the beam from whichever angle protected the most tissue, and would do so fairly quickly to hit all the nodes in only a few minutes. He introduced me to two radiation techs who would help me make the mold and apply the alignment tattoos before the CT.The techs cautioned me to be sure the position I took on the mold mat was comfortable, since I would have to hold it for at least fifteen minutes almost every day. That seemed like a lot of pressure, trying to pick one position to hold for weeks to come, but they let me lie on a padded table to try different things, putting foam under my knees to elevate them and relieve pressure on my lower back, raising my head slightly, putting my hands above my head in different ways to get them in position to treat the nodes under my arms and so on before actually making the mold. I'd worried that it would be messy, molding my body, but the system is actually really cool. It's this big blue mat that unfurls onto the table, with two chemicals inside separate chambers. The techs break open the two parts and then the chemicals can combine to create the foam that will eventually harden into the mold, all inside of the blue part, no actual foam contact required. They reminded us that this planning visit would actually take longer than my treatment days, which surprised me. They strapped me onto the table in my final chosen position, once the mold had hardened and then they elevated me to the proper height for the laser alignment. I left that day with six new freckles, though they were so unobtrusive I worried the techs might not be able to find them among the real ones.I tried to joke with Karlie about how I'd told her I was going to get a tattoo one day, but her smile was tight and forced and I realized she was having a hard time seeing all of these treatment steps become real. I wanted to hug her and tell her I was okay, that all of this was part of what it took to make me better, and that it would be fine, but I was strapped in place and couldn't move, and it felt weird to have that conversation in front of the techs, holding up the entire scan process. Before I could figure out what to say, they forced her out of the room so they could actually run the CT scan. She was in the booth with the techs again, like she was for the PET, so when they checked in on me before moving me into the machine for the scan, I made sure to tell her I loved her and smiled, giving a thumbs up to the camera, hoping it would convey that everything was okay on my end, and that I didn't want her to worry. It seemed like the longest test I'd had to endure, simply because I was anxious to get back to Karlie and make sure she was okay. It was similar to a PET, in that I lay on the table travelling slowly through a giant white donut. The noises were different, but the outcome was largely the same – a map of where in my body the cancer remained, but this time in a three-dimensional image so they could target every single millimeter.Once the scan was complete, I was pretty happy to be released from the table, bondage isn't really my thing. I understood completely why staying absolutely still mattered, and certainly didn't want any misdirected proton beams hitting where they didn't belong, but I was really relieved that the treatment would be shorter than the planning scan. My wife's face was a mask, like she wears down the runway, and I knew she was using every ounce of strength she had to hold it together. They wanted to show us the infusion area, but I declined, practically dragging Karlie out of the hospital behind me. The infusion room and I would have plenty of time over the next few cycles to get acquainted. But my wife was on the verge of breaking down.For most of the morning she'd been silent, refusing to speak, or unable to without crying, I wasn't sure. "Baby, please, talk to me," I begged as we got into the car. I took her hands in mine, but they stayed only a few seconds before she crumbled, and I pulled her into my chest. She was as broken as I'd ever seen her, worse even than the night Austin tried to save us with a moonman, and it hurt, knowing that I couldn't fix it. That I couldn't make it better. No matter what it was that had set her off, it was going to take time, and treatment, for me to get better, and me being healthy was, I thought, the only thing that would truly make her okay. I wasn't entirely wrong. She told me it had been the scan, seeing so much cancer remain, when I'd been through so much already. Hearing all the positive prospects made her think that chemo and radiation would be just a formality. Her optimistic nature had led her to feel that the steps we'd taken so far would be enough, like they were for other thyroid cancer patients. But seeing all that red on the PET, had made her understand, suddenly and violently, just how against me the odds actually were. And for the first time, her waking mind had to face what her sleeping mind already had. The possibility I could lose this fight. I didn't intend to, and told her as much, again. I told her how the scan, while scaring her to death, had only served to strengthen my resolve to face treatment head on, with everything I had. And then I told her I was proud of her, for talking to me, and letting me know when she was scared. Because we are truly in this together, and that means me being there for her too, always.Mike had the grace to pretend he hadn't heard us in the backseat of the car on the ride home, even though it was just a normal SUV, no privacy windows or anything. He was going off duty, and I knew to text Sean if we needed to go anywhere. In the meantime, we had the house to ourselves while we pulled it back together. Karlie was a mess. I understood where she was coming from. She was finally facing the things that had frightened me earlier on. The enormity of what I was up against was overwhelming for me too. To pretend it wasn't would be stupid and unproductive. But everything I'd read indicated that out of the box though my treatment might have to be, it still usually worked. The only way it would work is if I did it. I had to show up for my infusions, and my radiation treatments. I had to listen to my body and my doctors, and even do nothing when they said to do nothing, which was maybe the hardest part for me to contemplate. That sometimes doing nothing would be the best thing for me.As soon as we got upstairs, Kar grabbed a bottle of vodka off the bar and took a healthy swig before taking herself and it into the master bedroom. I figured she wanted space, but I didn't want to be too far in case she needed to talk. I heard the shower running, so I decided to let her do her thing. I sat on the bed and texted with my mom, telling her what was going on, how the treatment planning meeting had turned out, what my next steps were, and also that Karlie wasn't handling it well, which was my mild way of saying she was totally having a breakdown. I heard something slam in the next room and dropped the phone on the bed to investigate. She'd dropped the shampoo or something on the floor of the shower, which had made the sound, but that didn't much matter when I found my gorgeous, strong wife reduced to a rocking, sobbing mess on the floor of our shower. I grabbed a huge fluffy towel and shut the water off, wrapping her up in the towel as she began to shake. I started to worry there was something more than emotion wrong with her, having never seen such a strong emotional reaction before. She couldn't get breath to form words, crying so hard she barely made a sound. I was able to guide her to a seat on the bath mat, where I could sit with her and wrap her in my arms as tight as I could. I'm not sure how long we sat there, the microfiber mat the only thing separating us from the cold marble floor, but I know when she was finally ready to let me help her into bed, her shivers were from the cold. I helped her lay down and pulled all the blankets we had over her, then slipped off my shoes and lay with her, taking a rare moment to be the big spoon.When her breathing evened out and her body stilled, I slipped carefully out of the bed, trying desperately to let her sleep off the shock. I was soaked from holding her, so I figured I should just go ahead and shower myself, but I left the door open so I'd be able to hear if she woke up. I didn't know what to do for her, and I hated it. She hadn't been able to do anything more than be there for me, so I knew that was all I could do for her, but I hated knowing I was the reason for her total freak out. Seeing the bottle of vodka she'd left on the counter was hard. She so rarely goes overboard with drinking, it was uncomfortable to see her turn to that, even if it was only the equivalent of a couple shots, way less than we might consume over the course of an evening. Just the thought that she was that desperate. She was still out when I emerged in my robe, and I hesitated to leave her, not wanting her to be alone when she woke up. I finally resorted to sending a text to my therapist, explaining the situation and asking if maybe we could schedule an appointment for later in the afternoon. I wanted to make sure this was just a result of the shock of my PET scan and not something that would last and haunt us as I started treatment. I didn't need her to be strong for me, but I needed her to be okay.* * *
If my hair hadn't been wet, I would have believed it was all a nightmare. I woke up and initially thought the appointment hadn't happened yet. That the horrible scan results were just a function of my worry over Taylor, but that since it hadn't happened yet there was still a chance she was totally fine. But my hair was wet. So the shower I barely remembered taking through a haze of emotion had happened. And as I cracked my eyes open, the bottle of vodka on the bathroom sink made it crystal clear that everything had been real. Taylor was sitting in the chair in the corner, typing away on her laptop, dressed in a robe. Since I didn't remember getting out of the shower, or how I got to the bed, I suspected that she'd had to help me, and I was mortified. My job is to take care of her, so she can focus all her body's resources on fighting the cancer, and I'd fallen apart and made her care for me instead. But as she looked up to check on me and saw I was awake, the gentle smile that crossed her face was enough to tell me everything I needed to know. She didn't mind that I'd broken down, or that she'd had to take a moment to care for me. She just loved me and wanted me to be okay as much as I felt that for her.

We ate sandwiches in our robes, lunch had been forgotten in all the excitement. She was careful in the way she brought up the idea of talking to a therapist. She didn't want me to feel pushed into something I didn't want, or like I had to use hers if I wasn't comfortable with that. I know most of what she and her therapist have talked about, because I've heard it from Taylor herself. She told me stories from her past well before she told me she even had a therapist. She was very candid, when it appeared we were getting serious, about her battles with depression, the way that past relationships had influenced how she related to new people who tried to get close, why it was easier for her to write about deeply personal experiences in songs that she played for the world than it was sometimes to talk to a friend or girlfriend in the same room. Three years on, I will never forget the time she stopped me as I started to undress her and I feared I'd misread the signals, but she told me instead how much she wanted it but was nervous about revealing herself to someone new. I'd thought at the time it was a fame thing, you know, I was about to see THE Taylor Swift naked, but as she peeled off the layers for me, I realized she was afraid to let me see her scars, afraid that I would judge her for finding ways to cope with the demons inside her head. But the lines were old, thin and white and fully healed, and I kissed each one and told her she was incredibly strong. If finding a good therapist had helped her through the unthinkable, then I was more than willing to try it to help me be my best for her.
I told Karlie on the drive over that she should feel free to tell me anything they talked about, but that she should also feel free not to. I wanted this to be a good experience for her, a chance to talk out the fears and pain she was feeling, and feel like that was okay. Finding the right fit is so important, and a huge part of that is feeling safe and comfortable with your therapist. I was enormously happy for Karls that this wasn't something she'd ever had to try before, but I was nervous that I was pushing my own methods on her. My goal wasn't to push Karlie anywhere. Especially away.We were the only patients in the waiting room when we arrived, something I'd come to expect. Other patients would sometimes pass in the seating area, but they were always super accommodating of me and made sure that no one would know I was there. They were in a large office building with tons of different businesses, letting me walk in and out freely with anyone outside having any idea which one I'd been patronizing. The unexpected came from seeing two therapists emerge from the office to greet us. My therapist had anticipated that it might be weird to Karlie for the two of us to share, and had brought in a colleague to give Kar options. I worried that options might be overwhelming for her, but for the first time since she'd started to fall apart, she was ready to say exactly what she needed. She liked the idea of working with someone else, but having the option for the two of them to come together with the two of us, so we could work on things together.I don't know what was said in her first appointment, or most of the ones that came after. But I do know that when I returned to pick her up, although she wasn't quite one hundred percent sunshine, she was definitely on the way back to being her usual sunshiny self. Before I said a word, she pulled me in for a kiss, and then she thanked me, over and over, for supporting her, which I found slightly awkward since it is she who is the supportive one, and had been through the entire journey so far. As she got in the car, she directed Sean to take us back to the Institute to see if it was too late to tour the infusion area and meet the nurses. She'd forced me to cut my visit short, and she was ready, now, to take reality head on, the way she wished she had been in the morning. It had been a roller coaster day, for sure, but at the end of the ride, we were together, a little shaken, but okay, and getting better.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I was really glad Karlie had cleared her week between the treatment planning meeting and the first day of treatment. We needed some us time, and we needed some family time. After a brief tour of the infusion area, although we were indeed too late to meet the actual nurses and techs who would be part of my team, we headed upstate so Karlie could spend some time with her parents. From there we flew down to Florida to see my dad and enjoy some warm weather, only it was actually pretty damn cold and we largely just hung around the house, cooking out with my dad and trying not to freeze to death on the boat. We'd just been to Nashville, but we swung past Mom's on the way home, just to check in. At each stop, we had to go over the plans, a deliberate strategy suggested by Kar's therapist as a way to desensitize her to everything, and help her prepare herself for chemo actually starting. Our last stop was the house in Rhode Island, so we could have a couple of nights out of the city, just the two of us. We didn't have time to fly out to Big Sur, though we'd considered it before we realized what we really needed was family. So we did take a couple of days to honeymoon, something we really hadn't done since the wedding, but in the space where we'd gotten married. The plan was to return in a couple weeks for Thanksgiving, with both families gathering for one big Swift-Kloss holiday, assuming I felt up to it. It would be my second week of chemo and first week of radiation, though it wouldn't be a full week since even the radiation techs would take the holiday off, so we had no idea how I would feel. We were hoping I would be up for the holiday, and planning as though I would.The morning of chemo was bright and clear, but cold. Because it was my first infusion, they wanted me early in the day, giving us daylight hours to try to fix any side effects or reactions. It was hard to really think about the fact that I was about to let doctors put chemicals in my body that they expected to cause more symptoms than the disease was causing, so I tried not to. I just told myself that the worse the side effects were, the better it was working. Not true, but not a bad fiction to tell myself. Karlie made me an omelet, with the theory that once again it would be better to have something in my stomach to throw up if the meds made me sick. There wasn't any joking around that morning. It felt like a pair of zombies navigating around our kitchen, not speaking, but still working together with a familiarity that came from years of cooking together. I still made coffee and cut vegetables, she still made the eggs. We just didn't know what to say, so we said nothing. The silence was deafening, broken only by the scrape of forks on plates, the clink of mugs on the marble counter top. We sat with empty plates in front of us, unsure how to proceed.She wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on the top of mine. "I love you. This is hard. But you are stronger than you know, and I will do everything I can to make you even stronger. You've got this."She turned me on my stool and kissed me, gently at first, then with strength behind it. "Don't know when you'll feel like doing that, but know I'm up for it, whenever," she quipped, then kissed me playfully on the nose. And she thinks she's not good with words. She knew exactly the right things to do and say to break the depressed mood we'd both woken up with. Intellectually, we knew this would go better if we could have a positive attitude, maybe even try to have fun with it, joke and dance and play around. But that was all easier said than done. Karlie loaded up a small cooler with flavored drinks, both carbonated and not, and some stomach-friendly foods like applesauce and those little jello cups. She tossed in granola bars and random snacks she knew I liked too, on the off chance that I preferred puking those up instead. It was sort of a foregone conclusion I was going to end up talking to Ralph on the porcelain phone, what we didn't know was how bad it would be, or what, in the end, would make me feel the least awful.I dressed in layers, unsure whether I would be freezing because hospital, or hotter than hell because poisonous chemicals. They'd told me to dress in whatever made me comfortable, because as long as they could access my port, what I was wearing didn't matter. Mike drove us over, and I was thankful it wasn't a long ride from the house. I knew I would be at the hospital until at least lunchtime, maybe longer depending on how I reacted to the medications. I went straight to the infusion floor, once again one of the first patients to arrive. They tried to always time it like that, both for my comfort and for the benefit of the other patients. This time, for sure, I would be in a private room for my infusion, standard practice for all first timers. After a couple infusions, if I wanted, I might be able to go to a more open section of the floor, where some patients found it helpful to be able to talk to one another, kind of like a support group. I wasn't sure how I would feel, and that was okay, they were flexible and committed to making this process as pleasant as they could. Dr. Miller met us at reception. I thought maybe it was because I was a VIP, but the nurses said she did that for all her patients. In fact, unless there was an emergency situation, they said I could expect to see her every Monday when I came for my infusions. As we walked to my room, I saw her greet several patients just as warmly as she does me, and it was weirdly gratifying to know that the personal level of attention she always gave us was just her standard of care, and not because I was famous, or rich.My chemo team was waiting in the room when we got there. Dr. Miller introduced me to each of the members of the team, explaining that as much as possible, the people caring for me during infusions would be the same each time so they would be familiar with my particular protocol, from pre-medication to the actual chemo drugs, and with which side effects I experienced and which treatments helped relieve them, so it wouldn't be new discovery every time, and if I was in the middle of a reaction they wouldn't be reading charts trying to figure things out. It was reassuring. I had one main nurse, a very warm and bubbly woman named Makenna who seemed almost too young to be a nurse, though I wasn't about to say that. I also had two techs, Deshaun and Andy, who seemed to be, in addition to medical techs who could do things like access my port and hook up the different meds, the comedic relief. They kinda reminded me of Turk and JD from Scrubs. I was tempted to scream "Eagle" just to see if they'd do it, but apparently they could read the urge on my face, because they did it themselves, which completely confused Karlie who had apparently never seen the show, and made Dr. Miller and Makenna exchange a *look* because they'd apparently seen this routine before, but it made me crack up so hard I thought I might pee myself. It was like all the nervous energy I had escaped in truly hysterical laughter, which confused Karlie even more, because she had no idea what was so funny, and then my reaction was way out of proportion to the bit, even if you did get it. The extreme variety of reactions seemed to entertain the guys, so they seemed satisfied. It was kind of unfortunate to get down to business, but at least the tension was gone, and I was in a good place to get started. Mission accomplished, Deshaun and Andy.Andy assured me that Deshaun was the best at port access in the business as he swabbed my chest with disinfectant, making sure it was totally clean and dry before installing the IV. At one point he had to adjust my top a bit to expose more of my chest, and Karlie joked that he'd better keep his hands off her wife, which made him laugh and point out that he was happily married, but it was so good to hear her joke with us. I'd worried about her handling all of this maybe more than I had worried about me handling it, but she seemed to be doing just fine. On the plus side, I actually missed the part where they accessed my port, enjoying seeing Karlie smile and laugh and joke. They started me off with fluids to get hydrated, and then anti-nausea and anti-histamine pre-meds to try to minimize any reactions to the actual chemo meds. I loved the theory, but didn't have a lot of faith that they would actually keep me feeling good. I spent a bit of time letting those flow through my veins, the only side effects so far being a bit of sleepiness, while Karlie and I picked out a movie to watch. We figured something distracting and funny would be best. Having felt pretty bad during the radioactive iodine treatment, I knew reading and puzzles and that kind of thing wasn't going to work for me if I felt sick, but watching something might help.It turned out, we watched the entirety of both Big Fat Greek Wedding movies without anything all that interesting happening. About a half hour after the pre-meds, they brought in the big guns. Other than a slightly weird taste in my mouth, easily masked by sipping the flavored drinks, it wasn't much different than any other IV med I'd ever gotten. I was initially cold, which was nothing new, and I did begin to feel warmer and warmer as the treatment went on, but not like, I have to get naked now levels of warm. Karlie reported my cheeks were flushed when she went to grab a snack in between movies, but not alarmingly. Makenna, Deshaun and Andy all stopped by regularly to see how I was doing, but I didn't have much to report until the infusion was almost over. With just a tiny bit of liquid left in the bag of medication, I felt the first wave of nausea crash over me. It was so fast and out of nowhere, I had no time to react. I was going along just fine, having finished the second movie and just cuddling with Karlie while we decided what to watch, and then I was puking, violently, with no way to even try to control where it went. It had mostly landed on the bed, which was both disgusting and horribly embarrassing, but at least I'd missed Karlie, who had dutifully held my hair as soon as she realized what was happening, and pushed the call button to the nurse's station which sent Makenna running in.Her first goal was to give me a bin to aim at, but as soon as she'd thrust it into Kar's hands, she set about getting some more anti-emetics into my line to try to help. The upside of such violent expulsion of everything I'd eaten was that it subsided almost as fast as it started, leaving me shaky and on the verge of tears, with my stomach still roiling but without the imminent threat of emptying out. I was mostly embarrassed not to have even known it was coming, but Makenna assured me that it wasn't weird, and that it happened to lots of patients. I don't know if that was true, but it helped, a little. The problem was, there was now puke on my pants, and it hadn't occurred to me to bring extra clothes. Karlie helped me off the bed, carefully avoiding the worst of it, and helped me into the bathroom to try to clean up. I slipped off my sweatpants, intending to try to clean them off in the sink so I could get home without getting vomit in the car. Unfortunately, that was the moment I discovered that chemo wasn't content to just eject everything I'd eaten out of my stomach, it felt my intestines should also join the party. At least I was already taking my pants off, and in a bathroom. I'm not sure I would have ever left the hospital out of sheer humiliation if I hadn't.There are few markers of true love more evident than enduring your wife's vomit and diarrhea back to back, live and in person. I'm sure Karlie was grossed out. I was, and it was my mess. But she stuck by me, until I was done emptying out at both ends. And then she handed me a pair of scrub pants, thoughtfully donated by Andy, whose build made our butts almost the same size. My outfit clashed horribly, but at least it didn't have anything gross on it. I still kinda wanted to cry, but I was almost afraid to let anything else, even tears, come out. I just wanted to go home, but I still had an hour of post-treatment observation and hydration to go before I could leave. I wanted to lay my head in Karlie's lap, and I guess she could sense that, because even though I hesitated for fear of getting sick again, she pulled me in and laid me down, gently stroking my hair and telling me it was okay, she didn't care if I puked on her, because she loved me. I didn't empty at either end for the rest of the hour, or the drive home, but I never knew it was possible to feel that awful without actually getting sick. I wasn't sure which was worse, the projectile vomiting or feeling like I wanted to but not. Even at home, it was a constant battle within me to decide if I was actually going to be sick or merely extremely nauseous. I hadn't felt up to stopping to pick up my prescriptions, and once we got home, Karlie didn't want to leave me to go get them either, so we finally sent Jeff out to get them before telling the team to go home, since we would definitely not be going anywhere once I had my meds. I couldn't imagine even leaving my room, never mind going somewhere I would need security.I spent most of the afternoon alternating between sleeping and wishing the nausea would relent enough to let me sleep. I wasn't really sure the tablets I had to swallow were doing much since it seemed like they just came right back. I wondered if that was why there were so many of them. So that I might get something out of one of them if it ever stayed down. I had skipped lunch entirely, at the hospital, but Karlie insisted I try to eat something in the evening. I managed a little rice and some applesauce, but mostly I was just miserable. I only actually threw up twice at home, both times on the heels of taking my meds, but I felt on the verge of it for most of the day. Kar was awesome, always ready to help if she could, willing to carry a bucket for me so I didn't have to try to dash from the couch to the bathroom. They'd told me chemo often caused fatigue, but I had been unprepared for just exactly how draining it was. I was absolutely exhausted, even when I couldn't actually sleep. When it came time to go upstairs and actually go to bed, I made it about three steps before she scooped me up bridal style and carried me, even holding me up while I brushed my teeth and helping me slip into a cozy night shirt. I'd made it almost an hour just before bed without really thinking about my stomach and so I laid down thinking maybe the worst was over.
I didn't know what to do. Taylor was the sickest I'd ever seen anyone. Once it hit, there was no turning back. We'd had such a good morning watching movies and cuddling. She'd made it almost all the way through the infusion without any major side effects, and I guess somehow I let myself think maybe she'd get off without anything awful. I was wrong. So wrong. And there was nothing I could do to help at all. One moment we were trying to figure out what to watch and the next it was the opening scene from Pitch Perfect. And just when she got that to stop long enough to get into the bathroom and clean up, my poor girl barely made it before the rest of her digestive system decided to rebel. The worst part for me was seeing how embarrassed she was about something she had absolutely no control over. She felt sick, and that sucked, but she also looked like she just wanted to cry, and I couldn't do anything about that either. All I could do was lay her down in my lap and try to let her know that nothing, not even vomit, could make me not want to be with her. I was honestly relieved when I got her home and she was able to sleep some. I figured sleeping would be better than being awake, at least asleep she might not be totally miserable. It was still a very rough afternoon. I had to hang up on her mom at one point when I heard her get up to throw up again. Holding her hair, holding her, that was all I could do. That, and try to make her eat, and keep taking her meds, and drinking fluids, even when she didn't want to. I have never been more relieved as I was when it seemed like things finally calmed down for about an hour before she decided to call it a night. I tried to get things together in case it didn't last, but I was pretty happy to fall into bed next to her for the night.
* * *
When I woke up at around two, Taylor's side of the bed was empty. I couldn't believe I hadn't felt or heard her get up. I felt worse when I realized she was lying on the bathmat, a folded towel as a pillow, her robe draped over her as a blanket. I figured she'd felt sick again and gotten herself to the bathroom but been too tired to get back to bed, or maybe felt too sick to risk the distance. As I approached, planning to pick her up and bring her back to bed, it struck again, and I rushed to hold her hair while she deposited what little remained in her stomach. When she was done, she told me how it had gotten worse since she woke up, and I decided it was time to call the hospital and see if there wasn't something more we could do. Taylor fell back asleep while I waited on hold for the nurse to check with the on-call oncologist and call in a prescription to the hospital's in-house pharmacy. Problem was, it was nearly three a.m. and I couldn't leave Taylor to fend for herself while she was so sick, but we'd sent security to their own homes so I didn't have them to send out to pick up the new meds either. So I decided to take my big brother up on his offer to help. I never imagined I'd have to call in the favor so early in treatment, but Derek had assured me that if he was in town, he would do anything he could to help us out, and this was something he could do to help.

He picked up on the third ring, voice thick with sleep. I could hear Nick in the background asking if everything was okay. Derek had known I would call, even if I didn't know it myself, and had programed a special Karlie ring into his phone so he would know it was important if I called. They barely gave me a chance to explain what was going on and what we needed before Derek assured me that as soon as they got pants on, they would be on their way. Nick arrived first, texting for the swipe code to let himself in, and I was grateful that we'd had the electronic locks installed so I didn't have to go down to get him. He brought in an air mattress, saying if we were going to lie on the bathroom floor, at least it could be comfortable. Tay had woken up at the text, and despite being extremely tired and feeling really sick, she laughed a little and hugged him, and let him support her to the edge of the tub so she could sit until the mattress inflated and I got a sheet and some blankets on it. By the time I'd finished that so Taylor could lie down again, Derek had arrived with new anti-nausea meds, this time in the form of a patch. I think they left around four, headed home to catch another couple hours of sleep before work, while Taylor and I crashed on the very thoughtful air mattress, thankful that we had nowhere else we had to be.
The patch worked wonders, and although my stomach felt a little off I felt much less like I was actually going to throw up. I was still more tired than I could remember ever having been, even after crazy jet lag or lengthy rehearsals, but I could eat, a little, as long as I went slow. I spent most of Tuesday either asleep or lying down, HGTV playing in the background, while Karlie finished up schoolwork and answered some work e-mails. By early evening I felt relatively good, actually, so I asked Karlie if she would help me film an update for the fans. The last one had simply said that I was doing well after the radioiodine treatment and we were going to find out how well it had worked, and what the next steps were, but we hadn't updated since deciding on a course of chemo. I felt like even though I definitely didn't feel great, I owed it to my fans to let them see me struggling a little. So many of them have told me about the worst moments in their lives, and that I helped them, I wanted them to know that they were helping me too, just knowing they still cared and were praying for me and thinking of me. It was a short video, I didn't have the stamina for much more than a quick explanation of the fact that I'd done my first chemo, it had been rough, I was still feeling under the weather, but I appreciated them, and loved them.* * *Wednesday I slept in while Karlie went to class. When she woke me, I thought it was to tell me she was leaving, not that she was back. I couldn't believe how much I needed to sleep, but Karls reasoned that maybe I was so tired because my body was working so hard to fight the cancer. It seemed reasonable, and for the first time in a while, I didn't feel like just moving was going to be enough to make my stomach empty out. Things still tasted weird, and I realized there was a good chance I was going to be stuck with that for a while. I'd seen on a cancer message board that getting chemo was a bit like the worst pregnancy ever, because the morning sickness lasted longer than the first trimester. But a lot of the nausea prevention ideas were the same, like not letting your stomach get too empty, avoiding certain foods that made you feel gross just thinking about them, even craving certain foods and finding weird combinations appealing. I'd thought it was a weird analogy, but since by Wednesday's lunch the only food that I wanted was 'beaners and weans' and I wanted it as fiercely as I had ever wanted any food ever, even though I hadn't had it since I was a really little kid, I figured the cravings part was at least somewhat true. I knew Karlie would find the entire concept of eating baked beans with cut up hot dogs in it utterly repulsive, but I had to have them.I was half-right. She found the concept pretty revolting, but she was so thrilled to hear I wanted to eat anything, it somewhat overrode her impulse to run away while I ate. The one thing I couldn't handle was plain water, which tasted like chemicals, but as long as whatever I drank had a flavor, I could make it work. After lunch, we had to try to plan for the next few weeks, even though one infusion was not a whole lot of information to plan with, plus I hadn't done any radiation yet. She was scheduled to go overseas to the Adidas headquarters the first week in December, something they'd planned before we knew what the treatment plan would look like. It would be the last infusion of this round of chemo and week of radiation, before a two week break that would conveniently encompass my birthday and Christmas. She didn't want to leave me during a treatment week, but she also wanted to be around for the holidays. And with her role designing the new line besides modeling their clothes, I thought it was important she keep that commitment, even if she didn't make all the stops she'd originally planned, but that meant seeing if my Mom could come into town, because I knew Karlie wouldn't trust just anyone to take care of me the way she would. We put it on the list of things to figure out at Thanksgiving. I was encouraged to be feeling okay on Wednesday, because it gave me an extra day to recover from the infusion by Thanksgiving the next Thursday. I really wanted to get to enjoy the holiday with both of our families. We decided to wait until after the next week to see how it went with infusion two before committing one way or another. We were sure Adidas would understand if she had to cancel last minute, and we didn't want to rule it out prematurely.The rest of the week was pretty like Wednesday – my stomach settled, but napping was an inescapable reality. I felt better and better, each day we got further away from the infusion, though I could never quite shake the fatigue. By Friday I'd gotten it down to one nap a day, which was an improvement over feeling like I'd developed narcolepsy. I knew exercise was supposed to be good for me, as long as I didn't overdo it, so Friday morning I decided to try just walking on the treadmill, which is where I was when Karlie came home from a much more strenuous workout. I looked up from messing with my iPad, trying to find a show to watch, to see her leaning on the doorframe, all glistening with sweat, her hair a mess from the beanie she'd been wearing, those shiny abs showing through her unzipped jacket. I wasn't sure I was going to have the energy to make it work, but Dr. Miller said once it was forty eight hours after my infusion it was safe for Karlie and I to do whatever I was up for, and seeing her like that, I definitely wanted to find out.* * *Saturday, Lily and Dixie were in town, so we invited them over for brunch. It was weird, seeing them again for the first time since the wedding. So much had happened, I wondered if I seemed like a different person. Most of our friends had been seeing me off and on throughout treatment, but since they live in Nashville and I hadn't seen them the last few times I'd been, they were seeing the changes first hand for the first time. Lily had obviously talked to Dixie before they came over, because she insisted she had to wash her hands before she would hug me. It was too early for the chemo to have done much damage to my white counts, but it was good practice. Not to be dramatic, but an infection was more likely to kill me than the cancer was. Lily and I took our naps together in the early afternoon, and then the four of us went on a well chaperoned date to the Central Park Zoo, though Kar insisted on checking with the hospital that the crowds and chill in the air wouldn't hurt me before agreeing to go. There were a few fan shots of us, Kar carrying Dixie while I pointed out the penguins, the two of us walking with her hands in ours, Dixie on my back and Karlie holding the string of a balloon with a sea lion on it. Lily hung back a bit, observing quietly, snapping some pictures herself to post on instagram."You're going to be amazing moms one day." Lily was flipping through her camera roll of the day, and browsing what she'd put on insta as we'd gone. "All your fans think so."She was right, most of the comments were about what an adorable family we made, and how they couldn't wait to see us with our own kids one day. I had mixed feelings, looking at those comments about us as moms. I still wanted that, badly, but with everything going on in my life, it was hard to see that part of my future, when it seemed like so much was standing between now and then. Karlie could, I think, see the change in my demeanor and took a chance to pull Dixie away to go try to find the cats, leaving Lily and I alone in the living room. She'd glanced up when Karlie spoke to Dixie, but it took her a minute to catch my face. I guess I'm not much of an actress, because the bittersweet nature of it was written all over. "Shit, Taylor, I'm sorry. I didn't think, I mean, if you can't, there's always Karlie, or adoption, or...I'm really not making this better am I."She wasn't, but I was proud of myself. I didn't cry as I told her we just didn't know, couldn't know, until I came out the other side of this. The unknown was always the hardest part, when it came to trying to envision the future for me and Karlie. It was better if I focused on what I could control, the parts of the future I could see, like Thanksgiving, and the break for my birthday and Christmas. That was a far cry from a time when Karlie and I could even think about becoming moms, but it was what I could handle, and I said as much. Lily was really good about listening, she always has been, as a sort of mentor for me. She didn't try to give advice I didn't need, or offer platitudes that didn't mean anything. She just let me talk about where I was and what I needed. It was a conversation Kar and I had had before, and one I'd had with my mom, but not one I was prepared to have that day. I was obviously hopeful that the future held kids for us. I just had to try not to let myself fall into worrying about whether or not there would be a future at all. Lily hadn't heard all the medical details of my diagnosis, and as I relayed all the steps and scans that had brought us where we were, I remembered why we weren't letting just everyone in on the specifics. There was nothing fun about watching her face shift as she realized just how sick I was, just how uphill the battle was. And I could see the struggle as she wondered if we should have really even gone out that day, but didn't want to say it, because it's my life, my illness, and she knew better than to question what Karlie and I had decided.Despite the melancholy turn, I was glad we'd had a day to just be Aunt Karlie and Aunt Taylor, taking our little 'niece' to the zoo. And when Karlie texted us a photo of Dixie sound asleep with her head on Meredith, clutching Olivia like a stuffed animal, it helped shake off any lingering sadness. If Karlie could see evidence of what we'd discussed in my face or Lily's she didn't say anything and instead suggested we order pizza, real, carbalicious pizza, gooey with cheese and sauce, the kind she almost never let herself eat, especially when she was working. By the time we made our way through a couple slices each, followed by ice cream sundaes, we were all back in the mood we'd been in at the zoo, relaxed and happy, able to enjoy watching Frozen for Dixie's seven millionth time (according to Lily, anyway), all cuddled up on the couch, four humans and two cats. And yeah, I wanted that with my own kid someday, and this time, it helped make me more determined than ever to make that happen, so it turned out to be a good day after all. Seemed every day went like that these days, like a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but I was thrilled this one ended with an emotional up rather than a low.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't anxious eating breakfast the morning of my second infusion. It took a lot of self discipline to make myself eat, knowing as I did just how awful I'd ended up feeling. And now this week, I was adding in radiation too. My doctors and the internet both had told me that compared to chemo, the radiation would be almost unnoticeable in terms of side effects and that the worst part of it was having to go to the hospital every day, but until I'd done it myself, I had no way to know that for sure. Karlie knew I was nervous, so all morning she made sure to give me little extra touches, letting her hand rest on my shoulder a little longer as she passed, kissing the top of my head whenever she was close, reaching over to squeeze my arm as she ate her own breakfast by my side. That day was scheduled to be a bit different from the previous week for a number of different reasons, but would be more like the infusion days for the rest of treatment. The first week had been a higher dose of my chemo drug cocktail, which was the one ray of hope that maybe I wouldn't be so violently ill this time around. It had also taken longer to infuse than would become my norm, and I hadn't needed the usual pre-chemo blood work since I'd had blood tests the week before and there was no reason to think the counts had changed. I also hadn't had radiation, and would start that this week, though it would only last the first two cycles of chemo, most likely. I still had to take my cocktail of pills, though with the introduction of the anti-nausea patch, I'd gone down one pill. They weren't so bad, the pills. Most of them were supposed to reduce the side effects from the chemo, it just always felt weird taking so many, when most of the time all I would take was like two Advil, or one antidepressant, or one sleeping pill when my anxiety was really bad. Not six pills at a time, multiple times a day.We were all a little better prepared this time. I was apprehensive, hoping I wouldn't get as sick, but nervous that I would, or that it might be worse since sometimes the effects of the chemo can get worse as it starts to somewhat build up in your system. Driving over, this time I still had flavored drinks, but we didn't bother with snacks. If I got hungry, by some miracle, my team would find me food within the hospital. I'd discovered that fizzy drinks were more palatable than non-fizzy, so Karlie had stocked up on these organic fruit flavored sodas, in different flavors. I wouldn't let her buy the cherry ones, because I loved those, and I didn't want to start associating them with chemo and vomit, because I thought it was likely that some of the things I ate and drank during chemo would probably never cross my plate again once it was over. I'd brought an entirely extra outfit, just in case, although I hoped that maybe knowing how it had gone last time, I would be better able to anticipate what was going to happen and maybe not make such a mess.I still went to the infusion floor first, where this time it was Andy's turn to access my port to draw blood for the labs. Before every infusion from now on, they would check my blood counts to make sure they weren't too low from the previous infusion, and to double check that I didn't have any reason why I shouldn't get it that day, like the start of an infection or anything. Then I went up to radiation for my first treatment. They'd told me that compared to chemo, the side effects from radiation would be negligible, especially at first. Over time, I might notice some minor skin burns where the beams were aimed, like sunburn, but that was likely to be about it. Compared to projectile vomiting and lava butt, I was all for it. Just like they said it would, getting into position and making sure that everything was lined up properly took quite a bit of time. They got the mold of my body lined up slightly off, so once I got on the table, none of the alignment tattoos fell in the right place compared to the lasers, so they had to get me back down and move it just fractions of a centimeter to get everything to line up correctly. Once it did, they strapped me in and left the room.I'd seen the equipment on my tour the day they set up the alignment, but I hadn't ever actually been on this table with the equipment going. It was sort of crazy, how it worked. This huge arm could rotate all around me and aim from a bunch of different angle to try to hit the lymph nodes while passing the beam through the least amount of healthy tissue. It was an incredible feat of engineering that they'd pulled off, somehow using the computer to map each place that they needed to treat and then calculating to the millimeter how to direct it so that it would avoid important structures, like my heart, and kidneys, and reproductive organs, while also taking the shortest distance to get to the cancerous tissue. And it did it quickly. I lost count of how many times it paused, because each pause was only a few seconds long, just enough to shoot a single proton or two at the target, before moving on to the next spot. And as promised, I still felt exactly the same when it was over, though pretty happy to get to move and stretch after being held so still by all the straps and restraints.Then it was back down to infusion to get my lab results, a tiny dip in my white count, not, according to Andy and Deshaun, who greeted me in my room, 'statistically significant,' whatever that meant. The plan, they told me, was to try bolusing the IV anti-nausea meds halfway through the infusion, in the hope that adding a secondary dose to the pre-medication dose would prevent the sudden onset vomiting that hit me so hard the previous week. The downside was that they had to back down the pre-med dose a little to avoid going overboard. Makenna came in with the pre-meds to get me started, and once again, it started off with just a little sleepiness, and I started to think maybe I should use that to my advantage and try to take a nap, except for the first time in a week I didn't feel all that sleepy. We'd decided to try marathoning episodes of Veronica Mars, which neither of us had seen before, thinking that maybe the whole mystery angle would be distracting, plus, with the shorter infusion time, TV shows seemed like they would fit better. Loved the show, but didn't get to watch more than one, because by the end of the first episode, I was on my knees in the hospital bathroom. On the plus side, I knew it was coming this time, and not only managed to rush to the bathroom, but managed to tell Karlie what was happening so she could push the alert button and also help bring my IV pole as I ran, and she even managed to somehow get a hand wrapped around my hair. Turns out I married a superhero!Given that the dose they'd given wasn't enough to hold me to the halfway point, they decided to try a adding a different med for the second dose, hoping that maybe it would be more effective for me. Although I didn't stop feeling sick, it did allow me to make it through the rest of the infusion without actually throwing up, so I felt like it was an improvement, even though I still felt really awful. After the infusion was complete, they had me stay a little extra to try to get some more fluids into me in case I had the same level of vomiting as the previous week. I think I felt worse, but kept food and liquids down better than the week before. Unfortunately, the intestinal symptoms were worse, much worse, which led to yet another late night run to pick up new meds. This time we'd planned ahead and kept Sean on duty, so it wasn't a big deal to get the new pill. The patch was definitely working better than the pill to stop the puking, but I wished it could make me actually feel better, besides helping with keeping things inside me. It was sort of cute, when Sean came back with my new prescription, he also brought me these lollipops his wife had used to help with morning sickness when she was pregnant, and also some ginger ale. It was so sweet of him to step up and try to think of something different to help me feel better, and it even kinda worked. I did feel a bit less nauseous after sucking on one, so I thought that was pretty good.I had once again spent most of the day alternating between sleep and wishing I would fall back asleep so that my stomach would stop rolling. I still found it mind blowing how completely exhausted I could feel having done literally nothing all day but lie around, but it felt like I was at the end of a long week of all day rehearsals with all night video shoots so that the actual sleep added up to like three hours a night. But I hadn't, all I'd done was get medicine and lie around feeling gross. I was so happy to have Karlie with me, no matter how I felt or what was happening, she was by my side. As I napped off and on, she was in a chair across the room, working on her laptop, or messing around on her iPad. At one point she took aerial footage of me passed out on the bed with her drone, and I slept right through the whole thing. She called my mom to keep her in the loop, though I could hear her minimizing just how rough things were for me. It was an unspoken agreement between us that my Mom should stay in Nashville enjoying her time as an empty nester and not worrying too much about me. Having my mom with me in New York wouldn't change how I felt, I would just have more people wishing they could make me feel better, and that wouldn't really help at all. Mom had actually started seeing someone, and although I wasn't ready to meet him yet, I wanted her to be happy, and the start of a relationship is so important. She was going to see first hand how all this went if Karlie went to Germany in December, and I hoped by then we would have found a medication combo that actually helped.I still didn't feel confident enough to sleep in the bed, knowing what had happened in the middle of the night the week before, but I laid on the master bed while Karlie made up the air mattress again, grateful that Derek and Nick had let us keep it for the duration of treatment, given that they don't actually camp. Three a.m. said that was a good call, when I just had to figure out how to roll the right way, rather than try to get myself from bed to bathroom in a hurry. I didn't even realize Karlie had gotten up with me until I felt her hand gently rubbing my back, offering comfort and support since she couldn't actually do anything to make me feel better. It was still better than the previous week, though I was hoping that maybe continuing to play with the different medications would help me feel even better with the next treatment. It was a relief to be able to brush my teeth and then just lie right back down. It sucked to think I was going to spend my Monday nights sleeping on an air mattress on the bathroom floor for the next few months, but every time I started to really dwell on it, I just reminded myself that I was taking these drugs for a reason. That although it was easy to get caught up in the fact that at the moment, treatment made me feel worse than the disease did, I was letting doctors flood my veins with poisonous chemicals so that the next time I got a PET scan, it would have fewer scary red patches. I wanted to beat this for me, of course, but more than that, I wanted to beat it for the amazing woman who laid behind me, her hand wrapped around my waist. I wanted happiness for her, and for whatever reason, I was part of that. She, and the millions of fans who still like my posts on social media and who are subscribed to my YouTube channel to see updates from us about how I'm doing, and my family and friends all worked together to remind me of everything I was fighting for.Tuesday was, like the one before, generally a day of sleep for me. Other than the three a.m. wake up, I didn't throw up once, which was pretty amazing. I still felt queasy periodically, but the new medication combo was definitely helping me keep things down. I had to get up in the morning and go to radiation, and I was a little nervous going in, like, what if I had to throw up while I was strapped to the table, but they gave me an injection to battle the nausea before they laid me down, and although it helped, it also made me incredibly sleepy, on top of the general chemo fatigue. Karlie had to help me get up to the couch when we got home, and I was barely able to wake up to eat and take my meds periodically, usually with a healthy dose of prodding from Karlie. I think I went to bed for good at about seven, which would have made me feel like a grandmother if I'd been awake enough to care. I know Karlie was still working late into the night, on what, I don't know. When I woke up at midnight to go to the bathroom, she was still typing, though she looked up to make sure I was okay when she realized I was up. I'm not sure when she came to bed, but I know that when I woke up at four, she was there, arm securely wrapped around me.* * *I found the first fallen locks of hair on my pillow the day before Thanksgiving. I considered myself lucky that I couldn't find the spot on my head they used to belong. Karlie was already working out, so I threw them in the trash, hoping she wouldn't see. I just wanted to get through the holiday without having to truly deal with it. Even more came out in the shower, and I was slightly terrified to try to comb or dry it after seeing how much was in the towel, which is why when Karls got home, I was still sitting on the toilet, my hair half dry, wrapped in a towel. I told her I didn't want to cry, not about this. There had been so many tears, over so many things. It seemed like such a stupid thing to cry over. It's just hair. But I guess I just wasn't ready for it to happen. Even though I'd known for nearly three months that it was coming, I guess nothing really prepares you for the moment it begins. She gently dried my hair, not allowing me to look in the mirror as she worked, carefully keeping the brush and her hands out of view. Probably for the best, as when she finished, it just looked like my hair, not noticeably thinner like I thought it would be. There was no denying I was going to have to make a decision sometime soon about how I wanted to handle it, but it didn't have to be right then, that day.I was late for my radiation appointment because it had taken me so long to get ready, but Karlie had called ahead to say we'd be running behind, and they were actually very understanding. They swapped my spot with another patient, an easier feat than I expected, since they just had to load the other patient's program into the computer and it did the rest, like it was nothing. They said it happened a lot, especially early on, when things were unpredictable, and that they appreciated the call. I hated being late, ever, for anything. Still do, for that matter. But it felt especially wrong since it was changing things for other patients, but they said treatment plans are often very fluid, so I shouldn't get too upset about it.After my treatment, Karlie wanted to do something special, so she took me to brunch at Sarabeth's, a restaurant we hadn't been to since the early days of our relationship, but that held a lot of fond memories. I got the coconut waffle and she got a stuffed egg popover and we shared some of each, with warm coffee and their special juice blend. It seemed like we were maybe getting away with just having a brunch, the two of us, but as we walked out, we spotted a pair of photogs, much like the first date we'd spent there. I made sure to smile as Karlie led me out the door to our waiting car. I was well aware that I looked as exhausted as I'd felt the last couple days, though at least I was starting to fit into my pre-surgery pants, I also knew this wasn't the way anyone would choose to lose weight. I was really glad Karlie had done my hair, and that I was wearing jeans and a sweater rather than the workout pants that had become the norm since starting treatment. It was only a few steps to the car, and it wasn't a true paparazzi gauntlet like I had to sometimes run, and I was definitely happy about that. I supposed it was good for the fans to see all the different stages I was going through. I'd spent so much of my career documenting everything, sharing my whole life (you know, minus the girlfriends) with them, it almost felt unnatural to try to hide any of this journey from them, so I didn't. I wasn't going to vlog everything, but I knew I was going to share the next step, in some way.We barely stopped at home before getting in the car, just the two of us, to pick up the twins at the airport. Just long enough to grab our bags and the cats and for me to shed the jeans in favor of yoga pants. They were flying into JFK only twenty minutes apart, so we'd decided to get them ourselves and then drive up to Rhode Island to help with the Thanksgiving prep. I was so thankful to feel pretty good Wednesday, and I wasn't due for another radiation treatment until Friday morning thanks to the holiday, so we were going to be able to have some quality Swift-Kloss family time, the first time since the wedding that both families would be together in their entirety. My mom was already there, making sure we had everything we needed to cook all the holiday favorites, from turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes to pumpkin pie and Mama Kloss's signature pumpkin loaf. Karlie had been asked to walk in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, despite having officially retired, but she had declined, and as I thought about all the amazing food we were about to consume over the next two days, I was really glad she had. I couldn't imagine having to celebrate a holiday all about food with someone about to walk a runway in her undies. It might have been where we officially met, but I was excited that our first Thanksgiving as wives was going to allow her to eat like the rest of us (minus the turkey, she's still vegetarian, even on cheat days). Dad and Austin were flying in later that night, and Dr. and Mrs. Kloss and Kristine were expected Thanksgiving morning, in time to make pumpkin loaf and watch the parade.I drove to the airport, a beanie and sunglasses helping to make me less conspicuous, though the moment my giraffe-sized wife got out of the car she was bound to be noticed, even without the fact that she's drop dead gorgeous and one of the top models in the world. She dressed casually as well, an NYU sweatshirt and leggings, sunglasses perched on her delicate nose. Kariann spotted us first, rushing along the sidewalk, dragging her bag behind her. She threw her arms around Karlie and I was startled to see how much her smile reminded me of my wife. They're sisters, after all, but I had never seen that particular look on Kariann before. She climbed into the back seat, making sure to pause and wrap her arms around me from behind as she got in, while Karls hefted her suitcase into the back. I actually saw Kimby before either of her sisters, standing in the doorway, trying to differentiate our Highlander from a hundred other black SUVs, so I got to see the look on her face as Karlie stepped back into view from behind the car. They embraced eagerly, and then Kimby replicated Kariann's entrance to the car, though she hugged her twin before me. The drive largely consisted of asking them about college, Kimby was at a new school this semester, having transferred after finishing up her semester in Paris, while Kariann was continuing to excel at her university, including having found an amazing boyfriend. I let the sounds of three Klosses animatedly discussing the trials of tribulations of academia wash over me, since my entire college experience consisted of talking to Karls and Abigail about theirs. I don't regret the choices I made, choosing my career over school, but I am never quite as aware of how abnormal my life has been as when I spend time surrounded by those who followed a different path.Still, I was pretty thrilled to have made it through an entire two and a half hour car ride without one person asking how I felt, or looking at me with that uncomfortable pity face. Mom was in the kitchen when we arrived, trying to figure out how to fit the turkey into the fridge along with all the other ingredients. Apparently it takes five intelligent women half an hour and completely unloading the fridge to figure it out, and the crazy part is, anything that was in there was only for the holiday. We don't keep food at this house that could possibly go bad ever since we're not here much. But it made us all laugh, and once again, let me avoid health questions for almost an hour. We got started on food prep once we'd gotten things arranged, starting with the cranberry sauce, both homemade and releasing the canned kind from its aluminum prison. Yes, I know, I'm a millionaire and could buy the best cranberry sauce money can buy, but really, there is nothing that says Thanksgiving quite like red gelatinous glob shaped like a can. It was sliced elegantly and arranged on a platter, but it was still Ocean Spray and still bore the ridges from the can. We also got the sweet potatoes ready for casserole, though we had to send Kimby and Kariann out for more marshmallows after they ate half of them rather than putting them on top of the casserole. I really enjoyed getting to share the kitchen with our family, and looked forward to having the rest of the Swift-Kloss clan join us, filling even my oversized kitchen with family.I think it was Karlie who opened the first bottle of wine. I could only have a glass or two at most, but that didn't stop even my mom from getting a little bit tipsy. My dad and Austin walked in to find the five of us arrayed around the kitchen island, trying to build little turkeys out of oreos and reese's cups and candy corn, but mostly laughing hysterically as Kimby chased Karlie around the room, threatening her with a slice of bacon. Once everyone had been properly greeted and the threat averted by Austin snatching the bacon out of Kimby's hand and eating it, the guys joined in trying to help with our crafting. It was kind of weird, actually, seeing my mom and dad actually working together, even on something as small as making tiny turkeys out of candy and cookies. They've always tried to be okay around each other, even though they're not together anymore, and they've done a great job of coming together to support both me and Austin. But that doesn't mean they work together well, anymore. Karlie saw it too, and came over to wrap an arm around my shoulders, followed by Austin coming around to my other side. The twins remained in an alcohol-induced oblivion, but what amazed me most, as I gazed fondly on the unusual display of teamwork playing out, was that my dad pulled it off without the benefit of wine. He did it just because he's a good guy, and because things had been good once. It was a really beautiful way to end the evening heading into Thanksgiving.* * *
I woke up before Taylor the morning of Thanksgiving, hardly a surprise given how much sleep she needs since starting chemo. I was so proud of her, she'd had a really good day the day before, despite discovering that yet another lovely side effect of chemo was beginning. I'd seen how much blonde hair was in her beanie when she'd taken it off before bed. I knew she'd set it in her mind that she wanted to get one last holiday to be 'normal' and that she didn't want to have to deal with it until the next day, once Thanksgiving was over. But there was no denying that it was happening, and happening fast. When I'd brushed her hair for her, I hadn't let her see my hands or brush because I didn't want her to see how much hair was coming out. I wanted to give her this one last day. But I was pretty devastated to see how much hair was on her pillow when I woke up. We'd agreed she just wouldn't wash it again after seeing how bad it was, but I was scared to even try to style it today, for fear I'd reveal an actual bald spot. I couldn't win. I gathered up what loose hair I could without waking her, then made my way downstairs where the smell of coffee told me someone, probably Scott since Andrea had been pretty drunk the night before, was up ahead of me.

It wasn't even seven a.m. when I got downstairs in my jammies. Scott was indeed the maker of the coffee, and he offered me a mug shaped like a turkey when he saw me come down the stairs. "Happy Thanksgiving, Karlie," he smiled and gave me a hug. "How's my youngest daughter?" Before I knew it, I'd poured out the entire saga of Taylor's hair over two cups of coffee. He listened, interrupting only to offer me more cream and sugar for the coffee, and to brew another pot for anyone else who might wake up. It turned out that the next takers for coffee were my parents and Kristine who walked in at around eight. Scott was nice enough to distract them long enough for me to go wash my face in the powder room and let my eyes get down to a level of redness that could be attributable to the previous night's wine. I didn't want anyone to tell Taylor I'd been crying over her hair, not when she had yet to shed a tear over it, and while I knew Scott wouldn't say anything, I didn't need more people trying to keep the secret.

Kristine and I helped Mom get the pumpkin loaf going, and before I knew it, there were only fifteen minutes to go before the parade started, so I ran upstairs to wake my wife and get her downstairs for coffee and the parade. I found her already up, sitting on the bed with her brother, seemingly having the same conversation I'd had with her father, if the fact that she was once again wearing a beanie even though she hadn't changed out of her pajamas. Since I'd last seen him, Austin had shaved his curls down to barely peach fuzz, and I had to wonder if maybe his sister was part of the inspiration. It wasn't a bad look on him, actually, though obviously easier to pull off on a guy.
When I woke up Karlie was gone, and I guessed from the scent of coffee she was probably enjoying some downstairs. I wanted to go down myself, but first I had to figure out what the hell to do with my hair. It was falling out even more than the day before, and all I'd done was try to organize it a little with my hands. I threw my brush against the wall with a groan of frustration, and I guess Austin heard it, because while I sat on the bed on the verge of tears, I heard a gentle knock and his voice, "Teffy, is everything okay in there?""I'm fine, Austin, you can come in," I called, relieved it wasn't Karlie. He's a pretty awesome brother. I meant it when I said inside and out he was better than I was in Best Day, and it still stands. He could see something was wrong, and before I knew what was happening, I'd explained everything, and how frustrated I was that I couldn't figure out how to even begin to do my hair since every time I touched it, more of it fell out. I actually had a bit of a bald spot just over my left ear. I so didn't want to cry over this. I mean, I knew I was going to cry when I shaved it, and I was pretty sure that day was going to have to be sooner rather than later, but I didn't want to ruin Thanksgiving with it. And more than that, I didn't want Karlie to have to deal with me and my emotional mess. She did everything she could to take care of me, and my hair, the day before and I just wanted us to have one day where my cancer wasn't at the forefront of everything we did. I felt pretty good, and I wanted to keep it that way. So Austin took over hair duty, carefully combing it as gently as he could to minimize what fell out. He did a pretty good job, for a guy who recently shaved his head and so didn't have to worry about brushing his hair. I still felt self conscious about it, so I pulled on a beanie, hoping it could qualify as a fashion statement.When Karlie came in, I could see in her face that she knew what we'd talked about, but she didn't let on, instead simply kissed me good morning and announced that the pumpkin loaf was ready and the parade was about to start. We watched the parade as one huge family before taking a moment to get dressed and make the rest of the food. Kar and I were in charge of rolls and the stuffing that hadn't actually been inside the turkey, since the idea of eating stuffing that had been contaminated by cooking inside meat totally grossed her out. Austin and Kariann were arranging veggies on a tray for snacking, while Kristine and Kimby were mashing potatoes, and Mom was overseeing the turkey with Tracy. Dad and Dr. Kloss set the table and put out the cold stuff that was already made, like the cranberries and salad. It was amazing to me how well we all blended into one family for the holiday, and as we sat around the table, all intermixed, I was weirdly thankful for the circumstances that had pulled us together. It wasn't often that I thought about everything that had happened in a positive light, but if I hadn't gotten sick, then this Thanksgiving, Karlie would have gone to St. Louis, and I would have spent the holiday without her, and without her family. We wouldn't even probably be engaged yet, maybe not even out yet. I would still have gone back and changed it so I wasn't sick if I could, but I was really thankful for the things that had gone right since then.* * *We'd driven back into the city late Thursday night, since I had radiation in the morning. We'd stayed with the family in Rhode Island as long as we could, and most of them had stayed without us, which was an interesting turn of events, that our siblings had decided to hang out together, even though we couldn't be part of it. I went to radiation with a hat on, but once that was over, it was time to face reality and admit that my hair was officially giving up. I knew I was going to cry shaving it off, but I was also pretty confident that shaving was going to be better than having to cope with losing it for another week or so. Both Kar and I started to tear up just thinking about it. We were pretty sure any of the hair stylists we'd worked with over the years would do it as a favor, but it seemed like a waste of their considerable talents to have them do the shaving. So, after careful consideration, we decided to call the friend we knew would be enough of a badass not to hesitate. Cara.She was actually on vacation with her sisters, which we both felt bad about, but when she heard why we called, she insisted she was on her way. She also said if we tried to talk her out of coming, she was going to shave her own head out of spite, so I decided we'd better let her. Austin's shaved head was okay, since lots of guys do that anyway. But I really wasn't interested in seeing any of my friends make such a drastic change in their appearance. It was bad enough I had to do it. I mean, if Cara wanted to shave, like, the side of her head, she's enough of a badass to pull that off and look really hot. But the whole head only works if it's for a part. Although I had a feeling she would go out and find herself one if she got it in her head it was what she wanted.The three of us assembled in the guest bathroom, eschewing ours due to the presence of Derek and Nick's air mattress taking up most of the floor space. Kar had carried up a bar stool from the kitchen so I could sit on it, and we'd laid newspaper on the floor to catch the remains. It was Cara's idea to wrap me in a sheet, since we didn't have one of those capes from the hair stylists, so I wouldn't get bits of hair all in my bra. I set up a camera off to the side. I was pretty sure I didn't want to remember this day, but it was a turning point in my journey, and I believed it was important to document. Just like I'd videoed when I got my hair cut between the Red and 1989 eras, which, interestingly, Cara had been there for, I knew this marked a change for me. And I also believed it was a moment that would resonate with the fans. Especially those facing scary diagnoses of their own. I'd spent tons of time visiting cancer patients in the hospital, who had told me that my music helped them. I hoped that maybe seeing my journey, all of it, would help too.I forced myself to watch as Cara set the clippers to the shortest setting. She started above my left ear, where the largest bald patch was. I couldn't stop the tears from rushing to my eyes as the shorn strands fell into my lap, and I could tell just by her breathing that Karlie was having a hard time too. Each pass brought me closer to total baldness, and that wasn't easy to watch. But once she was done, I had to admit I was glad to have it over with. She and Kar stood behind me, each with a hand on my shoulder. "You look beautiful, Taylor," Kar breathed, her voice thick with tears, but the smile on her face reached her eyes, and I knew she meant it."Fuck, Taylor, you look like a badass warrior," was Cara's take. "Seriously, you look like you could kick ass. Which you can, and are."It wasn't easy to see the new me reflected in the mirror. No hair, scars from treatment. But I was proud that there was a me to reflect, and I gave my best smile, so that the video could be posted. I was even able to joke, when Kar asked how it felt, and answer 'cold.' It wasn't a particularly good joke, but it was a joke, and that meant something. I sent Tree a copy of the video, figuring she'd edit it some before posting, but it appeared on my social media almost as fast as I'd sent it. She, like me, felt it was the most powerful when it was allowed into the media in its original form. I could only hope that it would help some of my fans who were dealing with the same thing. The rest of the day, the three of us ordered in Chinese. I couldn't stop reaching my hand up to feel my head, so I didn't even bother with a scarf, a surprise to myself for sure, but practical, since I would have undoubtedly knocked it off. It was definitely one of those moments I wished had never happened, but it turned out okay since it reminded me how thankful I was to have such amazing friends, and that seemed like a fitting end to Thanksgiving week.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The week after Thanksgiving was rough. Waking up Saturday and wandering into the bathroom, only to be startled by my own reflection in the mirror wasn't much fun. Neither was getting frustrated when I couldn't get the scarf I wanted to wear to stay on my head, though Karlie helped me solve that one so I could go out to treatment on Monday. My counts were down, so they told me I needed to wear a surgical mask anytime I was coming to or leaving the hospital since I would share spaces with people who had contagious illnesses, and that I should do the same if I was going anyplace with an unusually large crowd or going to any other kind of medical facility, or if I knew or suspected someone near me had a cold or whatever. Because the scarf over my bald head didn't scream 'sick' loudly enough.They used a different dressing after they accessed my port, and in the middle of radiation, I developed unbearable itching where it was. Apparently, I'm allergic to that kind, and by the time they got it off, I'd gotten hives all over. So before they could even start my pre-meds, they had to try to treat that and stop the reaction. With my counts low, they were kind of surprised I had enough of an immune system to mount that strong of an allergic reaction, but they said that was kind of a good sign, ironically. In addition to the regular meds, I had to add a course of steroids, which made my face all puffy again, like after surgery, and also made my feet and legs ache, no matter how many bananas I shoved into my stomach. So I was also taking pain meds to counteract that. The one bright spot was that the new med they'd added mid-infusion the previous week seemed to help with the nausea and vomiting, when used as part of my pre-med regimen. Two bouts of vomiting, but not too awful, and I felt less nauseous than I had since starting treatment. The anti-diarrhea meds were helping there too, since they'd upped my dose from the previous week. I guess that was the concession from the universe for the fact that three days after chemo I was still mildly itchy and covered in raised red blotches. Still, I was frustrated going into December. Which is why, on December first, Karlie decided we should get out the Christmas decorations so the house would at least look good when Mom came to stay with me so she could go to the Adidas event in Germany.She plopped a santa hat on my head that morning as soon as we were both up, and announced that it was officially December and that meant we were overdue to decorate. She knows Christmas is my favorite holiday, especially with my birthday so close, and I love that she took the lead decorating this year. Usually I'm the one telling everyone they have to help me, but she totally took control. She even made me santa pancakes with strawberry hats and whipped cream beards to get me in the spirit, which was adorably Karlie. I took a picture of them to post on my insta, a reminder that although I wasn't up to a video right then, I was alright, and there were good things happening in my life. I wasn't cheerful enough yet after breakfast, so Karlie put on a pair of reindeer antlers, presented me with the can of whipped cream, knowing I have a weakness for dispensing it right into my mouth, and then proceeded to serenade me with a horribly off-key rendition of Santa Baby until it made me laugh.The good mood even carried into radiation, probably the first time I've gone into it with a truly positive attitude. The team was the same one who had been working when I discovered my allergy to the port access dressing, so they'd seen me in a pretty bad place, freaking out about the itching and afraid it was some kind of reaction to my meds or something, and worrying about what might happen if it was. They said they were really pleased to see me so happy, dancing around with my wife while we waited our turn, both wearing goofy hats and promising to bring treats the next day. They even played festive music for me while I was on the table, just to help keep me in a good mood. I hadn't realized just how bad my attitude had been until I saw the change reflected back at me from the radiation team. Where before they'd been kind of quiet and business like, now they tried joking around with me and Karlie a little, even showing that they're familiar with tumblr, pulling out "I like your socks" and pointing out something I hadn't even noticed – that Kar's socks had little giraffes wearing santa hats and scarves all over them. It was an important reminder that although going to treatment sucked, I did have some control over how I felt about it, and I wasn't doing as good a job as I thought choosing to be happy and not letting it get me down.Getting home from radiation, I was much more in the Christmas spirit than I had been when I woke up. Karlie put on Christmas music, and even as we worked she would occasionally stop what she was doing to pull me in for a dance. She did the heavy lifting, carrying the tubs of decorations from storage, and climbing up the ladders to hang things up high, while I mostly pulled the different decorations out of tubs and directed her where to put them. She explained that she'd sent Sean and Jeff to go get a tree from some farm in Jersey. She'd thought about taking me out there, knowing I grew up on a Christmas tree farm, but decided it was too cold for us to spend that much time outside, and as much as I hated to admit it, she was probably right. Getting cold doesn't actually make you get sick, but it can lower your immune system and dry out your mucus membranes, making your more susceptible to germs, and with my immune system already down, it wouldn't have been a smart decision.She was up on the ladder in the living room trying to hang some lights up high when she sent me into the kitchen to get more command hooks and adhesive. I had my head deep in the cabinet under the kitchen sink trying to find the size she asked for when I heard a startled yelp from the other room, followed by a loud thump, a metallic clatter and Karlie's voice yelling 'FUCK!' I raced into the living room to find my wife lying on her back on the living room floor, pushing the ladder off herself."Jesus, Karlie, you're bleeding," I exclaimed, surveying the scene. There was a fairly large gash on her forehead, a trickle of blood aiming for her eyebrow."Am I?" she queried, bringing her left hand up to her forehead, making a face when she saw the blood on her fingertips as she pulled them away. "Shit. I wasn't even paying attention to that, because I hurt my wrist when I fell."Up until that moment, I'd been most concerned about her head. It wasn't until then that I consciously realized that she wouldn't have used her left hand for anything she'd done since I'd come in if her right was okay. I pulled the ladder off the rest of her and helped her sit up, finally turning my attention to her right wrist. It was just slightly swollen compared to the left, and didn't seem too oddly shaped, but when I asked if she could move her fingers, she could barely manage a flutter, accompanied by a sharp hiss of pain. I hated to see my wife in pain, but letting her drip blood everywhere wasn't going to help anything, so I ran back into the kitchen to get a clean towel for her head and a bag of frozen veggies for her wrist. I held the towel to her head, trying to see if I could get the bleeding to stop, but it became clear very quickly that it wasn't going to happen. I had a moment of panic when I realized that security was somewhere on a tree farm in Jersey, but Karlie assured me they'd left the Highlander in the garage, though they'd left it in case we needed it for me, not her.It wasn't easy getting her down to the car, which I knew I was going to have to drive, since she had her hands full not bleeding all over the car and keeping her wrist as still as possible. It was a good thing we'd left a box of masks in the car, because I didn't even think about it until we pulled up to the valet line, a blessing since I've never actually had to worry about what to do with the car at the hospital before. I've always had security drive us, so what they did after that, I didn't really know. But the ED has valet parking so you don't have to worry about it, you can just take care of whoever is having the emergency. As we approached the front of the line, I grabbed a mask out of the box, looping it over my ears. I was still wearing a santa hat, and I realized that somehow Karlie's antlers had stayed on through all the drama, though slightly askew. An orderly with a wheelchair met us at the line, though he looked confused as to which of us to wheel in, with Kar the slightly bloody reindeer and me the obvious cancer patient santa. Kar had been doing pretty well, not too much pain on the way over, only grunting a bit at the bumps. But getting her out of the car proved more difficult than getting her in. The orderly was gentle though, and once he discovered I was there as the wife and not the patient, he led us directly to the orthopedic treatment area and a relatively private treatment bay so I would be kept apart from all the germs. He even hung a sign on the curtain requesting that any doctors or nurses coming to see Karlie follow infectious disease control protocol so I would be able to take my mask off, it would be them who had to wash up and wear masks, gowns and gloves to protect me. I'd done that plenty of times to keep patients I was visiting in the hospital safe. Now it was my turn to be protected.The first nurse to come in was there just to figure out what we were there for, which means the infectious disease warning made her think we were in the wrong bay, since usually patients with crazy diseases don't end up in orthopedics, but once she saw me in the chair, and Karlie on the exam table, it all made sense. The first order of business was to check Karlie for any signs of a concussion, asking questions and checking her pupils. Fortunately, aside from a headache and the obvious bleeding gash, she showed no signs of internal head injury. She remembered exactly what happened, that she'd reached a little too far to try to hang the lights and then she'd gotten surprised by one of the cats and tried to correct it but overbalanced and put her hand out to try to stop the fall, which probably saved her head, but led to the second reason we were currently sitting in the emergency room. Her pupils were equal and reactive, terminology I'd learned from television medical dramas. They reserved the option to send her for a head CT, just in case, but since she hadn't lost consciousness and wasn't showing any symptoms, they let us wait and watch a bit. Once we knew her head was okay, she had to change into a hospital gown. Getting her top off was like a war, making sure she didn't jostle her arm too badly while also avoiding the gauze they'd taped on her head to keep the blood from going everywhere, and really hoping we could avoid having to have her shirt cut off. She joked a bit about how it was usually me in the awesomely too short hospital gowns, and on Karlie the gown was practically obscene, though we weren't in any place to do anything about it. I decided that unless she wanted to show off ALL of Victoria's Secrets, she should probably put her pants back on. These days I'm the only one who gets to see her in sexy lingerie.It seemed to take forever, getting all the pieces into place. She had to go to another department for x-rays, while I stayed in my bubble of germ-free air. When she got back, they'd wrapped her wrist in a special machine that worked like ice to try to bring down the swelling while we waited for a plastic surgeon to stitch up her forehead, and for the radiology department to process her x-rays and pass them on to an orthopedic specialist, to see if it was broken, though it was pretty clear that it was. They also had to determine how bad the break was, and if they could just set and cast it or if she would need surgery. She was really quiet. I didn't know if it was because she was in pain, or embarrassed to have fallen, or just tired. I got some increasingly anxious texts from security when they got home to find the ladder on the floor, and Meredith lapping daintily at the drops of Karlie's blood that had spilled, and the Highlander missing, and zero communication from me. We damn near burned the house down, because we'd turned on the over. Thank God we hadn't gotten any cookies in it yet, or we probably would have. I'd never even thought about it. All I cared about was if Karlie was okay. I told them where we were, but when they asked if I wanted them to come, I said no. No one knew we were there, and with the protections in place to keep me away from the germs, I was also kept away from anyone in the hospital who might squeal. We could do this ourselves, I thought. I was, however, grateful when they said they would clean up a bit of the mess we'd left behind, leaving in such a hurry.She met with first one, then another plastic surgeon, trying to ensure the best possible healing process for the cut on her head. It was nearly an inch long and pretty deep, and had refused to stop bleeding no matter how long she held the towel to it. She was fortunate that it was fairly high up on her forehead, and would probably be easily covered with bangs, a must for her line of work. The general consensus was that there was no way to completely avoid a scar. The best they could do would be to minimize it, ensuring straight edges and careful, flat stitches, with special bandages to keep it from drying out at night. It would take longer to heal initially, but hopefully help her avoid needing scar revision surgery later. She hung her head as the second surgeon left, a slump in her shoulders I'd rarely seen. Between dance and modeling, holding herself with confidence is more natural for her than slumping. I slipped onto the table behind her, on her left side to avoid her injured right arm, and rested my chin on her shoulder. "You okay, babe?" I asked softly, taking her left hand in mine and turning it over to trace the lines of her palm, paying special attention to her ring finger, where the two I'd given her mere months before rested."Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm good," she replied, shaking her head a bit like she was bringing herself back from somewhere else in her head. I was amazed at how like me her thought process was as she explained it, how she'd been worrying about the trip to Germany and her contracts and what would they do about her having a broken arm and fresh stitches on her face and what if the injuries meant she couldn't fulfill some of her obligations. She'd worked so hard to line up some different campaigns for the last month of the year, all of which were supposed to shoot in the next week and a half to let us just chill for my two week break from chemo and enjoy the holidays. Setting all this up was supposed to let her be more free in the New Year to chose her own schedule, and pick and choose who she wanted to work with and support. There were some cute holiday themed ones, besides the Adidas trip, and now she didn't know if she would really be able to do any of them. She was afraid she'd get dropped and her management would be upset at her, models are supposed to take extra care not to get injured 'in season' though in my time with Karlie it had always been pretty hard for me to tell when it WASN'T the season since she was constantly working. With her hand immobilized in the cryocuff, she couldn't text, so I did it for her, contacting members of her team and letting them know what was happening. Even if they were mad at her, I thought she would feel better knowing. I also contacted her rep at Adidas directly, and they assured me she was still very much in demand, even if she showed up with a bandage on her forehead and her wrist in a cast, which eased at least that fear.
My brain had been going so many directions since the fall. Taylor had been awesome, taking charge and doing everything she could do to make sure I was as okay as I could be, given that I was uncontrollably bleeding and my right hand didn't work and my wrist felt fine as long as I didn't move, at all, whatsoever, which meant that most of the time I alternated between a dull throb and shooting pain. I've spent so much time and energy focused on her, and making sure she's feeling fine and gets to treatment and I had this whole day planned and now, instead of having this fun day decorating the house and making cookies and dancing around and being goofy, here we were, in the hospital again, and it was all my fault. If I'd been more careful, we wouldn't be here. Just being here with me put her at risk for infection, which killed me, but I knew there was no way she would have left me alone here, and I was really grateful that the hospital was working so hard to keep her as safe as possible. Between worrying about Taylor, being in pain, and worrying about just how bad this was going to be for my career, I guess I had gotten pretty quiet. And Taylor did her best to bring me back and lift me up, which was amazing, and exactly what I needed.
And just as it seemed they might have forgotten about us, the plastic surgeons returned, this time with trays of sterile supplies, sutures and syringes of local anesthetic, and the special moist dressings that would do the most to reduce scarring. I held her hand and let her squeeze as she hissed her discomfort through her teeth, the result of the burn from the injections, a pain I'd experienced more than I would have liked just recently, but one Karlie wasn't so familiar with. Once the numbing took effect though, she handled the stitches like a champ. She had to sit super still while the surgeon worked extremely carefully to make sure the edges were as straight as possible, and met neatly, and that the stitches laid flat and neatly. It seemed like it took as long to stitch up her head as my entire port-placement surgery, but then, with my surgery it was more about making sure they didn't damage the veins leading to my heart while inserting the catheter, not so much about the cosmetic result. I wasn't fond of the scars left behind, but I knew they wouldn't hurt my career. Assuming I was able to get better and put this all behind me, a few unsightly scars wouldn't stop me from writing songs or performing. They would, on the other hand, have a really detrimental effect on Karlie's modeling career, so I thought it was good the surgeon was taking his time and doing his best to minimize the scar. It would still need time to heal, and she would have to get creative to hide it in the mean time, but they were going to do their best to make sure this would eventually only be a story we would tell our kids one day, about how our first Christmas as a married couple, Karlie fell off the ladder and scared me half to death.It wasn't until the alarm on my phone went off to remind me that it was time to take my meds that I realized I didn't have them with me. I was pretty proud of myself when I thought to call Dr. Miller's office, in another building of the same hospital complex. When I explained what had happened, she actually sent Andy over with meds for me and to check on us both. He praised our handling of the situation, getting the emergency department to take steps to reduce my exposure to other patients and germs, and also me for calling to get meds rather than just skipping. He even gave Karlie a little side hug and encouraged her to feel better soon, while insisting that we dress festively for my next appointment, the last infusion before the holidays. He was disappointed to hear she wouldn't be at the infusion appointment, but was so excited to hear she was meeting with one of her big clients and maybe working on her own designs. I thought it was hilarious that he had no idea who she was, other than my wife, but as she talked, I could hear her getting more and more excited about the trip, and it was distracting her from the pain. The light was back in her eyes, and I tried as much as I could to convey my thanks for that to Andy, without actually saying anything. As he left, he squeezed my shoulder, and I hoped that was his way of saying he understood my message.It seemed like we'd been in the ER for an entire day by the time we finally got the x-rays and the orthopedic doctor back. Karlie and I had actually taken a nap on the bed in her room, her bad arm stretched out in front of her on a pillow, me playing the big spoon, which felt weird but was the best way to make sure I didn't bump her arm and cause her pain. It hadn't lasted long, or been much of a nap, but we tried. The nurse actually had to wake us up and re-check Karlie's vitals since the sleepiness could have been a sign of a head injury that they'd missed. It wasn't, fortunately, we'd just been up early for radiation, and then all that time trapped in one section of the ER had been pretty draining on top of working to get out all the decorations. We were just tired. Fuck it, I was always tired. But even my ball of energy wife was exhausted by being in pain and all the tests and the waiting."I get it," she said suddenly, as we sat together at the end of the bed, hoping that since they'd bothered to wake us we might be getting her test results soon. "I've been dealing with this for a few hours. This is your life. It's hard on my side, but its really hard on yours. I thought I understood before, because I held your hand and was there for every test. But I didn't. Not at all. The way you've handled all of this, everything that's been thrown at you...I love you even more, and I didn't think that was possible. Thanks for being here for me today. No one else would understand exactly what I'm going through right now." She leaned in to kiss me, and so of course at that moment, the doctor finally came back with the images of her wrist.It was definitely broken, not badly, and not too far displaced, but in need of setting and a cast for probably four to six weeks. The cryo cuff had done its job, the right wrist was only slightly larger than the left, despite the time that had elapsed since the injury. She didn't need surgery, which was a blessing, but setting it wasn't going to be a walk in the park. The bone was slightly out of place, which was why she'd been struggling to move her fingers, and why she was still having more pain than was usual. The doctor explained that there were a couple options to set the bone, but the quickest would be for him to just move the bone back where it belonged. The downside was, it would hurt like a bitch while he did it, though he assured us she would feel much better with the bone in place. He estimated it would take less than a minute. Otherwise, he could numb her up using regional anesthetic, but it would take time to actually work. Hearing that, Karlie held out her arm and said "do it." She held my left hand in hers (I'd seen enough movies of childbirth to know better than to give her my right, she's a beast, even left-handed), and gritted her teeth while he squeezed her bad wrist with both hands, maneuvering the bone back where it belonged. Typing can't replicate the noise she made, but suffice it to say it was nearly inhuman, but as soon as it popped back into place, she released her grip and unclenched her jaw, the pain left behind. It took much less time to get the results of the second x-ray, that the bone was aligned correctly and she could get her cast.So she would be able to keep working out, they gave her a waterproof cast, wrapping her arm in a kind of squared-off bubble wrap, held in place with a strip of tape and then wrapped over and over with fiberglass tape to create the hard outer shell. If she got sweaty or swam or got soap in it, she needed to run lots of plain water through it to prevent skin irritation, but otherwise she could live her normal life, which was incredible to me. The doctor said the padding for the arm was what usually made casts unable to get wet, because most of the time the under-wrap layers were cotton. The air-filled squares and special mesh allowed the water to dry from under, rather than trapping the moisture and germs in there. They asked what color she wanted, and Karlie immediately turned to me with a question. If she got it in white, would I paint it red and green plaid for Christmas? Once I laughed and told her yes, the color was chosen and it took less than five minutes to get the cast in place, and only a few more for it to dry enough that she could get dressed again, very, very carefully. I had to stretch the heck out of the sleeve of her shirt to get it wide enough to go over her cast, but we got it on. She even put her antlers back on for the ride home. I was so glad the valet could bring the car around for us, I couldn't imagine having to go find it in a parking garage somewhere after the day we'd had. It was already dark as we left, we really had spent our entire day at the hospital.We were both absolutely exhausted by the time we pulled into the garage, and I was a little nervous about what we were going to walk into. But the guys had worked really hard, finishing most of the work we'd started, just leaving the ornaments for the tree for us to hang, and the stockings to put by the fireplace. They'd even left food in the fridge for us to make, though they'd given us a pretty strong note about not leaving the oven on again. They'd even replaced the bloodied rug from the living room, unable to get the stains out. We barely stayed awake long enough to eat before Karlie took more of her pain meds and she and I both passed out in bed, still dressed from the day and completely drained from everything that had happened.* * *I dreamed I won the Album of the Year again. We were front row at the Grammys. I was sitting on Karlie's lap, and Ed was on one side of her, with Jack and Ella on the other. Mom and Dad and Austin and Abigail sat in the row behind us. Everyone else was wearing dark colors, black and dark blue, but I was wearing this super sparkly silver dress. I had hair, hanging long and loosely curled down my back, a silver circlet woven through at the crown of my head, which gave me the impression this was sometime in the future, since I hadn't gotten to take Karlie to any of my past Grammys. And Karlie looked older to me, fine lines beginning to form at the corners of her eyes and mouth, slight bags under her eyes betraying sleepless nights. I wasn't sure why I was on Kar's lap instead of in a seat, but I figured I'd done that so someone else could sit up front with us, like maybe Ella or something. Karlie was holding both Ed's and Jack's hands, which seemed weird, but I had my arms around her so I was pretty sure she was holding their hands so I could hold her. As you do in dreams, I knew we were nervous because I was nominated, even though I didn't really know what was going on. I had barely any time to wait before I heard them say "And the Grammy for Album of the Year goes to: Forever by Taylor Swift, produced by Taylor Swift-Kloss, Ed Sheeran and Jack Antonoff!" The whole room erupted into cheers, but it was a weirdly subdued sort of cheering where everyone leapt to their feet, but yet somehow seemed sad. I had jumped off Karlie's lap in my excitement, but I was surprised to see her hug Ed and Jack without even glancing at me. She even hugged my parents and brother and best friends while completely ignoring me, though they all seemed to have tears in their eyes. And so did Jack and Ed. I mean, they hugged each other without hugging me. And then Ed began escorting Karlie to the stage, so I tried to latch on to Jack but it seemed I couldn't quite get hold of him.And then I heard it. The voiceover talking about the award to fill the time between the announcement of the winner and us all taking the stage. "This is the third Album of the Year win for Swift, and the thirteenth Grammy overall. Swift wins the award posthumously. Accepting the award on her behalf is her wife, Karlie Swift-Kloss, along with her co-producers Ed Sheeran and Jack Antonoff." Posthumously. POSTHUMOUSLY. I was dead. Maybe a ghost? They weren't ignoring me. They couldn't see me. I stood to the side of the stage as my wife addressed a crowd of my peers, all standing on their feet, most crying."My wife was the one who was good with words. I know if she were here, she would want to thank her parents, her brother, and her friends for being the ones who helped her get here. For supporting her no matter what. She would want to thank the fans for all the love and support they showed her, us, especially at the end. She would have been twenty-nine, now. And I know she would be incredibly proud to be not only the first openly gay woman to win this award three times, but also the first PERSON, period, to win this award three times. And she would have been even more proud to achieve that feat before her thirtieth birthday. I know I have always been proud to be her wife, and I am proud to accept this award on her behalf. Thank you." There were tears in her eyes, and her voice broke a couple times, but no one seemed to want to hurry her off the stage.Ed stepped up next. "Taylor was my best friend. I'm proud to have been a part of her life, and a part of this album." He turned his eyes upward. "Tay, this one's for you, innit." He was actually weeping, tears running down his face, but he didn't seem bothered.Jack couldn't speak. He simply raised his Grammy over his head, to a slight increase in the level of cheering.I rested my hand on Karlie's shoulder as she walked off the stage, the Grammy that should have been mine in her hand. She shivered, just a bit, as my hand touched her skin. "Tay, you did it," she whispered. "Somehow, I know you know. You won, baby. I wish you were here. So much.""I am here, Karls. I'll always be here," I replied, trying to make her hear me, even though by then I'd accepted that no one could see or hear me. And then she was enveloped by my family who had made their way backstage to comfort her as she broke down, completely, into a weeping mess, sobbing my name.
Taylor woke me up, repeating over and over, starting in a whisper but becoming louder and more passionate "I am here, Karls. I'll always be here," which wasn't so bad, except that as she said it, tears began to stream down her cheeks and I realized this wasn't a declaration of love, exactly, but more of an impassioned plea for me to hear and understand she wasn't going anywhere, which is when I started trying to wake her up, gently shaking her and calling her name. When she finally woke up enough to realize, I expected her to break down, like I had the night I had my nightmare, when Austin was here. But she didn't. Without her glasses, she couldn't totally focus on my face, but she peered up at me anyway, saying, with wonder in her voice "you're okay? you're not crying?" like she expected me to be upset. The only thing that was upsetting me was the fact that my wife had been calling out in her sleep in and crying. Once she accepted that I was really okay, that we were both okay, I knew I had to ask what happened. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I knew that we needed to talk about it, just like she'd pushed me to tell her about my nightmare about losing her, she needed to tell me whatever happened.

When she told me she'd dreamed about the Grammys, I felt better, like this was going to be a good dream. Maybe they were happy tears. Maybe "I am here, Karls. I'll always be here," was her response to positive news, like "I'm okay! So I'll always be here!" But as she began to tell me about the way we were seated and the outfit she was wearing, I knew. As surely as I had known in my own bad dream that Kimby was trying to get me to leave for a funeral, I knew this Grammy awards show hadn't gone well. As we talked it through, I knew this was coming from anxiety, but I wasn't sure what sparked it. She wasn't sure either, at first. She'd worried about me, when I fell. She was used to me being the stable, healthy one. But today I'd given her a scare, falling off that ladder, breaking a bone, hitting my head. She'd been the one taking care of me. I needed her. But now, just as she'd gotten me put back together, I was going, and I wasn't sure leaving her right now was the right thing.
I hated that I'd had this dream when Karlie was getting ready to go to Germany. That trip was everything, and she had to go. This partnership with Adidas was huge for her, the first step toward maybe having her own line one day, not just under Adidas, but under her own label. It was her dream to own her own company one day, and this was a good step in that direction. She wouldn't let me help her, and I loved her for it. She wanted to pave her own way, and I didn't want to hold her back. Being sick sucked, but thinking I might be keeping Karlie from where she belonged sucked more. That, really, was what I was anxious about. And once we'd talked our way around to that point, we could go back to sleep, arms wrapped around each other.* * *In the morning Karlie took off, promising to be back shortly, and insisting that I get out my paints, because she was holding me to my promise of a Christmas plaid cast. After my nightmare, I wasn't sure how we would be together in the morning, but we seemed to have an unspoken agreement to try to recapture the amazing mood we'd been in the day before, even trying again for the Christmas cookies and decorating the tree. I actually felt good, like getting dressed in something a little better than workout clothes, so while Karlie was off doing whatever she'd come up with, I pulled on a dress, covering my head with a pretty scarf instead of just a beanie, even putting in my contacts and doing my makeup. I thought if she was up for it, we might take Christmas photos, at least, after I'd finished painting her cast and maybe cutting her some bangs to cover her stitches.When Karlie came back, she'd bought a huge cinnamon roll somewhere, but I was pretty sure that hadn't been her main errand. She had this huge, goofy grin on her face as she bounded up the stairs, the cinnamon roll in her good left hand. I could tell she'd intended to say something clever, but she did a double take, seeing me actually dressed, like, in a dress, for the first time since I started chemo. I'd been mostly wearing workout clothes, occasionally spiffing it up with an actual jeans and sweater or flannel ensemble. To be honest, I thought our date night from right after surgery might have been the last time I'd worn a dress. And I thought it was time to change that. Dressing up, in an outfit like I would have worn on any random Thursday before I got sick, was one way of saying I wasn't giving in. And it appeared my wife approved. She leaned in and kissed me, remarking "I guess I'm not the only one full of surprises today!"After gorging ourselves on the cinnamon roll, we put on Love Actually while I got to work with the paints, carefully painting red, green, silver and gold lines up and down and around her cast, until barely any white showed through. I was actually really proud of my handiwork, and I guess Karls was too, since she insisted on Snapchatting the process. I was even more glad I'd dressed up for the occasion, since I was definitely in every shot. But it was fun, taking something not so awesome, like Karlie's broken wrist, and making it pretty. Then I turned my attention to her forehead, and cutting a nice fringe to hide her stitches while she healed. I was maybe even prouder of that than I was of my painting skills, because they looked really good. I couldn't believe that she'd agreed to let me cut her hair, but when I was totally done and had taken a pic for posterity, she admitted that she'd had it in the back of her mind that if I totally screwed it up, she could just shave it and wear a wig. She admitted she was relieved I'd proven totally capable with scissors, then cracked up because she's apparently a middle schooler inside and she said I was good with scissors.We spent the day decorating the tree and baking cookies, even called Jeff up to take some pictures of us with our fur babies in front of the tree. It was our first Christmas together, and I wanted the memories, especially of a day like this one, a good day, where my wife and I did domestic things, and watched my favorite movie, and I got to be crafty and mess around and just be. She had another temporary tattoo for my shoulder, this one a simple rainbow heart, a reminder that I carried a piece of her heart with me always, even when she and I were apart. We were both more apprehensive than we wanted to acknowledge about the fact that we were about to be separated for the first time since the night before our wedding, and separated by an ocean for the first time since I was diagnosed. But we also both knew it was the right decision, and that we couldn't let life stop just because I had cancer. Mom was arriving in the morning, then Kar would be gone only a few days, and once she got home, it would be time for my chemo break, and my birthday, and those were both things I was very much looking forward to. Just like everything else that had been thrown at us, from allergies to adhesive to a broken bone and a bleeding head, we could handle this. And there was always Facetime, just in case we needed to see each other.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Having my mom stay with me the last week of chemo was weird. We haven't lived together since I moved out at eighteen, almost nine years ago. It was like we had to re-learn each other. She didn't know what I liked to eat for breakfast anymore. Or where I kept the coffee mugs. She didn't know the routines that Karlie and I had established, living together both before and after our wedding. I didn't know how she liked her coffee. Even when she'd been in town after my thyroidectomy, she'd stayed at Karlie's old apartment, not with us. It felt like we were dancing awkwardly around each other, just slightly out of sync. She hadn't watched the video of Cara shaving my head. I didn't realize she hadn't seen it, until she walked into the house, took one look at me, and got all misty eyed because she hadn't seen me since Thanksgiving day, and so she hadn't seen me since I shaved my head. That was hard for her, that visible reminder that I'm sick. She didn't lose her hair when she was doing treatment, so it was a first for both of us. I know it was hard for her, because I'm her baby and there was nothing she could do to make it better.It was even harder for her to go to chemo with me. She flinched when Deshaun accessed my port, even though it didn't hurt me at all. Made me wonder if maybe some of my fear of needles came from her. My counts were even lower, so we scheduled a shot of a white cell booster for Wednesday after radiation. It had to be given under the skin rather than intravenously, so they couldn't use my port, which sucked. After the first one, they said they could teach me how to give them to myself, but they had to give the first one to make sure I wasn't allergic or anything. I know my mom didn't like hearing where my numbers were, but she appreciated that I had worn a mask into the hospital and anytime I was outside my infusion room, even during radiation. But she really hated seeing the side effects once chemo started. The vomiting was the worst it had been since the first week. They wouldn't let mom take me home right away because I was so sick, they were worried about dehydration, so I had to get extra fluids and some electrolytes. I think it scared Mom, how sick I got. It wasn't exactly a picnic for me either. I wished Karlie was there, even though she couldn't have done anything more for me than Mom did, rubbing my back and murmuring soothingly. They talked about maybe sending me home with IV fluids still connected, but ultimately decided there was enough in me to be okay.Mom didn't sleep in the bathroom with me that night, like Kar would have, but she did sleep in our bed so she was very close by. She took care of the cats and made sure I ate and took my meds, as much as I could stand to eat, and she ran out and got Gatorade to try to help with electrolytes, and mostly she let me sleep off the effects of chemo on Tuesday and Wednesday, other than when I had to go to radiation. Wednesday's injection after radiation took only a few seconds, just long enough to swab an area on my stomach near my belly button and slip the medication just under my skin, but then I had to hang out for a half hour to be sure I wouldn't have an allergic reaction to it. I was so tired, I fell asleep waiting. I felt fine after that, other than tired, until Friday. In between, Karlie and I Facetimed almost constantly. She was doing awesome things at the Adidas headquarters with a bunch of their designers and athletes, and I had seen tons of pictures, including a few of the Adidas athletes wearing Karlie's prototype designs, which was so impressive. She was getting to go to all these exercise classes and was loving it, although she missed me and wished she could be with me.Friday though, Friday I was unprepared for. I was in the middle of baking cookies when my muscles started to ache like I was getting the flu. Within an hour, the pain was so intense it was all I could do to lie on the couch. The slightest movement was agonizing. It migrated from my muscles to my bones. I didn't know bones that weren't broken COULD hurt. And my head hurt with the worst migraine I'd ever had. Ever. My mom hovered around, trying to figure out what she could do for me, but even digging out the hated narcotics from surgery, like they suggested when she called Dr. Miller's office barely made a dent in the pain. It hurt so much she had to call Mike to carry me to the bathroom, then stand just outside while I did what I had to do, then carry me to bed so I could lie in the dark and try not to move. In desperation, she called Karlie, who had the driver take her straight to the airport. She was scheduled to head out Saturday morning, so she wasn't skipping much at Adidas, fortunately, though I was in too much pain to really care, at that point. I was willing to try anything to make it stop.The sound of someone hitting the intercom button downstairs made me jump, we weren't expecting anyone and most of the time, people do leave me alone, not just ringing the bell for no reason. I was even more surprised to hear the voices of my two favorite Brits lilting up the stairs. I hadn't heard more than murmurs when Mom greeted them at the door, but I was completely at a loss as to what would have possessed her to let them in, right at that moment, when it was taking everything I had not to want to die. I was not in a place to want company, not even from Ed and Cara. Cara was giggling. If it hadn't hurt to move, I would have smacked her. The sound was grating to my aching head, even though I knew she meant no harm. It wasn't until I heard Teddy giggle that I realized what was happening. What confused me was why the hell they'd come over, and why Mom had let them in in their state...could she really not tell they were both high?Turned out, that was the idea. Karlie had called them after hearing that the strongest pain meds the doctors had to offer weren't working. She'd been talking to some of the athletes from the Netherlands, where marijuana use is common and legal, and hearing about how lots of places, including New York, permitted its use by cancer patients to ease pain. I mean, technically I should have gotten a certification from my doctor, registered online and gotten a medical marijuana ID card BEFORE testing it out, but at that point I wasn't sure I cared if I got arrested right off my roof deck if it made the pain ease even a little. It was possibly the weirdest moment of my twenty six years, sitting on the rooftop wrapped in a ton of blankets because it was December and it was freaking freezing, smoking weed with two of my best friends, while my mom sat downstairs actually hoping I got high. If it worked, Dr. Miller's office had promised to make sure I was legal before the next white cell booster shot.I had smoked exactly once before, the other times I'd tried it with Ed, it had always been edibles, so it took a bit to adjust and figure out how to best get the effects without coughing from the smoke, since coughing just made my head hurt, but once they'd demonstrated a few times, I got the hang of it. And within fifteen minutes of achieving a pleasantly mellow feeling, the pain in my head and bones eased enough as to be bearable. It wasn't gone, but it was so much better than it had been. I was functional. I could take myself to the bathroom. I could sit up to eat something, as long as it didn't require much chewing. For the first time since starting chemo, I was actually hungry. I'd been able to eat, other than on the first day or two after an infusion, but it had been more about knowing I needed to, or wanting to enjoy the ritual of eating with friends or family than about actually feeling hungry. Ed and Cara, on the other hand, were giggly ravenous messes, though my mom took that in stride, so thankful that I wasn't in excruciating pain anymore that it didn't even matter that two of my best friends were high as kites in our living room. She fed them and then sent them to couches to sleep off their highs, while I took myself to bed to eagerly await Karlie's return, now that I didn't hurt anymore.
I planned to go right home as soon as the plane landed, but when I texted Andrea to let her know I was on the ground, she said Taylor was sleeping off the effects of the pot Ed and Cara had brought over, as were they, and could I stop at the store because we were out of Oreos and Doritos. I had to laugh. Before that moment, I had been unaware that we owned Oreos or Doritos, although I seemed to remember having an argument with Taylor in a store about the fact that Oreos were vegan and therefore healthy, which might have ended with her tossing them into the basket. And surely with the treatment for pain I'd come up with, that junk food had been consumed by Taylor and two of our friends. Taylor's birthday was the next Tuesday anyway, so it seemed like a good chance to pick up some of the things I needed and wanted for her party, small and intimate though it would be. We couldn't risk having too many people over, large crowds were dangerous for Taylor with her counts still low. The shot she'd gotten Wednesday should help raise them some, but I still didn't want to push it. Hopefully by being careful now, there would be plenty of other birthdays to celebrate with huge parties in the years to come. I was pulling Funfetti cake mix off the shelf when I heard his voice, and I wasn't sure if I should ignore him or say hey when he called my name.
* * *When Karlie told me about seeing him, it was like my mind constructed a movie script, so I could see it play out, exactly as I would have if I'd been in the bodega with them.Josh: Hey, Karlie.
Josh runs his hand awkwardly over the back of his neck, looking down. He seems unsure if he should be approaching her.
Karlie: Hi Josh!
Karlie's voice is a little too bright, a sure sign she's just as unsure of the situation as he is, though her body language is slightly less tense.
Josh: How is she?Karlie: Um, good, mostly. There are good days and bad ones. Today started out not so good, but I guess she's doing okay right now.Josh: I'm glad she's doing okay. I've been praying for her, you know. What happened there? Josh gestures to the cast on her wrist.Karlie: Oh, yeah, that. Um, casualty of Christmas decorating. It's a very dangerous holiday. Much worse than Hanukkah. But I'm fine. Healing. It doesn't hurt or anything. Karlie hesitates. How've you been? I've heard rumors...Josh: Um, yeah. Guess I'm not heir to the Kushner family fortune anymore. Laughs ruefully.Karlie: Did you really tell your dad to go fuck himself? In a board meeting?Josh: Yep. The lawyers are still negotiating the division of assets and everything, but yeah. I kinda did.Karlie: Josh, I want you to know I'm really sorry...Josh: Breaking in and interrupting her. Sorry? For what?Karlie: I feel like this is all my fault. If Taylor and I hadn't gotten married and everything so publicly...I don't know...I guess I just feel like we pushed you into it and no one should ever be pushed into or out of the closet and I feel like we did that to you, and I'm just so sorry. Karlie looks like she is on the verge of tears.Josh: Karlie, no! Not at all. You didn't push me into anything. If anything I should apologize. If I hadn't pushed you to stay with me, you two wouldn't have had to hold off on your own coming out, and honestly I feel like I held you back from being yourselves and that's on me. But it was time, Karlie. Seeing the two of you may have reminded me that life is too short to spend it pretending to be something you're not, but you didn't push me into it at all. I could have told all kinds of lies about you, and Taylor, to get my dad off my back, but for what? Trashing you two to him wasn't going to change who I am. Getting another fake girlfriend wasn't going to change who I am. So not only should I be saying I'm sorry, but I should also be thanking you. I don't like the mess it's made of my family, but for the first time, I can go on a date with my boyfriend and not care who sees us or what they think. Jared's caught in the middle and that sucks, but we're gonna be okay, I think.
They hug, Karlie wrapping her casted arm across his back, her shopping basket still in her good hand. They have both managed not to cry, and thanks to the fact that it's New York, they haven't even attracted a crowd, despite the fact that this entire exchange seems like something out of a movie.
Karlie told me that she'd invited him to my birthday, after all that, and he'd declined due to a prior commitment, but he'd said he might come for Christmas Eve, even though it was the first night of Hanukkah. He'd been going to a different synagogue since the fight with his father, and found people who are much more accepting than his old congregation. Which is why she'd worked so hard to recount everything that was said. If he was coming over for the holidays, which would admittedly be weird, she wanted me to know exactly what had happened between them. My mom, too, had listened earnestly to Karlie's story, making sympathetic noises as she realized exactly what Josh had faced in his own family that had made him the way he was, and made his relationship with Karlie what it had been. It made me think about my own coming out to my family, and then to the world with Karlie.Mom's come a long way since I was younger. There was a definite adjustment period when she found out I was gay. I was thirteen. My entire friend group abandoned me in one day after I admitted I didn't really have a crush on any boys, but I kinda had a crush on one of them. I came home crying but I was scared to explain. She knew I would feel more comfortable talking in the car if we drove around a bit and put on music. I was devastated, but I think she was more hurt than I was because it was the first time there was something I didn't think I could tell her. Once I did, it didn't get less scary. Telling her that I liked girls the way I thought I was supposed to like boys, was probably one of the most terrifying things I have ever done, and she didn't exactly take it well. Like a lot of parents in their generation, my parents' initial reaction was to suggest that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just hadn't found the 'right boy' yet. I was young. When I went back to school, the girls had spread it around to everyone. Nothing like finding hundreds of notes in your locker calling you names, with freak being one of the nicer ones. So there you have it. The real reason my parents were willing to move me to Hendersonville. They might not have been one hundred percent on board with me being gay, but they'd be damned if they let anyone else hurt me for it.Because of how fiercely protective of me she is, and how involved she has always been in my career, people often thing she's bee the one pushing me in certain directions. She never pushed me at all. She wanted me to be an Olympic equestrian. Music was my dream, and mine alone. But when she saw how strongly I wanted it, she did everything in her power to help me get it. And getting me out of Wyomissing and into a school where no one knew who I was, or who I liked was part of that. They still hadn't totally accepted my sexuality, but they didn't try to make me hide it either. They only cautioned me to be careful about who I told, and how. I don't think anyone will be surprised to find out Abigail was the first friend I told in my new school. We formed a tight knit group of girls who didn't care, and who didn't gossip outside the group. I dated a couple guys for appearances, but we were young enough that no one thought it was weird I didn't want to do more than kiss. I fooled around with some girls, too, but didn't date anyone seriously.And then I actually started to make it in music. Mom and Dad always said I could be myself and they would support me, no matter what. But I wasn't so naive as to think country music was ready for a lesbian teenage singer-songwriter. I couldn't hide my age, but I could easily keep my dating life out of the public eye, or so I thought. And I did, for a while. Ish. I wasn't so calculating with social media back then as I am now. My MySpace was full of clues. And the fans clearly picked up on my first serious girlfriend. Not sure how my parents missed that. But no one ever told me I couldn't do this and be myself, except myself. And over time, my parents realized it was unfair to me to let their fears of what other people would say about me dictate who I loved or how openly I loved them. Took me longer to get there, actually, than it did them. People said such awful things about me when they thought I was straight, but it wasn't that hard to laugh them off since I knew what they were attacking wasn't the real me. It was scary to think I might put my whole self out there and get shit for it. But it had turned out okay for Karlie and I. Telling the truth. We'd gotten hate. I didn't want to know how many threats my security team had intercepted, how many homophobic slurs they'd blocked for us. But the majority of the fans and the media had accepted us for who we were, and that mattered, not just for us but for those who came after us. I was proud in that moment to have that be part of our legacy. Including helping Josh get to a place where he wanted to be himself too.Cara and Ed ended up staying the night. I needed another dose just before bed, and I felt better having them with me, though I was the only one partaking, while the four of us, Karlie included, sat on the rooftop by the fires, trying not to freeze to death. For future use, medical grade in tinctures or edibles would definitely be a more convenient method. Karlie, ever the scientist, had been doing research and discovered that the medical stuff had less of a high effect, but did more to alleviate pain and other medical symptoms, than the recreational stuff I didn't entirely want to know the origins of that I was using to get by. I don't condone recreational drug use, as a general rule. The first time I tried it I didn't know I was until I'd eaten the whole cookie, and the second time had been to see what it was like if you knew you were getting high. But when it comes to pot I've always been pretty tolerant if my friends want to, I honestly think it shouldn't be such a big deal, not like heroin or coke or something. And when even my doctors recommended it, and offered a promise to make it as legal as possible because they truly believed it would help with the pain, I was totally in favor of giving it a shot. It won't help everyone, and in New York, as many other states in the US, you have to have one of a short list of conditions in order to qualify for the medical stuff (which is still technically illegal federally, though they tend to look the other way), but keeping it from people it can really help is wrong, and there are bigger problems in this country than a little weed use here or there. So I looked forward to my official Medical ID for the future, but I was willing to smoke a little when it made it possible for me to keep going.* * *I told mom she should stick around for my birthday, but she waved it off, saying she'd be back again soon enough for Christmas, and besides, my birthday was going to be all siblings and friends, and not too many of those, since we didn't know where my white blood cell counts were, and had to assume I was still at high risk from germs. Now that I had my Karlie back, and Cara was staying with us as well until my birthday, she didn't think I needed her to be right there anymore. Ed had some work to do on his album, but he planned to be back for the party, and the girls could take care of me in the meantime. Karlie for the day to day stuff, Cara for the pain management until my ID card came in the mail. I'd had to designate two caregivers in my application who could pick it up for me from the dispensary if I couldn't go, and who would also not be arrested for carrying it. Karlie was the obvious first choice, but I realized it could get complicated if she got caught there. Or if I did, for that matter. There isn't anything wrong with medical marijuana, I think it should be legal all over the US, including at the federal level. And when this is all over, I just might say so. But if I got spotted, it might attract a bit more attention nationally than the usual visitor. So I also designated Mike, as well. He's the one with the most connection to my medical history. They also get their own IDs.I was still needing a dose three times a day going into my birthday, to keep the pain at bay, but as long as I kept up with it, I was feeling better and better. I'd been in constant contact with my team at the hospital, they wanted to make sure I wasn't hurting too much, and that I wasn't experiencing any side effects from yet another medication added to my regimen, especially since it wasn't the carefully regulated medical grade, but I felt pretty good, actually, except right at the end when it was wearing off. And I guess it's like any medication. Pain killers give you much worse side effects if you don't really need them. For me, I didn't get much of an actual high, not like Cara would with the same stuff. It just made me feel like I could live my life normally. And that's the point of using it medically. I had to get a PET scan and a CT on Friday anyway, to see how the first round of chemo and radiation had gone, and make sure everything was aligned properly for the second round of radiation, so they would check on me even more then.The morning of my birthday I got flowers from the whole team. Chemo, radiation, and Dr. Miller's office. They were shaped like a little birthday cake. I was reminded again that they see me as a person and not just a patient, not just the disease. Karlie had piled the table high with presents and cards, and she and Cara had stayed up into the night making a homemade birthday banner, which they assured me had been hung by Sean and Jeff, and baking me a good old fashioned Funfetti cake, covered in rainbow sprinkles. For breakfast she mixed sprinkles into waffles, so they were flecked with rainbow confetti as well, and she gave me all the whipped cream I wanted to top them with. Cara had actually learned to crochet and had made me a hat. Actually, the box contained about six failed attempts, each more abysmal than the last, until I finally got to the good one she'd made that I could actually wear. It meant the world to me that she'd worked so hard to make something nice for me, I gave her the biggest hug, and made Karlie post a picture of us, me in the hat, online. Karlie had gotten me a new outfit to wear for my party, a cute skirt and sweater I couldn't wait to try on.I felt better than I had in days, but both Karlie and Cara cautioned me not to overdo it, and save energy for the evening. It wasn't going to be crazy, just Ed, Cara, Abigail, Derek and Nick, Austin, Kariann, Kimby and Kristine. More of a dinner than a party. Which was just as well. I wasn't up for anything too crazy, but I was definitely looking forward to seeing some of my favorite people. Security was going to actually check everyone's temperature as they arrived. We'd talked to my team and they said my counts wouldn't be back up yet, so Karlie had come up with the idea to take that extra precaution, just to be safe. After the week I'd had, keeping myself from getting any additional sickness sounded good, even if it was a little bit of a weird way to greet everyone. I just wanted one week to feel good. That was what I really wanted for my birthday. A solid week in which I wasn't in pain, wasn't vomiting, and didn't have to rush to the bathroom. That, and some time to snuggle with my wife while I was having that good week.I took a nap right after lunch, hoping to wake up in time to shower and do my makeup before putting on my new outfit. I really wanted to feel good in what I was wearing for this, maybe even more than the Christmas photos from the other day. Twenty-seven isn't usually much of a milestone birthday. It's not like eighteen, or twenty-one, or twenty-five or even thirty. But I knew I wasn't the only one who'd thought of it. Twenty Sevens. The most elite club no one wants to join. I knew it wouldn't be my fault. I had every intention of celebrating again in a year. And the year after that. But there was something a little disconcerting about twenty-seven that I didn't like. And so the only way I knew to combat that was to really enjoy it. Live for the moments with my friends and family, and do everything I could to stay healthy, physically, but also mentally. And having fun on my birthday was part of that, the mental side.
With the side effects from the white blood cell booster being so strong, and having been gone for almost a week before those hit, and having gotten hurt myself right before I left, it had been over a week since Taylor and I had really gotten to be close. She didn't often feel like sex, which I could understand, everything she went through took a lot out of her, but we hadn't even really been able to cuddle since the night I broke my wrist. I missed her. I missed the other kinds of intimacy, not just the sex kind, but knowing intimately what she was thinking or feeling. Working in parallel to get ready in the morning. Pulling clothes from each other's side of the closet, or even not realizing we were wearing the other's clothes. The simple harmony we created just by existing together. So I slipped upstairs while Taylor was taking her shower, hoping to capture a little of that familiarity. She was singing, something she hadn't done in the shower in a while. It made me smile, she was just goofing around, not singing her own stuff or anything. I hadn't seen her naked in a while, and I was a little shocked. She'd gained a bunch of weight with the surgery, and I knew it had been coming back off now that her hormones were back in balance, but I'd had no idea she'd lost so much. I could see the bumps for every single one of her vertebrae as she let the water cascade over her. Her hip bones were sharp points jutting out, and I couldn't believe how fragile she looked. She was still beautiful, of course. Still my Taylor. The faded remains of the heart I'd pressed to her shoulder just highlighted the way her shoulder blade looked like it could slice through her skin, and I wondered if the outfit I'd bought her would even fit. What a difference a week could make. I didn't want to cry. Not on her birthday. Not on the day we celebrate her life. So I was relieved when she turned toward me, a sly smile on her face and asked if I was coming in or if I was just going to enjoy the show.
I knew Karlie could see what I could. Losing weight after the surgery had initially been a blessing. And then it had kept going. I was hoping that might be a positive effect from my newest med, the fact that it made me actually hungry. No way to know if it might also help with the stomach and intestinal symptoms that were making it hard for me to get the nutrients I needed, which was a big reason I was losing so much so fast, but I'd read that it might. I was too thin. I knew that. But I was doing what I could to maintain a healthy weight, and I wasn't going to stress on it. Hopefully this week and all the junk I'd been eating would help. So when she froze behind me in the bathroom, I knew what was happening in her head. And we weren't doing that right then. Not on my birthday. So I conjured my best sexy smirk and turned to her, hoping to distract her from the way you could count every one of my ribs and remind her I was still her wife.* * *Thankfully, the outfit Karlie had gotten me for my birthday was only a little loose, and actually served to give me back curves I used to have, if only by illusion. I'd thought a lot about how I wanted to do this, as I put on my makeup, and my outfit, and tried on heels to see if my feet could stand them. These were my friends and family coming over. People I trusted to look at me, the way I looked right at that moment, and still just see Taylor. But three scarves and two hats in, I just couldn't make myself look like I wanted. Karlie had already headed downstairs to make sure things were ready for our guests, so I was alone in the bedroom when I went into the back of the closet and dug out a box I hadn't given much of a thought to in years. I felt almost guilty, like I was betraying myself or something. But I also knew it was what I wanted, just for one night. So I pulled out an old wig I never thought I would have a use for again, after the Trouble video. And somehow, with the black skirt and sweater outfit, killer pink heels and rose colored lipstick to match the tips of the hair I was borrowing for the night, I looked exactly like the twenty seven year old Taylor I wanted to be.Cara did a double take as I descended the stairs, uttering in her best impression of a Boston accent "wicked" when she got a view of the entire outfit. I heard Karlie's distracted "hmm" from the kitchen where she was trying to figure out how to keep the lasagnas warm while also making room to warm up the rolls, and I wondered what it would take for her to look up. I knew she had to hear my heels clicking on the hardwood, and I wondered if she was ever going to pay attention, or if I was gonna have to speak to turn her attention my way. But then Cara said something like "I'm just gonna...you know..." and walked out of the kitchen leaving the two of us alone, and I suddenly got a little shy. Like, I shouldn't have been. The woman in front of me wearing a sexy little black dress with mismatched oven mitts had just made love to me in the shower. She knew every freckle, every scar, the ones no one else had seen. And yet I was nervous letting her see this me. For just a moment, I considered turning tail and running back up the stairs to find a nice, simple hat instead, but then she turned, and in her eyes, I saw that look. The one that there aren't words for, but it means something deeper than love. And I was glad I hadn't run.* * *For a small gathering of family and friends, we certainly knew how to destroy an apartment. The living room was awash in people drinking out of plastic solo cups because we'd long since decided that real glasses were a dangerous proposition. All that remained of the cake Karlie and Cara had made were about six rainbow sprinkles that Kimby was trying to get to stick to her finger so she wouldn't have to actually lick the plate, though if she had I imagine I was the only one sober enough to remember. With everything else I was putting into my body, I was pretty sure drinking more than one glass of wine was a definite no, I did plan to still have a liver on the other side of all of this, though Dr. Miller had okayed occasional drinks in small doses. I think my favorite reaction of the night had been Abigail's, when she'd come out on the terrace to see why the hell I was freezing my buns off with Austin before the rest of the guests arrived and had caught the scent on the air, then witnessed me take a long drag."I could make a fortune selling video of that," she began, stepping out onto the terrace to join us. "Something I never thought I'd see." She shook her head, laughing, coming up to give each of us a hug."What?" I snapped back, "you honestly think people would pay money to see me talk to my brother with my hair dyed pink?" We'd gotten to giggling then, just like we would have if we'd still been in high school doing the same thing. It had been almost easy to explain what I was doing and why, and she hadn't questioned it, other than wanting to know if it was helping. The same had been true all night long, and I loved that we could all enjoy each other's company without going too deep into the other side of my life.Which is how I found myself sitting in the living room, Austin and Kariann halfheartedly beating each other with pillows over some stupid bet they'd made, possibly over how many sprinkles Kimby would actually get into her mouth. My legs were draped over Karlie's, shoes off, her hands showing off their strength as she gently massaged my feet, unaccustomed as they'd become to wearing heels. Derek, Ed and Cara were all taking hits off the helium balloons and then singing karaoke while Kristine and Nick took turns filming for posterity. The kitchen was a mess of Italian food and wrapping paper, the gifts I hadn't needed but nevertheless appreciated arrayed in their boxes, one random blue gift bow lying in the middle of the basket of rolls, forgotten in the orgy of food, wine and fun. It was well past the time I would normally go to bed, but I didn't want the night to end. I was happy. Just. Happy. Which is exactly how a birthday should be.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The test results after my appointment had been both good and bad, which was pretty much becoming the norm. My white count was up, so the excruciating pain from the white cell booster shot had apparently been worth it. I was officially qualified for my medical marijuana card and had it in hand, so they could recommend exactly what to try and how often, a very weird experience. It was definitely odd to discuss with Dr. Miller how much I'd been smoking and how well it worked, but I know she needed the information to know what to tell us to get at the dispensary only a five-minute walk from the hospital. She had to sign another copy of the certification, sort of like a prescription that I, Karlie or Mike would have to take to pick up my first doses. She made me promise I wouldn't use any more of the recreational stuff, and would stick to the medical version for the rest of my treatment. She was prescribing two different types. One for general use during chemo to reduce pain, nausea and vomiting and stimulate my appetite. Another to use only when I was getting the white cell booster shots which was intended to combat severe pain. The regular one would come in a vapor form to be inhaled, since it was intended to relieve vomiting, among other things. The pain relief version would be a pill to swallow just like regular pain meds.Those were all good things. My PET scan didn't look much different from the previous one. Side by side with the original scan from my diagnosis, it was possible to see that the areas of red were smaller than they had been. But there weren't fewer of them. Other than the ones they'd removed during surgery, which seemed like it had been a hundred years ago, none had completely vanished. It was hard to be optimistic in the face of results like that, even as Dr. Miller insisted that she hadn't expected much change with only one round complete. It felt like I'd struggled through four weeks of vomiting, and diarrhea, and pain, and exhaustion to barely make a noticeable change. It was incredibly defeating. Even Karlie had a hard time trying to be sunshiny. Dr. Miller and the team were very sympathetic. Everyone hopes for the miracle. For the metastasis to vanish and be cured. But we weren't talking about a cure anymore. Remission was as good as we were going to get. Five years of that and they might be able to talk cures. That was hard. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas all at once. And yet my team insisted that I had a great chance of getting there, as hard as it was to believe, looking at how my results HADN'T changed. Three and a half months and all I'd done was gain and lose weight and gain a couple of scars and lose my hair.Karlie and I took the weekend to cry. We cried about the results, and the way things hadn't changed. We cried about how unfair it all was, about how it shouldn't be this hard. We cried about the fact that no one should ever have to deal with this. For a brief moment we cried for the things that we might not get. The future we might not see, the children we might not have, the matching wheelchairs in the nursing home that we might not get to share. We laid together on the couch and talked about the what ifs and let ourselves wallow, for a moment, in the fear and sadness that came with accepting, together, that we weren't getting the dream outcome. And then we sat down and talked about the future. The one we wanted. The kids and baby proofing the Franklin house and spending summers in Rhode Island and teaching the kids to swim in the pool with George Washington looking on. Who would teach them to drive when they turned sixteen, and what we wanted to do when the spotlights turned off and it was just the two of us, living our lives, without the music and the modeling being first all the time. Because we couldn't end on a note of defeat. We had to keep planning for the future we wanted, because if we let ourselves stay in that place, if I let myself stop fighting, then the fears would come true, and while I had to accept that losing this fight was possible, I didn't have to accept that it was inevitable.*          *          *With my white counts up, the pain gone and no chemo or radiation to go to, we were able to go out the week before Christmas and shop for our families. The plan was to spend the holidays in St. Louis. I would stay with the Klosses while my family saw the extended family. I would pop over for a visit if no one was sick, but with so many little kids we had to be careful, even with my counts back up. And then we would have a Swift-Kloss Christmas and celebrate Dr. Kloss' birthday. Josh had been supposed to go to Hawaii with his family and Jared had invited him to still come, even with everything going on in their family, so he was going to go, but he was stopping in St. Louis on his way west to spend the first night of Chrismukkah with us, since Karlie had invited him. So we also hunted down a Hanukkah present for him, and a menorah since we didn't actually own one and didn't know of anyone in St. Louis who did. We snapped pics of them and texted them to a few of our friends to make sure we were getting a good one. I spent a day making monogrammed stockings for the entire Swift-Kloss clan, and made one for Josh too. He might not have been my favorite person but I wanted him to feel welcome. He'd sacrificed a lot for us, even though he insisted we hadn't had anything to do with it. Everyone needs family, and since for the moment things were messy with his own, I wanted him to know he was welcome as part of ours, even if it would take some getting used to.I had fun getting to find things for everyone. We had a one present each rule, since none of us really needed anything. We would have cancelled all of them, but we enjoyed finding gifts for each other too much. And I needed something for Dr. Kloss for his birthday as well. Karlie had already come up with the perfect gift for him and while she said I could go in on it, I felt like I should find something of my own. I spent a day with Martha and Gigi searching for the perfect gift for Karlie. She and I spent so much time together, it was hard to pull away to shop for something to surprise her. It seemed like we'd lived entire lifetimes since her birthday in August, when we'd been apart but still celebrated together, when we thought we had hundreds of birthdays coming to spend together. I wanted to be clear what she meant to me, and that I loved her more than I could express in words or song. We weren't supposed to worry about how many Christmases we were going to get together, but just in case, I wanted her to know how much this one meant. It was fun having a girls day, almost like it used to be. Until they wanted to get mani/pedis and I had to say no. I couldn't risk getting a cut from the tools and getting an infection. We couldn't go for sushi either, because I can't eat that right now. But once we settled on Mexican and massages, we had a great afternoon. I may have fallen asleep during mine, but it was a nice way to spend the day with my friends.While we were shopping and hitting the spa, Karlie did two shoots, for Swarovski and ebay. I wasn't sure how exactly how they planned to make that work, since the Swarovski shoot was for Valentine's and Karlie still had her Christmas plaid cast, but they'd insisted it would work, somehow. The ebay thing was a video for last minue Christmas shopping, so it totally fit for that, at least. She'd taken on these last two shoots before the holiday because treatment was resuming the day after Christmas and she had a better feel for how that would go and when I would need her the most. Since I wanted time to go out with friends while I could enjoy it, she was totally down to get a little work done. She'd somehow managed to finish a semester of school and even got decent grades. I had no idea where she'd fit in the studying, but of course, since she didn't have to sleep all the time like I seemed to, I figured that was probably how she'd managed to juggle me and work and school while I barely manged to set foot in the music room every now and then. I was so proud of her and all she accomplished. She was taking the spring semester off, other than one online computer science course. It was just too hard for her to get to class, and she felt like she wasn't really getting her money's worth when she missed so much. She'd pick up later, when I was healthy, or when work was less demanding.I knew it was really important to her to finish, and get her degree, so I wanted to encourage her as much as I could, but I couldn't argue with her that just getting the piece of paper wasn't the point, it was about actually getting the experience too, and she wasn't getting any of that. On the plus side, we'd get more time for us, less stress for her, and hopefully it would be worth it professionally too, since things were still ramping up with the KSK<3 line at Adidas. Since I never went to college and didn't think I ever would, I loved the idea of my wife having that experience, especially when it came to encouraging our kids one day. Yes, even with everything, I still sometimes let myself think about the future I wanted. The one where we were moms together and had to deal with normal mom stuff like our son drawing on the wall in permanent marker or our daughter's first period, or our son wanting a tattoo when he was only thirteen, or our daughter wanting to drop out in high school to become a famous athlete. I had to. Because that future was what I was fighting to get, even when the news was depressing. So as long as I let myself occasionally imagine what my life would be like one day when all this was over and we could just be Taylor and Karlie without all the doctors and hospitals and medicine, I could remember why I was doing what I was doing to get better.
Taylor went shopping and to the spa with friends while I was working, which I thought was nice. She gets out so little these days, I was excited to see her get to spend time outside the house with someone other than me at any place other than the hospital. She was really looking forward to it, a nice change from the weekend of wallowing we'd allowed ourselves. We'd both needed a cry after we got her latest results. I guess maybe our expectations were unrealistic, but I really thought we'd see some kind of change, some sort of evidence that what we were doing was working. And instead we endured a meeting full of optimism that felt hollow and a medical team carefully avoiding the word "cure" in favor of "treat" and "remission." I wanted everything Taylor was going through to be worth it. But seeing her so skeletal, after a month of vomiting, followed by excruciating pain designed to somehow keep her healthier, only to see barely any improvement in her scans. That cut deep. Especially during what were supposed to be two of the best weeks of the year, her birthday and Christmas. And it was hard to change gears and go back to joy. But I wanted to, so much.

The shoots helped, surprisingly. Everyone there was in such a festive mood. The ebay one was quick, just making a faux vlog post about shopping for my wife and sisters on ebay last minute and how awesome it was they could ship quickly, often for free, so I could do all my shopping without having to carry a single bag with my broken arm. All done while wearing an ugly Christmas sweater, which gave me an idea. I actually ended up doing some online shopping, though mostly Target and Amazon (sorry ebay, lol). And then at Swarovski, they had all these Christmas carols playing and set me up at a romantic table with tons of beautifully wrapped pink and red presents and a lovely blonde woman vaguely reminiscent of Taylor who would only be shown from the back. They situated me so that my cast was hidden from view in every shot, behind the boxes, or under the table, or hidden from view by the stand in for my wife. I was still in awe of how so many of my big accounts had embraced the real me, letting me portray a relationship with a woman instead of a man, without saying a thing. It wasn't like I had a problem working with guys, I always had. The majority of the world was still straight and evolution said it was likely to stay that way. But it was really nice to get a chance to be myself sometimes in campaigns. I knew after Taylor and I got married it might change things for my campaigns, but I didn't imagine that the change would largely be pairing me with more women. Or that they'd go so far as to try to approximate my real-life relationship. But it made sense from a business standpoint I guess, to make it look like I was with Taylor in shoots. People know we're married. Even though we've done almost nothing publicly since the wedding we still appear near the tops of lists like "Top Ten Gay Power Couples" with Ellen and Portia and Neil and David. I guess I should be mad they're using my wife's image to sell stuff, but I'm so happy they're letting their lesbian model be a lesbian that I'm willing to let it go. I hope Taylor feels the same.
*          *          *
Taylor fell asleep on the flight to St. Louis. We were surrounded by wrapped gifts. Hanukkah paper for Josh. Too many Christmas gifts since in addition to the one gift each rule we'd bought ugly Christmas sweaters and Christmas jammies for each member of the family (including myself and Taylor) to open Christmas Eve which meant we'd also gotten Hanukkah jammies and an ugly Menorah sweater for Josh so he wouldn't be left out though I didn't see him using either in Hawaii when he flew on to meet his brother. And birthday paper for my dad. I didn't actually know what Taylor had gotten him, but I knew we were both excited to see his face when he found out that I hadn't really gotten him just a "World's Best Dad" keychain. I was trying to make sure we had them all, and while I was checking my list like the Santa Kloss my online followers liked to pretend I was, Taylor curled up on the seat under a blanket, the bright scarf slipping to one side, leaving her head bare. I wanted to kiss it. To let her head rest in my lap and protect her from the world. She'd gained two pounds over the course of the week, one bright spot. There was a little color in her cheeks, and the circles under her eyes had faded considerably. She was still sick, no changing that, but she looked better. Like she had before I got hurt and went abroad. Hard to believe I was using that as a benchmark for health. I guess that's why they do these breaks between chemo rounds. I'll take any improvement at this point. I want, so much, for this to turn out well. I can't lose her. We're supposed to grow old together. We're supposed to chase our kids through Central Park. I'm supposed to see her with our baby in her arms. I'm supposed to turn to her with a proud smile as our children cross the stage at their graduations. That's a future I'm proud to picture.
The landing in St. Louis was pretty uneventful. I didn't even realize I'd fallen asleep until I woke up to find my head on Karlie's lap. She had my scarf in her hand, and I expected her to be messing around on her phone, but she wasn't. She was just kind of staring into space, a dreamy look on her face. I wondered if she was thinking of Christmases past, time with her family, or Christmases future, the two of us together. I hoped future. I wanted this to be the first of many. The news might not have been what we wanted, but we had to keep hoping for the best. Keep planning the life we wanted. And that started with Christmas. This one. Making it a good one. My one Christmas wish was that we didn't tell everyone what the results had been. Just like the wedding, I wanted everyone to have good memories of this Christmas. They wouldn't soon forget that this was the Christmas I was sick, but I wanted to be surrounded by optimism. I hadn't even told my mom how bad the last tests had been. Karlie wasn't happy with me for that one, but it wasn't like I was dying. Not yet. Hopefully not for a long time. I wasn't hiding a shortened timeline. I was just letting our loved ones have hope. Because I needed them to. I needed their hope to renew mine. I was scheduled to start chemo and radiation the day after Christmas. So I needed to go into that with a positive attitude, and that's what family is all about. Lifting you up. So I wasn't about to pull them all down.*          *          *Christmas Eve morning Tracy made cinnamon rolls. I knew that because when I woke up I could smell the cinnamon from Karlie's childhood room. Karlie was still in bed with me, a rarity. She almost always gets up before me these days. We'd had to switch sides of the bed since she got hurt, to accommodate her bad arm, so I could feel the weight of her cast on my stomach. Even with the injury she always held me close if she could. I loved that. Feeling safe in her arms on Christmas Eve morning. I wasn't sure the cinnamon rolls and coffee were going to be worth moving from this spot. This was a normal, everyday wife moment. The kind that is beautiful at twenty-six or forty-six or sixty-six or a hundred and six. And I just wanted to enjoy it. The feel of my wife's body pressed against mine, her breath blowing on the back of my head, a sensation I shouldn't maybe have enjoyed but one I relished as a once in a lifetime opportunity. The bustling sounds of family downstairs, even Kimby sniping at Kariann for taking the last sausage link, just made me feel like I was surrounded by love. It was exactly what I needed, that feeling of love. I decided I needed to move when I thought I recognized Austin's voice joining the sausage debacle. But it didn't mean I wanted to. Not with Karlie softly snoring behind me. She's a bitch to wake up in the morning.I have to say, getting ready quickly is one upside to not having hair to wash or dry. I was in and out of the shower without Karlie even stirring. I pulled a cute knit hat that looked like a reindeer that we'd pulled out of the dollar section at Target on the way to the house the day before. It spoke to me. We were going casual for most of the day, though we planned to dress up for church, so I went with jeans and an oversized sweater, though everything I own is a bit oversized these days. The last thing I wanted was anyone in the family noticing the prominence of my bones. I intended to eat enough over the next two days to take care of that problem anyway. Starting with cinnamon roll, if possible. And maybe bacon. Karlie was still softly snoring when I headed downstairs, though I pressed a kiss to her temple as I left in case she was just pretending so she didn't have to get up, but even that didn't get a reaction.In the kitchen I found my brother laughing with my wife's ex beard, a weird sight but not altogether unpleasant. Josh greeted me warmly, with a hug and a chaste kiss on the cheek and then went right back to discussing some new play on Broadway I'd never even heard of with my brother who could barely be bothered to toss out a "Merry Christmas, Teffy," so engrossing did he find the conversation. There was a tray of cinnamon rolls on the counter, two empty pans already languishing in the sink, and Kurt was wearing an apron and standing over the stove frying up fresh turkey bacon for Josh and I and offering eggs to order if we wanted. I could hear my mom and Tracy in the dining room ordering Kristine and Derek to move the table slightly this way, no that way, no closer to the buffet, while Kariann and Nick grumbled to each other about having to carry dining room chairs. My dad was in the garage when I went looking for him, trying to figure out what was wrong with Dr. Kloss's car with Kimby holding a flashlight. I smirked to myself as I told him not to work too hard on it, and both he and Kimby admitted they were just avoiding hurricanes Andrea and Tracy in the house. When I got back in, I found the kitchen near to abandoned, the majority of its previous inhabitants having either been recruited to maneuver the leaves for the dining table out of a storage unit across town or dispatched to try to find the last cartons of egg nog in St. Louis. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the kitchen, so I did the only thing I could do. I started washing the dishes. I was so engrossed getting dried on crusty royal icing off plates that I didn't realize I wasn't alone in the kitchen until I felt strong fingers grab my ass. "Please be Karlie, please be Karlie, please be Karlie," I muttered, debating the efficacy of bashing my assailant over the head with the crusty pan in my hands, when she whispered in my ear."Merry Christmas, baby. We're alone in here you know...""Do you have any idea how close you just came to a second head injury this month!?" I demanded with mock outrage. "I had no idea there was even anybody in here and then I feel a hand on my ass? You DO know what happened to the last person to pull that move, right!?""What're you gonna do?" Karlie purred in her best sexy voice, "Sue me?"I couldn't fool her, not even for a second, she knew I wasn't mad. This was nothing like that day years ago, it hadn't even caused a flashback. But I couldn't let her just get away with it, so I whacked her on her own much more ample butt with the pan and demanded she help me dry. As we were putting away the last of the dishes, we got a frantic text from Kristine "Sam's has the nog, can you girls get there? Trapped in Schnuck's trying to buy eggs" so we grabbed the last set of keys off the rack and hoped that the old Jeep had one last run in her. She'd been Kristine's and then Karlie's and then the twins' so she'd seen her share of driving disasters, but she'd always been reliable, despite a few dents and dings. On the plus side, no one would expect a pop star and a supermodel to roll up to Sam's Club in a Jeep that looked like it might have been old a decade ago. Inside, everyone was so absorbed in finding the seventy-two ounce bags of chocolate chips and double packs of industrial size peanut butter they didn't even notice the abnormally tall married couple posing with giant stuffed giraffes and grabbing four cartons of egg nog each off the shelf while humming the Rocky theme. It was fun, doing something domestic like grocery shopping at Sam's with my wife. Made me think of the life we might have one day, when we were both ready to step out of the spotlight and just be Taylor and Karlie. I could get used to this.I sent a mass text to the family letting them know we had the goods and got all manner of responses back. My brother forgot he was in a group text with our entire extended family and made a very obvious pot reference which earned laughter from the under thirty-five contingent and a lecture from our dad about how if he was going to partake he'd better have a medical condition no one knew about yet, because otherwise Daddy didn't care if he was twenty-four, he'd still kill him. And then I discovered that Karlie hadn't shared my newest medication with her family. Her sisters thought Austin was just joking, because obviously Taylor Swift ™ didn't smoke pot, and her parents were horrified. That was going to be a fun conversation when everyone reassembled at the house. Derek and Nick, along with my parents, knew what was going on, that I had a legal prescription in New York, and while technically I could be arrested for using it in Missouri, no one in my family was going to object, knowing what I'd gone through before discovering something that actually worked. I'm sure it hadn't occurred to Austin or my parents that Karlie's parents didn't know.The line to check out rivaled any at Disney World. You would have thought they were giving it away. All the different aisles featured families having the same conversations. "Billy, did you get the milk at Save-a-Lot because they only have two percent here?" "Karen, are you sure two cartons of orange juice will be enough? Maybe better go back." "Curtis, put that back! Santa won't bring you anything if you buy yourself presents here." It was fun for me, to see how our family was exactly like any other. Scrambling because we forgot something important for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and trying to get it all done before the big dinner, or church, or the lighting of the candle for Hanukkah. The money and the fame can't buy that kind of thing. And when we finally got to the checkout counter and they demanded our membership card, the recognition that dawned in the cashier's eyes wasn't because he realized he was helping us as celebrities, but because he remembered Karlie from high school. That was cool. He was concerned I was sick because of my goofy reindeer hat, not because he'd seen reports on some gossip site. And he wished us well as one of the hundreds of families he would check out that day. I actually believed that when he got home to his own family, he planned to tell his family he ran into Karlie Kloss from high school and her wife, the way he would any old classmate. And it made me feel warm inside.Back at the house it seemed like there was still a ton to do. I was assigned to help Mom and Tracy in the kitchen, where they were attempting to make both roast beef with all the traditional sides and also latkes because Hanukkah. Karlie was supposed to be helping the twins pile all the presents under the tree, and helping to hang the multitudinous stockings I'd made so that every single person in attendance that night had one, complete with gifts, but somehow she ended up in the kitchen with me while Josh and Austin (official assignment making sure none of the garlands strewn around the house would catch on fire when we lit the candles) helped the twins with presents. I became aware, at one point, as I shaped shredded potatoes into little cakes for Karlie to fry, that our moms had stopped cooking and were just quietly observing. I wondered if they saw what I felt. The way that Karlie and I worked together, the way we didn't have to speak aloud to communicate. The way I just knew what she needed, and the way she could anticipate what I was going to do. I hoped they could, because it's one of my favorite things about the love we share.Before dinner, the filled stockings were passed to their recipients, and we smiled to find thoughtful little gifts inside. Phone cords for all so we could always charge to talk to each other. Yarmulkes for the men in the family to wear when we lit the first candle in the menorah Karlie and I had found to make Josh welcome. Socks in mine because my feet are always freezing. I sat at the dining table with my wife on one side, and my brother on the other. Our families, and even Josh, surrounded the table with feelings of love and comfort, and joy. After dinner the families headed out to church. I was too tired to dress up and go out, and I worried that even if I made the effort I might fall asleep during the service. It had been a lovely day, and I hadn't even taken a nap, but that only increased the likelihood that I wouldn't make it through the lessons and carols, much as I loved them. I had to talk Karlie into going, but I didn't want her to miss one of her favorite family traditions. I expected Josh to head out as well, off to Hawaii with his in-laws, but as the family bustled out the door leaving me on the couch in the Kloss's living room, Josh lingered behind. We actually had a pretty nice talk, one of the only real conversations I'd ever had with him, even though we'd both been part of Karlie's life for years. He told me he was glad we could finally talk, and thanked me for helping him realize it was time for him to come out with his family. Things weren't so great with them because of it, which is why he felt so happy to be included in our holiday, but he still felt he'd made the right choice. We ended with him giving me a genuine hug before taking off for the rest of his vacation, leaving me to watch Love Actually on the couch and wait for the family to come home.
We came back from church to find Taylor totally passed out on the couch, the menu for the Love Actually DVD looping in the background. Even when I gave her a gentle shake, she slept right through it, so I scooped her up and carried her up to my room for bed. I thought about waking her up to brush her teeth and change into the Christmassy pajamas we'd gotten for everyone, but she was so soundly asleep, and looked so peaceful, I didn't really want to disturb her, so I just let her sleep. It had been a really busy day, with cooking and family and trips to Sam's Club, and I could completely understand why she was exhausted. I tried not to dwell on how easy it was to lift her off the couch, or how delicate she felt in my arms as I carried her, so different from a few months ago. We had spent the day surrounded by love, and that, I thought, might do more for her health than any of the drugs they were giving her. Just knowing how much everyone is still behind her, I think, means a lot to her. She loves going online and seeing all the fans rooting for her, for us, and it makes her feel like she gets strength from them even when she doesn't feel like she has it in her. So I hoped that having all this time as a family would help give her strength going into the next round of chemo and radiation.
*          *          *I felt really disoriented Christmas morning, since the last thing I remembered was being in the living room but when I woke up I was in bed with Karlie, my head on her chest, with no memory of the change. Before I got sick, I would wake up for every little noise, just the change in the sound of the car motor would wake me up if I fell asleep on a long drive, and now I could apparently sleep through being carried up the stairs. Karlie was strong, so I had no fear I'd ever been in danger of being dropped on the way up, and even less knowing just how light I was, even after eating all kinds of holiday foods. The moment I stirred against her, Karlie woke up herself to say "merry Christmas, baby" and kiss me gently. When we got downstairs to the tree, the family was lounging around the living room drinking coffee in the silly holiday jammies we'd given them the night before, though I noticed Kimby and Kristine were still absent, probably either still asleep (Kristine) or making sure they looked cute for pictures even though the rest of us were barely conscious and wearing what we'd slept in (Kimby). I wasn't even wearing a hat. It wasn't planned or anything. I was just tired, and didn't feel like messing with it. I ended up putting one on before we started opening presents because I was cold, so Austin found my reindeer hat from the other day, but otherwise, if I couldn't go hatless with my family, when could I? The entire world knew I was bald from chemo. I didn't want to flaunt it, but it wasn't a secret either.We had a great morning passing around the gifts, talking about different memories that inspired the choice, or what we were thinking. The ugly Christmas sweaters Karlie had insisted on were a huge hit, and I had to admit there was something really nice about just throwing on a pair of Karlie's workout leggings and a sweater and being dressed for Christmas. My goofy reindeer hat fit right in. The meal was a smaller affair than Christmas Eve had been, but featured the added excitement of celebrating Dr. Kloss's birthday. At least I knew this one was happening and was prepared. It was interesting, sitting at the table with both of our families, and realizing once again that this probably wouldn't be happening if I wasn't sick. We would have come to the Kloss's because of her Dad's birthday, probably, but then, would we have done it every year? Birthdays were always so important to me I wouldn't have wanted to miss one, but I also would have wanted to see my family for Christmas. But now we were setting a precedent for our families to spend these holidays together. All of us. And someday when there were grandkids, maybe we would have everyone at our house, if we were the parents. And sure, the possibility of our siblings expanding the family even more one day meant that we might not ever get to do this exactly the same way, because they might have other family they needed to visit or spend the holiday with, but I really appreciated all of us together.
I watched Taylor all day, and she was in such a good place most of the day. She got a little tired in the afternoon but rallied to help with dinner and I could tell she was really enjoying having the combined families together again. She was excited to see what my dad thought of the gift I'd gotten him for his birthday, even more than she was about her own gift. I'd gotten the entire family to agree to let him open my gift last. It was the smallest box, so I know he was anticipating like a watch or something. Which is what Taylor had gotten him, but she'd put it in a shirt box so he wouldn't know. Which I thought might throw him off of what I'd gotten, because why would my wife and I both buy him watches? There was a lot of fun, dragging it out, trying to talk everyone into having cake first, before he opened my gift. And then it was just a keychain that said World's Best Dad. Which of course led to him trying to sound enthusiastic and not at all confused by my gift, even though I knew he and everyone else at the table but Taylor who knew the truth were wondering if I'd lost my mind. But then came the honking. I'd debated if I should have them honk or not, since it was Christmas night and I thought maybe the neighbors would be less than excited to hear the horn, but in the end, I wanted the full surprise. So I had Sean, who had volunteered as soon as he heard the plan, go ahead and set off the alarm on the car and then vanish into the darkness. He'd come into town late in the afternoon after doing Christmas morning with his own family and was vanishing to go back to New York with us at the end of the night. Because as lovely as it was to get to celebrate with family and with Taylor feeling good, she started the next round of treatment the next morning. But first we got to spend an hour while my dad exclaimed over the Tesla I'd gotten him for his birthday, so he didn't have to fix his old car after all. I'd totally pulled off the surprise and it was so sweet to see everyone surprised, not just Dad.
Karlie was so proud of herself and her surprise. Having the car delivered and getting to spend an hour riding around town and watching him play with all the controls and the electronic menus was so much fun. It really sucked to have to cut the evening short to fly home, but I had treatment in the morning, and even though the first round hadn't had the huge effect I was hoping for, I still believed that it was the only way I was going to get better. And I still planned to get better. One step at a time. I wasn't getting worse. The spots, though still there, were smaller than they had been. There were no new ones. Nothing was getting bigger. I was doing okay. I was very much NOT excited about starting treatment again. I didn't want to go back to spending two days of every week wishing for a drug-induced haze because it was better than vomiting. I didn't want to spend five days every week strapped to a table getting zapped with radiation. But I also didn't want to be sick anymore. So we pulled ourselves away from our families, boarded a plane, and snuggled together in our ugly Christmas sweaters, because in the morning, I had another battle to fight.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Going back to chemo had been one of the hardest things I'd ever done. Just making myself walk through those doors, knowing what would come, I felt like I was climbing a mountain. I had Karlie with me, of course. Without her I probably wouldn't have showed. But with her there to encourage me, gently but firmly, I'd gone. It had actually been better than expected. I'd gotten hugs from Dr. Miller, Deshaun and Andy, even Makenna, and we'd all talked about our holidays while Andy accessed my port for my blood tests. Deshaun and his wife had just found out they were pregnant, Andy had celebrated Hanukkah with his sister and her husband, Makenna had gone home to Maine, and Dr. Miller and her husband and kids had gone to visit her family back in small town Ohio. They were eager to hear all about our trip to St. Louis, and our time with our families. Andy was especially excited to hear we'd done Chrismukkah, a personal favorite of his since it was more inclusive, and because he just liked Christmas trees. I'd even gotten to meet with Dr. Park from the radiation team, though he was still more reserved, he had asked about my holiday and said his was good as well. He was there more to make sure the revised program for my treatment was set up properly, but it was still nice to continue to get personalized care from my doctors and treatment team.They warned me that around now was when I would likely begin noticing side effects from the radiation. It usually takes a few weeks for the effects to build up. They reminded us that they would probably be mild, things like reddening of the skin where the beams were aimed, and discomfort like sunburn. I could also feel tender and swollen in the areas they were treating as the cells that had been disrupted by the radiation began to die off in larger numbers. They warned me to watch out for swelling in my arms and legs since the radiation was targeting lymph nodes and could, because of the sheer number of lymph nodes being treated, cause lymphedema, a rare problem where the fluid my lymph nodes usually circulates through my body would get stuck in one place. Yet another lovely set of side effects to be on the lookout for, but this one was a little scarier, because unlike the hair loss, or nausea and vomiting from chemo, this one would be lasting if it happened. They said I was low risk because I hadn't had any nodes surgically removed outside my neck, and I was under rather than overweight, but it was still uncomfortable to be faced with an effect that could be life-long. A reminder for the rest of my life of the time I was sick. Not that I thought I would ever forget. But like any other unpleasant memory, the bad parts would, I hoped, fade with time, leaving behind things like my wedding to Karlie, and all the love and care she showed me while I was in treatment.Using the medication we affectionately called my inhaler, I actually managed to make it through the whole infusion before the urge to throw up hit, rather than in the middle. So that was an improvement. And even after, it helped. Instead of constant nausea, I only felt it right before I puked. And although the vomiting was as violent as ever, it only happened twice, at the end of my infusion, and later in the evening, which, coupled with the abatement of the nausea, meant for the first time since starting chemo, I was able to keep food down on an infusion day. An actual bright spot. The exhaustion had still been the same on Tuesday, but when Karlie woke me up I'd been able to eat more than just the bare minimum to accompany my meds. I wasn't hungry, exactly, but the thought of eating didn't completely repulse me either. It was hard to believe that it was that easy, adding in one vaguely illegal drug made it so much better. I still wouldn't call chemo fun, but it was much more bearable.Our New Year's Eve had come and gone without much observance. We'd snuggled on the couch and watched the ball drop, reminiscing about the times I'd performed in years past, and imagining a time when maybe Karlie and I could go together when I performed and it could be her wrapping her coat around my frozen slightly drunk ass instead of Ryan Seacrest. Even whatever the hell Mariah Carey did only made me laugh, at least it wasn't me. I was impressed with myself that I stayed awake late enough to see it. All of it. And to kiss my wife at midnight, the first of many to come, I hoped. 2016 had been a pretty huge disaster for me, three Grammys and my wedding notwithstanding. 2017 had to be better. Karlie and I were going into it together, as a couple, that everyone knew about. That nearly everyone supported. I was sick, but I was in treatment and hopefully if 2016 was the year I was diagnosed, 2017 would be the year I went into remission. There were a lot of reasons to be happy for a new year to be starting, even if I wasn't up for a huge celebration.My second infusion of round two was worse than the first. After the first one, I'd let myself think maybe I could sleep in my own bed, even on a Monday night. That was a very, very bad idea. Poor Karlie ended up just throwing away the sheets that had been on the bed and the clothes I'd been sleeping in rather than doing laundry at three a.m. She had to help me change after I threw up all over the bed and myself. I felt horrible for making such a mess, and embarrassed that after so many weeks of this I still couldn't get it together enough to avoid puking on myself. It was humiliating to have my wife have to strip me and bathe me and put me to bed like a little kid with the stomach flu. I didn't want her to touch me. But I was also too weak to do it myself. Seemed like every time I was making progress, like the way I'd felt better the week before, then something came up to put me in my place and remind me that for whatever reason I was required to go through hell to get healthy again. Nothing could ever be easy. When Karlie was able to slip onto the air mattress in the bathroom with me, I was reluctant to let her wrap her arms around me. But she rolled me over to face her, and snuggled my head onto her chest. She told me she didn't care, that she loved me, that she hated that I felt so sick and that she couldn't do anything to make it better. And then, though it was dark and I couldn't see her face, I know she smiled as she told me that I would get my chance to pay her back if she ever carried our child. And she was right, thinking about the two of us sharing a baby one day put me in a good place to go back to sleep.
Waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of my wife getting sick was bad enough. What was harder for me had nothing to do with the pukey sheets or clothes. It was seeing the tears in her eyes and knowing she felt embarrassed about it. As though there was anything she could have done to avoid getting sick. I felt horrible that she felt horrible. For about the millionth time I wished it was me. If I could have taken her place, I would have. In a heartbeat. It sometimes got so hard to imagine that somehow making her so sick was going to help her get healthy again. She had bruises on her hips, where her bones stuck out so much, just lying down could leave marks. She didn't complain, but she had sores in her mouth from the chemo that made certain foods, like citrus fruit, nearly impossible to eat. The chemo made certain foods taste weird, so things she'd always loved, like mint, suddenly tasted awful. I'd gotten an Amazon pantry subscription for cinnamon toothpaste just for her. She fought so hard, all the time, to take care of herself, even though it was hard. Like making herself eat when she knew it was going to come back up. Like eating even though it made her mouth hurt. Like walking on the treadmill to try to maintain a little muscle tone even though she mostly just wanted to sleep. She was always pushing to support me, making sure I was getting done what I needed to, making it a point to check out my new campaigns when they came out. And I knew she'd spent some time in the music room, even though she was struggling with the side effects from chemo. Holding her frail body in my arms once everything was cleaned up, I realized she was my hero. She was much stronger than I would ever be, to handle all of this as well as she had. To keep fighting so hard, even when the results weren't encouraging. To know how to come to me when she was sad, or scared, or hurting. Meanwhile, I snuck off to the gym to cry alone, or talked to my therapist about my fears, unable to acknowledge them to my wife, because they were fears about her. About how weak she was. About losing her. But she was able to tell me when she was scared. And I knew how strong that meant she was.
The next day was rough for both of us. Karlie had a ton of work to do with her management and her team with the new year starting. A lot of her contracts were up for either renewal or renegotiation. I wasn't sure she'd slept much. I'd passed out in her arms, too exhausted to be kept awake by the fear that I might throw up on her. But I had the feeling she'd just fallen asleep when her alarm went off in the bedroom. I couldn't recall seeing her look as tired as she did that morning in a long time. I was glad she just had meetings and not a shoot, because I'm not sure all the preparation H in the world was going to shrink the bags under her eyes. She made me a chocolate banana smoothie, mixing in a special high calorie nutrient shake Dr. Miller had suggested to try to help me gain some weight back. It was like the opposite of everything Karlie stood for, but she'd picked me up the night before like she was lifting Meredith, so she knew I needed it. She gave me a gentle kiss along with the pill organizer full of my morning meds and my smoothie and told me to get some rest, someone would be by around lunch to make sure I woke up to eat and take my afternoon meds, and then she grabbed her bag and ran out the door. I couldn't believe that even on a morning like that, when we'd had a hard night, she was still making sure I was taken care of before herself.It was a pleasant surprise to have Jack and Ella stop by bearing four different kinds of soup, because they weren't sure what would taste good to me anymore. When Karlie said someone would bring me food, I expected Mike. Or Sean. I knew she had Jeff with her, but I figured one of the guys would run out for lunch. It was really thoughtful of her to ask some of my friends to come over instead. I got to hear some of what they'd been working on, and it was good, really good. There was one song they were struggling with a little and I found myself in the music room, mostly just lying on the couch while they messed around with different sounds. They kept telling me I was helping, but I contributed nothing unless they recorded the sound of me snoring and looped it in the track or something, because I fell into a deep sleep pretty early in the process. I awoke alone in the music room. Someone had pulled a blanket over me, probably Ella who is weirdly a mom friend even though she's one of my youngest friends. There was a note on the piano thanking me for my help, and telling me Kar would be home for dinner. If there's a track on her next album that lists me as a musician, just know that whatever I contributed happened while I was sleeping, and for that I am deeply sorry.* * *January was jam packed for Karlie, even without taking classes on campus. But before she could work on any of her campaigns, she had to go back to the orthopedic specialist to see how her wrist was healing, and also to the plastic surgeon to see about the scar on her forehead. It was weird for me to go with her to her appointments. Such a role reversal. She scheduled them all on the first Thursday in January, knowing that I usually felt okay by then. It meant a lot to me that she worked around how I felt to make sure I could be there for her, just like she always was for me. As soon as I finished radiation for the morning, we drove across town to meet the plastic surgeon recommended by the one who'd done the initial sutures back in the emergency room when she'd gotten hurt. She had been using the dressings they'd recommended, and as long as they were careful with makeup and the bangs I'd cut for her, the scar was fairly well hidden in the couple of shoots she'd done since she'd gotten hurt, but she couldn't rely on her hairstyle forever. Most runway shows want to mess with everything about your look, including hair, and she needed to be her flawless self for them. And the reality was she still had a scar. Not an awful one, by any stretch of the imagination. If she'd been a computer programmer for a living, she probably wouldn't have bothered to do much of anything about it. It certainly didn't take away from how gorgeous she was. But it wasn't suitable for a supermodel.Dr. Webb was a tiny woman in her early fifties, impeccably dressed in a pencil skirt and rose colored blouse with black pumps. Even her white coat was pristine and tailored to fit her, no easy feat since she was quite possibly a foot shorter than I was. She was more familiar with Karlie's work than mine, which didn't entirely surprise me, she seemed like the fashion type. She carefully clipped Karlie's bangs back, and leaned in with special magnifying lenses and a bright light to see how the laceration on her forehead was healing. When she sat back, she sighed, and that wasn't a reassuring sound. What she had to say was that it was healing very well. So well, in fact, that she honestly couldn't see a whole lot she could do that wouldn't make things worse before making them better. She could try microdermabrasion, basically buffing off the top layers of the skin to try to reduce the appearance of the scar more, but other than that she would have to try to naturally stretch the skin so she could gradually ease the scar up into Karlie's hairline, but to do that would take months during which Kar basically wouldn't be able to leave the house. Which wasn't of interest to either of us. She said that honestly it was a really neat job by the original surgeon and her best recommendation was to do the same things Karlie had been doing and just give it time to heal. I appreciated her honesty. We were prepared to pay her big money if she could make Karlie's scar disappear, and instead she told us that we would be wasting our money. I respected her for telling us the truth and not putting Kar through a bunch of treatments that wouldn't have changed much anyway.Kar honestly didn't seem that disappointed. "It's just a scar, Taylor, between hair and makeup it's not that big a deal," she clearly cared more that I was upset than that there wasn't anything to be done. I mean, the loving wife part of me knew she was gorgeous, scar or no, and as far as I was concerned she was still flawless. But her job doesn't care what I think. I would think she was gorgeous as bald as I am with green skin and a hundred pounds heavier if she was still my Karlie under all that. But in the real world, she would be so fired if she gained even ten pounds that weren't pure muscle. I hate the superficial nature of what she does, because she's so much more than how she looks. But I fall prey to the same industry, the same insecurities. I got lucky being sample size without starving myself to get there. I cared that we were both a healthy weight, which at that point I was not. But if when this was all over, I carried a few extra pounds, I wasn't worried about it. I guess Karlie had the same thought about her head. She was okay. She didn't have a brain injury or anything more serious than a surface level mark. I just hoped that her clients would see it that way.The orthopedist at the next appointment was a young, very energetic guy who insisted we call him Matt. He took a set of x-rays of Karlie's wrist and was able to pull up the originals from the emergency room to compare them. It was clear that the line where the break had been was much less noticeable on the second set, but not completely gone. They'd said four to six weeks, and we were just finishing the fourth, so it looked like she was going to need the full six, which was a bummer but not totally unexpected. Dr. Matt said that was typical, needing longer to heal in adults than in kids, and suggested she get a new cast for the remaining two weeks, since even with being able to shower and sort of clean under it, it was still getting a bit grimy and gross. They had to cut off the old cast using a cast saw, which was sort of fascinating to watch. We were both mesmerized watching them cut two neat lines in the fiberglass and popping it off. It was weird after a month to see her with her right arm bare, it seemed paler though we hadn't been in any sun to speak of to tan the left, and it was definitely less muscled. We'd known she would need physical therapy when the cast came off, and it would still be a few months before she could resume boxing workouts, but this was confirmation.She just kept looking at it. The doctor said it would be okay to flex her fingers and thumb a bit without the cast, it was healed enough for a little movement. But I could tell she was scared, barely moving them at all. Like she could re-break it by moving even a tiny bit. She'd been so active since the injury, doing almost everything she normally would, her arm securely protected in its plaster home. But now she seemed hesitant. That was uncomfortable for me. My Karlie is usually the fearless one of the two of us. But I understood the fear. Just like it took me time to be ready to try singing again after surgery. It's not just a fear of causing damage, it's a fear of things not working like they used to. She went with a black cast this time, reasoning that everyone could sign it in silver and it would be almost elegant. They used a similar square bubble wrap to wrap her wrist, before wrapping the black fiberglass around it. I was disappointed she needed another cast, and that she wasn't done healing, but glad she was healing well, and they thought it wouldn't cause any lasting effects.We headed home after the appointments, not even stopping to grab lunch. I was exhausted from having spent the day in Karlie's shoes, being the supportive wife instead of the one in the hot seat. I was glad to hear the general consensus was she was going to be fine, and heal much faster than I was. I felt awful that she was always doing things for me. When we got home she immediately started making food so I could lie down on the couch. I wanted to help. I really did. But all I could manage was getting myself to the couch without her help, which shouldn't have been an accomplishment, but still was. The next thing I knew she was sitting next to me on the couch, a TV tray set up in front of us bearing bowls of salad and macaroni and cheese, heavy on the pasta for me, heavy on the salad for her. Anything to help me get back where I needed to be. Even bowls of carbs and cheese, which usually wouldn't be allowed in our house unless she was out of town. As always, a cup of pills accompanied my lunch, and on this day, after the week I'd had, that seemed more frustrating than usual. The meds I take on a daily basis mostly make me feel better, not worse, so it wasn't that. I just was feeling all the effects of being back into chemo, coupled with wanting Karlie to be better.Karlie could tell I was in a down mood, so when we'd finished eating, she pushed the TV tray with its empty dishes off to the side just enough so I could lie down if I wanted and still see the television. She put on Cinderella, the old animated one, and I gave her a questioning look. So she cuddled me into her chest, pulled a blanket over the both of us, kissed the top of my head and said "you're my princess," like that just explained everything. And in a way I guess it kind of did.* * *Infusion three wasn't so bad. It wasn't quite as good as number one, but nowhere near as bad as number two. Unfortunately, the pre-infusion blood tests revealed my counts were down again, meaning there would have to be another painful injection of the white cell booster, after the fourth infusion. The lymph nodes in my legs and groin were so painful and swollen it was hard to walk, I looked and felt like an old lady with arthritis. I tried to remind myself this was a good thing, as it meant the cancer cells were dying off at a greater rate than ever before, but it didn't change the fact that Karlie was actually wheeling me in and out of the hospital in a wheelchair now, so I wouldn't have to walk. In our house, she would carry me when she could. The only positive was that I'd gained a little weight with the addition of the nutrient shakes. If I hadn't they were looking at using a feeding tube to bypass my stomach entirely, to make sure I was getting at least something to help my body fight. Those three pounds were the brightest spot in my results, by far. The infusion brought another new lovely symptom: a low-grade fever. But once I took the meds to combat that, I felt better than I had since maybe Christmas, so at least I had that going for me, even with the appearance of some skin discoloration where the radiation was targeting. Just another effect that would go away once the treatment was over.Karlie was super busy that week, as the final prototypes for her Adidas campaign came in. I felt okay enough to go with her to the meeting after radiation, though I had to wear a mask and bundle up extra tight to make sure I didn't get too cold outside. I really wanted to be there. This was huge for her, her first foray into true design, not just approving the clothes that would bear her name, but actually offering suggestions and input and making all the choices herself. The designers who had worked with her had brought HER vision to life, rather than creating pieces for her to pick and choose. Walking into a wide-open loft strewn with the pieces my wife had created made me super emotional. They were beautifully designed and crafted. I could see her touch in each piece, and each literally bore her heart, carefully embossed in silver along with her initials.And then they led us to a corner of the space, explaining that the pieces there were the ones designed specifically with me in mind, and I actually started to cry. They were warm, and soft, and in the colors for thyroid cancer awareness, including the signature Adidias three stripes. There was a moisture wicking head scarf designed for wear in the heat of summer or when working out. Two versions, one for chemo, and one with more coverage for women who covered their heads for religious reasons. And a beanie of the softest fleece for cold weather head covering. There were tops designed with port access in mind, and bras where the straps could be reconfigured to try to avoid a port if necessary, depending on its placement. There was even a shoe line, with different ways to put them on and off, since some women lose dexterity in their hands during chemo. So they had a pair with zippers instead of laces, and a slip on stretchy pair, and even a pair with Velcro. I couldn't believe all the thought and care that had gone into each piece. It was truly beautiful, and a perfect testament to my wife as her first line. Adidas isn't in the habit of hosting runway shows, but they'd secured a spot in Fashion Week in February, to host a very special show. They intended to have all the models be cancer survivors, of all different shapes and sizes. Karlie wouldn't walk, but would close the show as the designer, wearing her own fashions. They hoped I would be well enough to attend, and as soon as I heard about it, so did I.The afternoon was filled with Karlie trying on all the prototypes and modeling them for promo shots. They planned to dedicate a portion of the women's and girl's sections of their stores in at least NY and LA to her line, with pics of her wearing the clothes proudly on display. I was so incredibly proud of the work she'd done, I thought I would burst. I got emotional again when she slipped on the scarf, tucking her hair up under it. She still looked gorgeous as ever, even with her look mirroring mine. I was still glad she'd left her hair long, I could live vicariously through hers, but I had to admit she still would have been just as gorgeous if she'd shaved it with me, as she'd offered to do when I started to lose mine.After much begging and pleading, she convinced me to let the makeup artist do mine as well, and by the time he was done, it was like they'd photoshopped me in real life. I didn't look nearly as tired or sick as I felt. It was stunning. I looked like the old me, wearing a scarf. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen that girl in the mirror. I was still too skinny, but as long as I wore long pants and long sleeves, you couldn't tell. After a bit more goading, I let them dress me up in a few of Karlie's designs and take a few shots of the two of us together, the first I'd allowed since Christmas. Looking over the dailies, I was forced to agree with the Adidas people, they were pretty cute. They wanted to use one for the "about the designer" section on the website, where they explained the inspiration behind the designs. In an uncharacteristically bold move, I pulled off the protype scarf I'd been wearing and posed with my wife. If the goal was to inspire other patients like me, I wanted them to see me as I was. They had lots of options to choose from, and it was fun to do a shoot again. I hadn't done one in years, and this time it was even better because like the Vogue shoot from 2014, I got to share it with Karlie. Even better than that, we got to take a few kissing shots, something we'd been afraid to try all those years ago. I didn't know what they would pick, but I knew it was going to be lovely, because Karlie was in it and her designs we were modelling were.She sent me home with Jeff after that, though she stayed on to discuss the website layout and the arrangement of products and finalizing decisions for which pieces to debut when and how, and which of the shots we'd taken she was going to use. I was utterly and completely exhausted from my day with her, so much so that I fell asleep in the car on the way home. Jeff had to carry me up to bed, laying me down gently and covering me with blankets, even gently removing my scarf and setting it on the nightstand. He doesn't have kids yet, but he'll make a good dad one day. I only found out about all of that when Karlie got home, the shift in the mattress from her sitting down beside me the only thing that woke me up. I had makeup smeared across the pillow from the shoot, a phenomenon I wasn't sure had ever happened before since I'm usually pretty good about removing it when I'm working. She helped me up so I could wash and changed the case for me, before we both went downstairs to make dinner. Well, Karlie made dinner, I mostly sat at the counter and told her what a great job she was doing. I technically helped because she set a knife and some strawberries in front of me so I could slice them for dessert, but she definitely did all the work. I realized we should totally do a Klossy video of all the meals she was making me, but she insisted she only wanted to make one if I could join her. It was something we'd always talked about but never done, and with the fans constantly clamoring for news of how I was doing, it seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one stone. It was going to have to wait for the morning though, and was very much going to call for her makeup artist to make a house call to work his magic again.* * *The next morning, she woke me up when she got back from her workout, carrying a tray with my morning smoothie and meds, mixed berry this morning. I drank my breakfast and took my meds while she took her shower, she's always gone first, since we started dating, and now it makes more sense than ever since I can get finished much more quickly. Even now, I like to take long showers, when I'm up for it. The hot water cascading over me is soothing, and refreshing, and helps me feel ready for the day. Most of the time, it's one place I can feel relatively normal. I don't hurt as much, and I can't see myself in the mirror, so I'm not reminded how much I've changed. It's one of the reasons I sing in the shower even when I don't spend much time in the music room. Because in the shower, the slight rasp left over from surgery that hasn't ever gone away doesn't bother me like it does when I'm trying out new lyrics, or when I'm trying to sing the old songs. It's not bad-sounding or anything, but it's not quite 'me' the way it used to be. I'm pretty sure that's something I'm always gonna have, like a tiny vocal scar. Karlie thinks it's sexy, and even Ed said it sounded good, and I trust him more than her because he's actually a musician where Kar, god love her, couldn't sing her way out of a paper bag, but I guess it's just hard to think that it's permanent. That it will be there, in every recording I make, the rest of my life, even when I've been in remission for a decade and my hair has grown back and I've gotten my curves back and all of this is just something I went through when I was in my twenties. But it's okay. Because it will be a reminder that I fought hard, and I came out, maybe not stronger, but alive.When she heard the water shut off, she cautioned me to 'put on some damn clothes' before I came out, since her hair and makeup team were already invading to help us get ready for the video. It's always amazing how much work goes into making one seemingly candid YouTube video. There were people bustling around in our kitchen, making sure the lighting was right, and they had a mic rigged up to capture whatever we said, and when I went into the closet to get something to put on in place of my robe, there was a woman in there selecting pieces from our wardrobes for us to wear. It made me almost wish I'd consented to just film whatever the night before, bags under my eyes and all, because it all seemed excessive. I appreciated that she wanted to get it right, but it seemed like she'd called in the entire army when a few soldiers would have been sufficient. We were just going to film a cute little video of us cooking stir fry, throwing a bone to all of the fans who had been clamoring for us to do one together since the early days of our relationship, when most of the world thought we were just friends. And also letting the fans see me, and that I was still doing alright. It was a pretty good day for that. My meds were keeping the pain and other side effects under control for the moment, I wasn't totally exhausted, and I knew that with a little help from the world of makeup, I could actually look more like my old self than I'd seen in a long time, even with all the ways I'd changed. Before we could film, I had to go to radiation, like always, but fortunately those were pretty short visits, and I was back before they'd even finished setting up the kitchen the way they wanted.Filming the video didn't actually take nearly as long as all the prep made it seem like it would. We went through the recipe twice, just to make sure they got all the shots they needed. At one point, I was chopping a carrot and a chunk of it shot across the kitchen right into Karlie's cleavage, which was hilarious, as was watching her shimmy and twist around trying to get it to fall out the bottom of her shirt so I didn't have to go back in to find it. Of course, that made it into the footage. As did Karlie sneaking a kiss here and there, and the part where the first time through we made way too much rice for the pot and it overflowed everywhere. Most of the time, that kind of thing would freak me out and drive me crazy, and I would insist on making a new batch just to film it going perfectly, but one of the things I'd been working on since I'd gotten sick was letting go of the need to be perfect all the time. Going back to being more like my teenage self, being freer, and being less polished. And making a goofy video with my wife, that was a good way to practice being imperfect, because I am, more than usual right now. I knew there would be hours of editing before it would go up online, but I looked forward to seeing the final product. I felt pretty good, actually. A little tired, but more like the kind of tired you can fight through, not the kind of tired that means you have to lie down. And since I looked pretty good too, still having the amazing makeup from the video on, and a cute stylist selected outfit I decided we should go out somewhere. Although I was going to have to wear a mask to go out, I realized I hadn't really done anything outside the house or the hospital since Christmas, and I wanted to. I wanted to take advantage of a rare good day.Karlie was supposed to meet with her academic advisor that afternoon but she cancelled as soon as I said I felt like going out. I didn't even feel bad about it. The meeting was just to confirm she was slowing down her course-load while I was sick, so it seemed like slowing down her meeting schedule while I was sick made sense too. She insisted it wasn't a big deal, and I wanted so much for the two of us to get to have a normal-ish afternoon that I let myself believe that. She never cancels anything if she can avoid it, so it wasn't like I made her do it all the time. It was absolutely freezing outside, so we knew we couldn't stay out much, just from the car to a location and back. It was even snowing a bit, which meant that in the car, she started singing, to the best of her ability "you two are dancing in a snow globe round and round," because she's extra like that.It was hard to think of a place in New York City that we could go to that wouldn't be so crowded I had to keep my mask on, so I wasn't surprised when the car turned into a tunnel and headed upstate. I wondered if we were going to see her parents, but we were definitely not going the right way. She'd made me bundle up quite a bit, but we were dressed in leggings and oversized sweaters. Mine were fleece lined and super cozy, and I also had a cute matching scarf, hat and glove set to go with my warmest coat, and although we had the masks in the car, since it was just the two of us and Sean, I wasn't wearing one. We pulled up in front of a huge warehouse building, and I was super confused at first, until I saw the logo over the door. Karlie brought me ice skating, which was the cutest thing ever. It was the middle of the day, so no one was going to be there, but Karlie had rented it out just in case, so that she and I would be literally the only ones on the ice, with Sean messing around on his phone off to the side. The only other person we encountered, for which I wore my mask, was the guy who worked there. He'd just run the Zamboni to make sure we had clear ice, and he helped us get our skates, and then he basically left us alone, thrilled not to have to do anything. Kar put on some music over the loudspeakers, and then we skated. I hadn't done that in years. Karlie was better than me, but neither one of us was good. We made Sean take some pictures of us on an actual date, because we didn't have too many of those in our married lives.I actually skated the full hour, which was kind of amazing. I'd been walking on the treadmill when I could, trying to keep up whatever stamina I possessed, and I was impressed with myself that I could maintain skating that long. I mean, half the time Karlie was kind of propelling me around the ice, so I wasn't working nearly as hard as she was, but it had been weeks since I'd done that much activity in a day. I didn't want to get ahead of myself, but I hoped that somehow meant I was getting better, even just a little. I was nearly to the end of my second round of chemo, and the end of radiation. I had only five more radiation treatments scheduled, and after that they wouldn't be scheduling anymore for at least six weeks to give it time to work, which seemed weird, but they explained it was like letting meat rest after cooking it, it needed time before it was ready, even after the heat was removed, which was a bit alarming, in a way, but since they'd been basically microwaving my cancer cells, it also sort of made sense. After our skate, Karlie had Sean take us to a cute little Mom and Pop Italian place she knew from going with her family, and since it was a weird time of day, it was pretty empty, so I felt like I could sit in the corner away from the other diners and still enjoy my dinner, though I wasn't that hungry. Thankfully, I think Italian is one of those foods that's easier to eat when you don't have much of an appetite because of the smells of garlic and everything, though the acid in the tomato sauce wasn't as comfortable to eat as I might have hoped. Still, I made a dent in some spaghetti and meatballs, and overall appreciated having a really good day with my wife, before passing out in the car on the way home, my head on her shoulder.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It seemed Karlie wasn't supposed to go to my fourth chemo infusion of any cycle. She'd missed number four from the first cycle going to Germany, for an extremely important work thing. And now with the fourth infusion of the second cycle, she got a call Sunday night asking if there was any way she could do a last minute shoot for Calvin Klein. She hadn't signed any new contracts since I'd gotten sick, but this would give her a chance to maybe be part of a big campaign for them. She'd walked in their runway shows in the past, but this would be printwork for sure, maybe a commercial as well. It was a big deal and I wanted her to continue to grow her career. Life didn't stop for my cancer. And I didn't want it to. Ed was in town, in the music room with me actually, getting ready for a bunch of American promo for his new album, so when Karlie burst in, unsure what to tell her team about her availability to do the shoot, he immediately volunteered.I questioned if he was ready to handle it. Chemo isn't pretty, especially for me. We're like brother and sister, but even Austin hasn't had to deal with that mess. But he reminded me of that night after the Grammys. One of the nights I gave in to curiosity about pot. And also possibly the drunkest I have ever been in public. It was a bit of a rough night, though we laugh about it now. He was, in fact, possibly the most prepared of anyone outside of Karlie or my mom to deal with the side effects when they came. I didn't want her to miss the opportunity, and there really wasn't time to get someone else to come into town, so I reluctantly agreed, but only after he promised that nothing he might witness would damage our friendship. He actually did the Boy Scout salute and said "scout's honor" so I guess he meant it.Karlie was excited about the possibility of expanding her connection to Calvin Klein, and the shoot gave her a perfect opportunity to get her foot back in the door there. She would only be on the shoot for the day, it just happened to unfortunately be a Monday. It was going to be an all-day affair, fly out early Monday morning for a west coast shoot, return home in what would probably be the early morning hours of Tuesday. At least she didn't have to worry about flight schedules, since the jet would go wherever and whenever she told it to. Mom and her *gulp* boyfriend were using the small jet for a trip to some Caribbean island, but I put in the call for the large one to come in to Teterboro and be on call for Karlie when she was ready. She'd always been reluctant in the past to use what she thought of as MY jet for travel when she could just as easily fly commercial, but she couldn't win against my two main points. One, we were married, and that meant it was OUR jet. And Two, using the jet meant she could get back to me faster than if she had to wait for a commercial airline. If the shoot finished early, for example, she could come straight home. And if it ran long, she wouldn't miss her flight, it would just leave when she was ready.She called Derek to see if she could count on him to step in if we needed something, and discovered that he, too, had business on the west coast. Nick was staying in the city though, and would be more than willing to step up, in his duty as brother in law, if Ed and I ran into something we couldn't handle ourselves. Although Derek was staying out west for a few days rather than just a matter of hours, he decided to take Karlie up on her offer to share the jet flight, even though it cost him frequent flyer miles. He couldn't pass up the chance to just chill on a private jet over being crammed into an airplane seat. He did have to be careful to cancel only his outgoing flight, though I promised I would send the jet back for him and wouldn't leave him stranded. It seemed a lot of our friends were going to be out west, for various shoots and television appearances and the like. I guess they were getting all the LA stuff out of the way getting ready for fashion week NY in February. Made me happy to know I could keep Ed for a few days at least.
I slipped out of bed at about four in the morning to get ready by five to fly out. My call time was 7:30 out there, and even that was pushing it. It usually took about five and a half hours to go from here to there on Tay's jet, putting me there at seven if we left here in less than a half hour. On the plus side, I didn't even really have to get ready, just get in the car and get to the airport. I could fly in my jammies since it was just me and Derek. He's seen me in a hell of a lot less publicly acceptable clothing before. When we swung by his house on the way to the airport, he had on sweats, a slightly better look than my cat themed pajama pants that on closer inspection I realized were probably really Taylor's. I had a rolling suitcase just to carry a couple changes of clothes and my favorite products to use once I showered to get off all the remains of the shoot. If I really needed something, the LA house probably had it. I have stuff at our houses all over the country. OUR houses. I guess it finally sank in. They're ours. Not just Taylor's anymore. Anyway, I had to admit it was convenient to be able to just roll up to the airport bleary eyed and ready to take another nap. All I had to do was set my alarm for enough before landing to be able to change and look presentable once I got to LA.

It had been hard to leave Taylor knowing that when she woke up in a couple hours she would be alone prepping for chemo. I'd put all her smoothie stuff in one spot in the fridge, and laid out her pills for the morning the night before. Ed had a whole list of things to do and think about and take with them, and he'd joked that it felt a bit like babysitting. Taylor, of course, could do this all herself if she had to. Even now, she's strong and capable and knows what she needs. She doesn't need me to take care of her. I just LIKED doing it for her. Making it so she could concentrate on getting better. I liked feeling like I was contributing somehow. I couldn't make her better. But I could make getting there easier. At least, I liked to think I could. She slept a lot more soundly these days, thanks to the chemo fatigue, so she didn't even stir as I installed yet another bit of temporary art on her shoulder, this time a pair of lovebirds because I would be flying home to see her as quickly as I could.
I had woken up alone a lot since starting chemo. Karlie would often go work out first thing in the morning, while I was still asleep. Or she would be in the shower when I awoke and I could smell her shampoo filtering into the bedroom. Sometimes I'd know she was in the kitchen by the smell of coffee wafting up the stairs, beckoning me down. But there was an emptiness that morning that reminded me she was already headed to LA. I was so proud of her for getting the call for CK, and even though I know she didn't want to leave me for the last infusion of this round of chemo, I was really glad she'd gone. She deserved it. It was that pride that pushed me into the shower. If I was going to go to chemo without her, I could at least up my game a little and show her I could handle it. I wanted her with me when she could be, of course, but I never wanted her to pass up a career move that would benefit her just to sit in a hospital room with me while I felt miserable. I thought a lot about that while I was in the shower. The things she'd undoubtedly sacrificed to be there for me. We didn't talk about it a lot. But I knew she had to have passed up things that came her way. She's one of the top supermodels in the world. She had to have been in demand, and just chosen not to accept unless it was really important to her. I wondered how much responsibility she might have given her team for accepting or rejecting offers, so that maybe even she didn't know how many things had been offered that she hadn't accepted. It wasn't until I was drying myself off that I caught a glimpse of my back and discovered that my wife had placed a new tattoo there, apparently while I was sleeping. Her little reminder that she was with me always, and always had my back.When I left the bathroom and slipped into a comfortable dress, leggings and boots, with a warm, soft beanie, I could smell coffee from the kitchen, unexpected since I was supposedly alone in the house. But when I got downstairs, I found Ed bustling around my kitchen, Karlie's apron covering his sweater and jeans. He had my smoothie already in a glass, a colorful twisty straw sticking out of the top, threaded through a strawberry for garnish, and was, I thought, making toast. I took a short little video to post on Insta, I knew our fans would get a kick out of Ed being domestic, and I captioned it 'this isn't quite Karlie, but I'll take it' with an emoji. He follows directions well. I knew Karlie had to have told him what to do for the morning. He'd followed our morning routine to a T, right down to the apron. He layered bananas onto the almond butter on my toast, and delicately sliced strawberries on top of that, and for a few moments I wondered who the hell this guy was in my kitchen. His girlfriend had taught him well it seemed."Morning, Tay!" he called, having caught me gawking. "Right on time! Breakfast is served." As I sat down at the island, he greeted me with a hug, and I marveled at how comfortable it was. He really is family. We sat side by side at the island and I was tempted to ask him to make a mess of the Wall Street Journal all over the counter top, just to complete the illusion that it was Karlie beside me. He'd helped himself to coffee and eggs himself, besides toast and leftover fruit from making my breakfast. I wasn't super hungry, but just the fact that he'd gone to the trouble to make it helped push me into eating more than I probably would have. I wondered if Kar had planned that on purpose, telling him to make me food so I would eat it, even though I wouldn't have if I'd been left to my own devices. He even cleaned up the dishes, something Karlie mostly didn't do, even with me as sick as I was. She knew I liked to still feel like I was doing something, even though it was sometimes the only productive thing I did all day. Still, it was cute to watch Ed try to play the perfect wife to me in the absence of my real one.The receptionist looked confused as I signed in for chemo. After all, Ed and I don't look particularly alike, and it would be weird for my little brother to be British when I'm not, but that didn't stop him from introducing himself as my brother. I guess he was worried they wouldn't let him come back with me if he wasn't family? That's not how it works for chemo. You can bring whoever you want with you. The hospital trusts that if they're accompanying you, you're comfortable with them seeing whatever, because after the first visit, you know exactly what you're in for. Friends, family, it's all the same to them. Dr. Miller happened to be in the hall on the way to the infusion room and recognized Ed right away for both who he was professionally and as a close friend of mine. She wanted to know where Karlie was, of course, since she's nearly always there. She wanted to make sure nothing was wrong with her head or her arm or anything. I explained she was working and that actually she was due to go to Dr. Matt on Thursday to probably get her cast off. Andy practically fangirled when I entered the room with Ed, he had to go get Deshaun to access my port because his hands were shaking from the excitement. I had no idea Andy was such a fan. Teddy promised him a copy of Divide when it came out though, so that made him exceptionally happy.Ed watched carefully as Deshaun swabbed my chest with disinfectant, and I realized he'd never actually seen my port before. It has been there for months now, but it's usually hidden under my clothes. I mostly don't notice it, unless I'm trying out a top that's extra loose at the neck or low cut. And occasionally I'll try out a sports bra where the strap placement bumps into where my port is. But for the most part it's just there, ready if I need it, unobtrusive if I don't. Like my mom, he flinched when the needle went in, which I found fascinating on a man whose skin is a work of multicolored art. It's obvious to look at him that he's not a needlephobe. When I asked him about it he explained that those are shallow needles. This one went deep. But he felt better to learn it didn't even hurt me. That was the whole point of the port. That little lump under the skin of my chest made it possible to put in a needle without causing me any discomfort. The blood draw was quick and easy to check on my counts before the infusion, and they could start my IV for the infusion before sending me off to nuclear medicine.Teddy was fascinated by the entire process for radiation, too. He'd never seen anything like it. He'd visited sick fans in hospitals all over the world, as I had, but when you do that, you don't witness treatment in progress other than IV infusions. You just see the person and usually their family. Watching them carefully align me on the table to fit exactly in the mold, and then lining up the lasers with the tattoos was mesmerizing for his first-time eyes. Karlie had long since taken to just chilling in the booth, out of the room for that part. The whole thing took only a few minutes and since it wasn't painful or anything, she knew I didn't need to hold her hand. I'd even attended a few of these appointments solo. But not on a Monday, since radiation always filled the space between the chemo blood draw and the actual infusion. From the booth, he could watch the arm rotate around me, targeting each cancerous lymph node from the most efficient angle.When it was over, he had tons of questions for the team, about how the process worked, why I had to stay so still that they strapped me down, how the lasers worked, why the machine moved the way it did. It was really sort of cool to see it from a new perspective. He cared so much about me that he wanted to understand everything they were doing. My mom hadn't had the same questions, having been through radiation herself. And Karlie had been present when they explained it all to me. One of the radiation techs promised to see if he could get some of my imaging results for Ed, if I was cool with sharing them, so they could use those and the programming of the proton accelerator to explain exactly what they were doing. I didn't mind at all. It certainly seemed better to have the actual medical professionals explain it over me. I knew to an extent what they were doing, of course. It was my body they were doing it to. But depending on what Ed wanted to know I knew there would be questions I couldn't answer. The tech couldn't get all of that together right away, but said he would bring it down to my infusion within a half hour or so.The start of the infusion was relatively uneventful. Premeds to minimize side effects first. I shudder to think what chemo would be like without them, because it's pretty vile with them. They still made me sleepy, so Ed pulled out his laptop and pulled up a movie to watch, so that I could just chill while they kicked in before the main event. We're not the kind of platonic friends who cuddle on the regular, but we did sit side by side on the bed for movie watching purposes. It was weird, being there with someone other than Karlie, but he assured me once again he was fully prepared to deal with the downsides of chemo.My counts had actually remained fairly stable from round three to round four, a definite positive, though they still were too low to skip the white cell booster. Ed wanted to know all about that too, what the different numbers meant and how they affected me. He knew a little from before my birthday, the last time I'd battled with my own immune system, but we hadn't really explained what it meant, other than that germs were extra dangerous to me because my body was working so hard to beat the cancer it didn't have any resources left to battle whatever germs I might come into contact with. I could see on his face how each new piece of information was processed and catalogued away. Like anyone who had accompanied me, I knew he didn't really like what he was hearing, as each new piece of info let him know just where I stood, and that it was maybe worse than I'd let on. I wasn't looking forward to his reaction to the scans, when he got to see those.It was only about fifteen minutes into the true infusion that the radiation tech appeared with the flash drive of my PET results. Ed hadn't ever seen one before, which was both beautiful and heartbreaking in the same moment. Because when he initially saw the scan pop up on the screen, he was simply fascinated by the artistry of it. "Look, Taylor, you're a rainbow on the inside! Not that we didn't know that already, of course..." he'd begun, just looking at how the scan highlighted different things in different colors. But then he started asking questions, about what it all meant. I watched his face fall as they explained what I had already known going into the first results meeting. That other than a few important places in my body, red was bad. Red was the enemy. And there was an awful lot of red on my scans. "Wait, all of these, these are all, they're all cancer?" he'd asked, gesturing at all the red patches on the screen in front of us, his eyes pleading with me, with the techs to tell him he was misinterpreting what we'd said. His eyes filled with tears when all I could do was nod. I hated that look. The one that reminded me why I was keeping most of the people in my life on a need to know basis. They knew I was sick, they knew it had spread, they knew it was aggressive. But only Karlie and my mom had actually seen the scans. "Shit, Tay. Fuck."The medical personnel filed out of the room, understanding that the scientific, educational part of the morning had ended, giving way to the emotional, which was more about the two of us than them. He paced the room, lost in his own emotion, trying to pull it together for me. Here he was, trying to support me through a round of treatment, and he was the one crying. I was too, a little. Each time someone new learned where I stood, it was an emotional reminder for me of exactly what I was up against. In my daily life, I could go days without really considering what was happening inside my body. It was about handling the symptoms of treatment, rather than the disease, for me. I hadn't even known I was sick. There had been nothing to tell me the havoc that was unfolding inside my body. We had no way to know how long it had been developing, or how quickly it had reached the point it had. If Dr. Frye hadn't been as good at her job as she was, I still might not have known. I might have been taking my antidepressants while the cancer invaded even more corners of my body. So even though it sucked to see it, up on the screen, in an ugly and devastating kind of screaming color, I was glad it was there. It meant we were doing something to try to fix it.I gave Ed a few moments to try to pull himself together with his pacing, but it became clear very quickly it wasn't working. I climbed carefully off the bed, making sure the tube for my IV wouldn't snag on anything and went over to him, catching him on one of his passes across the infusion room. I pulled him in for a hug and he just melted into the embrace, tears flowing freely now. "I guess I just, I just didn't get it. You knew that night in Rhode Island? Before the wedding? And you and Karlie were just joking around with me in the car and buying pizza and beer, like there was nothing wrong. Taylor, I just..." I knew where he was coming from. It was why I hadn't said anything. Even Tree didn't know, hadn't seen the scans. They look insurmountable. But Dr. Miller told me she would never lie to me about my chances, and I took her at her word. She still said I could achieve remission. She told me she would say something if the pendulum swung to a place where it wasn't treatable anymore. So no matter how ugly the scans were, I still wasn't dying, and it was still worth fighting. I told Ed the same, and that seemed to help, a bit. It got him to calm enough that we could sit on the bed together and try once again to watch a movie. But now that he'd seen, he made me promise I would send him the results of my next PET, due at the end of next week. I was okay with that, as long as he would promise not to treat me like I was made of glass.He said he would try, though it suddenly made sense to him how I'd gotten so thin, and tired. The treatment had to be strong to defeat it. It had been hard for him to see the changes, each time he came into town, from the girl he'd seen at the wedding to where we were, and all the different steps in between. But now it had a purpose, in his mind. There was a reason they were giving me such aggressive treatment. And that made him feel a bit better about it. A good thing, since it was around then that the first wave of symptoms hit, this time starting with my intestines rather than my stomach. Nothing he could do about that but get out of my way as I moved faster than you would have thought was possible with as weak as I was. But he was ready when I emerged from the bathroom with something to drink and a hand getting back into bed. Not that I stayed still long, we'd barely gotten settled when the urge to vomit hit. He was ready though. I'll give him credit. He's seen me a little too drunk enough times to see it in my face and was ready, basin in hand. He gently rubbed my back until I'd finished, and then helpfully provided water to rinse my mouth with. Makenna brought in a bolus of the antiemetic med, which allowed me to relax a bit, though my stomach still felt like it might rebel at any moment."Is it always like this?" He asked once it became clear that anything that remained in my stomach was likely to stay put for the moment. I shook my head and explained that it was different every time. Out of eight infusions so far, this was the first one that had included intestinal symptoms first. The vomiting was somewhere in the middle as far as severity. Not as bad as it was at its worst, not as mild as its best. I felt better than sometimes, in that I wasn't just totally nauseated every moment. But mostly, I explained, it made me tired. I told him I would probably throw up at least once, maybe twice more before it was all said and done, that I would feel pretty gross for the rest of the day, but be able to sleep off a lot of it thanks to the medicine he had played a role in getting for me. That made him smile. It was a good memory, the way that night had ended, four friends chilling on a rooftop, the scent of cannabis on the air, laughing and joking.Once the IV bag hanging above my head was empty, Ed helped me to the car, where Mike was waiting to drive us home. I slumped against him in the car for the ride home, and he just let me lay there, then carefully wrapped an arm around my waist to help support me up to the main floor, where he helped settle me on the couch while he made some light soup for lunch. Apparently, Karlie had left him instructions to feed me, even if it didn't seem like it made sense. She was right of course. The last thing I felt like doing was eating, but it had to be done, and at least knowing Ed had tried to cook for me would motivate me to eat at least a little. Karlie FaceTimed around then, taking her own quick break from the shoot just to check on us. Once I'd eaten as much as I could bear, Ed draped a blanket over me and kissed the top of my head, and I realized he's pretty paternal, really. He'd done a great job taking care of me for a guy who had zero experience with this kind of thing. I knew Karlie wasn't happy to be so far from me when I had an infusion, but I would be happy to report to her that Ed had been a pretty good subistute.* * *
I got home around two in the morning to find my wife and her best guy friend spooning on the air mattress in the bathroom. If Taylor had ever shown any interest in men, I might have been jealous, but as it was I just took a pic to save for posterity. I didn't want to wake them really, given that it was possible that they hadn't slept all that much so far, and they looked so darn peaceful. I thought about joining them. I figured Ed would get a kick out of getting to tell people he'd been the cream in that particular Oreo once Taylor returned to her old self. But before I could decide what to do, Ed began to stir behind her and turned to squint at me, without his glasses he was forced to assume the tall woman in the bathroom was me. He stood up carefully and gestured as if to say, wordlessly, that the space was all mine. Then he grabbed his glasses off the counter and stumbled to the bed where he immediately curled back up and went to sleep before I could even join my wife under the covers. I guess it had been a rough night.
In the morning, I surprised even myself by being the first to wake up. I'd had a rough early evening, vomiting a couple times just before dinner. It had hit one more time in the middle of the night, when I had been surprised but not unhappy to discover that Ed was the one snuggling me while we waited for Karlie to come home. When I woke up for the morning, a tattooed Brit had been replaced by the muscular American I was proud to call my wife. The ginger-haired Brit wasn't far, as I found him in my bed, snoring as she sprawled with my two cats. I felt better than I could remember for a chemo Tuesday. The two lovely humans sleeping upstairs had done so much for me, I decided to take advantage of the good morning and make breakfast. I wasn't stupid, I knew by the time I was done I was going to probably need a nap. So I arranged everything in the kitchen so I could sit at the bar while I got things ready, only needing to actually stand when it came time to cook. I decided on french toast, my wife was just going to have to deal with the fact that it was pure carbs, because it was easy to make a little ahead and just wait to actually put in the pan until they came down. I also cut some fruit and got out maple syrup and made myself some coffee while I waited.
When I woke up, Taylor was gone, but Ed was still in the bedroom, awakening himself, slightly disoriented by the odd location. We shared a hurried conference sitting on the master bed, the sort of thing that wouldn't often happen between a man and a woman with no romance between them. But I wanted to know how the day before had really gone. Ed confided his fears after seeing her scans, and I was forced to admit my own. Ed had always been Taylor's friend. A guy I knew through her, and liked as a person, but wasn't that close to myself. But by the end of the conversation, we were brother and sister, as much as they were. I knew he would be someone I could call when I was scared but didn't know how to talk to my wife about it, when I didn't want to burden her with my own doubts and insecurities. He knew, in a way that almost no one did, exactly where those fears came from. And like me, he knew the incredible strength Taylor possessed, and how much of herself she put into everything she did, this fight included.
They came down together, both dressed for the day in jeans and sweatshirts, and found me standing at the stove, warming a frying pan to make the toast, three places set at the kitchen table, coffee already in the pot. They'd done so much for me, I wanted to return the favor. I got a hug from the man who was almost my brother, and a warm kiss from my wife. They both seemed totally taken aback that I'd made breakfast, and I couldn't entirely blame them. It had been a while since I'd had more to contribute than just lying around the house. But I wanted them to know just how much their support meant to me. I had more plans for Karlie once we got into my chemo break, but for that day she had to share my thanks with Teddy. He had business to do in the city and had to go shortly after breakfast, but it had been a lovely morning, and it had been a special treat to see him and Karlie do the dishes before I drifted off into my usual Tuesday haze.* * *The rest of the week passed fairly quickly. I had my white blood cell booster on Wednesday, and like before, it wasn't a big deal right away. Thursday was Karlie's appointment with Dr. Matt. I couldn't go, because my counts couldn't possibly have gone back up that fast, but she promised to tell me everything, and she came home with a black brace velcroed around her wrist, which was fully healed from a bone standpoint but would need physical therapy for a month or two to rebuild the muscle she'd lost while it was held still by the cast. No boxing workouts for nearly six months, because it's so high impact, but almost everything else was fair game. She'd arranged to have a physical therapist come to the house and meet her in the workout room, so that she could work those appointments around her schedule, and so that I could attend the sessions if I wanted to and see how she was progressing, something that wouldn't be safe for me if she went to the hospital for her sessions. I was thrilled to hear she was healing so well.I attended possibly my last radiation treatment ever the next day, and the whole radiation oncology team, even Dr. Park, had cupcakes for us to share. It was hard to imagine, just a couple days after being reminded how my scans had still looked after the first round, that I might be done with yet another phase of treatment. But for at least six weeks, radiation was off the table. It was time to let it do its work, hard as it was to believe that it would keep working even when I wasn't going to the treatments anymore. Still, I trusted my team, and I knew they knew a hell of a lot more about it than I did. There were hugs all around as I walked out of the nuclear medicine department, a bittersweet moment knowing that not returning would be a good thing, but afraid it wasn't truly goodbye.That afternoon, I took the pain relief version of my herbal med, as the pain of the white cell booster began to start in earnest. Once again, it started as muscle aches, and knowing this time around how bad it could get, I didn't hesitate to pop the pills. I still found myself lying in the dark of the bedroom, trying not to move, though it never reached the excruciating levels it had the last time. Karlie did her best to stay out of my way, coming by every now and again to give me more pills or help me to the bathroom, but mostly just trying to be quiet so the pounding in my head wouldn't get any worse. She did make me eat, periodically, though it even hurt to chew. It was only knowing that I'd made it through the last time that allowed me to get through it. No amount of pills could stop it entirely. It was better than the first time, but not by as much as I'd hoped. It was enough to make me tell Karlie at one point that she should text Ed and Cara and tell them to bring over the recreational kind, because what I had wasn't helping. She ignored the request.But by Saturday morning I was functional again, the worst behind me, ready to start planning our two-week break. It wasn't a full two weeks without hospital visits of course. I had another PET scan scheduled for the Friday that fell right in the middle of my break to allow the team to see where we stood going into the third cycle of chemo. And Karlie had a few physical therapy appointments in there, but it was a period of time during which I could expect to feel better and better as the days passed. Unlike the last time I'd had a break, there were no major holidays coming up, no birthday party to plan. I'd basically missed my Mom's birthday, though it had been at her request, so I knew I wanted to see her, though I wasn't sure if it would be her coming to us, or us going to her. She was finishing up her vacation and I didn't want to intrude. How the travel happened would depend on how much my white counts rose with the booster shot. They hadn't dropped as low this time as the time before, so that would hopefully mean a bigger rise, and a stronger immune system for this break. I was hopeful we might be able to finally take our honeymoon, or as close to one as we were going to get until I was healthy.The first week of the break was spent mostly trying to gain weight while I could eat without vomiting. Mom came into town and made every childhood favorite food she could think of. Not all of them tasted right, since unfortunately chemo mouth didn't go away just because I'd had a Monday without an infusion. But she tried so hard, and at least we got to have birthday cake. She and Karlie and I would spend hours in the kitchen cooking together. Tracy came down from upstate to complete the mother-daughter experience. I only wished their effort could somehow pack the pounds back onto my frame. Still, it was fun to have a whole week of just family time. There was nothing to say about my health, because nothing about it had changed. I could have gone for blood work sooner if I wanted, but I didn't see the point since I had the PET scan on Friday and I wasn't planning to really go anywhere or do anything but hang out with my family until after that. If the results were decent, Karlie and I were going to actually honeymoon, flying to a private island in the Caribbean for a few days, the fact that my bony ass couldn't fill a bathing suit be damned. I'd made her promise there would be zero photos with me in them before I'd agreed to the trip, but I really did want to go. We needed some time for just us. To just enjoy being together. And I wanted to make it happen for her. She worked so hard every day to make my life easier while I was in treatment, even as she was also working at her actual career, and also trying to get a degree. She deserved a real vacation.* * *
When I begged Taylor to go on a trip with me after we got her PET and bloodwork results, I never imagined it would be the celebration it turned out to be. For the first time since surgery, there was a noticeable change on her PET scan. Three of the lymph nodes in her legs disappeared off the scan entirely. I literally leapt up out of my chair cheering when I saw the scan pop up on the screen. She wasn't even close to healthy yet, but she was finally making visible progress that direction. Her blood work was positive too, making it safe for us to take that vacation. And she'd gained back four more pounds, putting her only about ten below where she wanted to be. She wasn't going to fill out her old bikinis yet, but she did actually look less skeletal than she had even the week before. There were so many reasons to celebrate after those results. It seemed like we were starting to move the right direction. Dr. Miller and her team cautioned against too much celebration just yet, though they were also happy with the results. She still had a long way to go and a lot more cancer to fight off, but at least we were going in a direction that made it seem like everything she'd been through was worth it.
I couldn't believe it. I thought maybe the image was wrong, to show nothing in places where there had been burning red on the last scan. But the doctors assured me it was my image we were looking at. I took a photo of it and sent it right away to Mom and Ed. I wanted them to get to share in our joy at learning that the treatments were actually producing results besides making me sick all the time. To the rest of my network of friends and family I sent a less specific message that some of the metastatic sites were showing no signs of cancerous tissue. My phone blew up the rest of the day with well wishes and cheers. I had Karlie help me take a quick video for the fans who I knew would be just as excited as we were to learn I was actually getting even a little bit better. It was the first time I had that kind of positive news to share and I couldn't stop smiling. I knew there was still a lot more to go to get where I needed to be, but I couldn't think of a better way to go into my honeymoon than to learn that the hell I'd put myself and my wife through had a purpose.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I was so excited to board the plane for our own Bahamian island. So excited, in fact, I logged in the back of my mind to consider buying one of these someday, when Karlie and I were ready to take more time just for the two of us. When I was sure it would get use. Seemed silly, really, to buy yet another home, when it wasn't as though the two of us could really use all of the ones we had, but just the idea of going someplace warm, with beautiful crystal clear water and white sand beaches and exactly zero people outside family and the friends who were like family who knew where we were, well, it was very, very appealing. After two rounds of chemo, I needed the break. Christmas had been lovely, combining our two families, but it had also been busy and taken a lot of energy out of me, right before going into the next round of chemo. This time, we were going to just have fun, just the two of us. Nothing in particular we had to do, nowhere we had to be, and no one around demanding energy or attention. We had security coming with us, but they would be on the other side of the island, appearing in our lives only if they detected some sort of threat to us or if we asked them to go off island and find us food or something.Packing bathing suits had been less exciting. I'd had to buy new, because all my old ones fell right off my bony hips, and trying them on had been a bit of a nightmare. I was aware, of course, of how much my body had changed since the diagnosis. My weight had been all over the place, up after surgery, down since chemo, my curves filling out and then disappearing entirely. I was back up, a little, not so far below my goal weight for treatment, but still below where I liked to be when I was healthy. But bathing suits leave nothing to the imagination. No matter what I tried on, I was always able to see something that wasn't how I wanted it. The bump from my port, the scars from its placement, the bruises from just lying the wrong way and my bones leaving marks from the inside out. After a couple I stopped looking in the mirror and just made note of the fit. Would it stay up? Did it cover the important stuff? Then I got it. Because if I was waiting for one to make me feel confident, I was pretty sure I was going to be looking forever. It didn't matter, after all, what I looked like in it, since only Karlie was going to see, and I knew she would tell me I was gorgeous no matter what.
I hated seeing Taylor torture herself over bathing suits. They're just fabric designed to get wet and cover the important bits. But I knew she was comparing what she saw in the mirror to the pictures from her last trip to the Bahamas, taken under very different circumstances. The photos she'd posted then, well, they'd made her look like she belonged on the cover of Sports Illustrated. She still looked just as beautiful to me, even now, with all the physical changes she'd experienced, but I knew she wasn't seeing what I saw. A strong, beautiful warrior whose scars only showed how hard she was fighting. She was seeing the way her hip bones poked out, and her ribs were too visible, and her scars were still fresh enough to be red. I was happy to see her put that drama behind her and let herself get excited for the trip. A whole week for the two of us to just relax. No work, no medical drama, nothing. I was cast free and had clearance to take off the brace if I felt comfortable, and she had absolutely no appointments the entire week. We could just be.
I had wondered if I needed to avoid the sun, with treatment still in progress. After all, being in New York in winter time, it hadn't really been an issue. But the team actually said the sun would probably be very good for me. The vitamin D would only help, and the psychological boost would likely be even better. The only thing I really had to be careful of was the spots where I still had redness from the radiation treatments, and even there all I needed to do was make sure to cover them in strong sunscreen, which I should be using all over anyway. I was looking forward to Karlie's strong hands rubbing in my sunscreen, maybe giving me a soothing massage as well. And returning the favor, since I had more energy than I had in a while. I imagined there would still be afternoon naps, but they would seem less out of place when we could both enjoy, cuddling up and relaxing together. It all sounded heavenly.I fell asleep on the plane ride down, but Karlie made me wake up to see the clear water and palm trees come into view. We couldn't land directly on the island, it wasn't large enough to support a runway, but it wasn't a long boat trip over, and the airport was nearly deserted so no one but a few workers even knew we'd arrived. We had pre-ordered tons of food to be in the cabana fridge when we arrived. The people we were renting from had offered to have everything cooked for us by a private chef, but honestly we wanted to do it ourselves. Cooking is one of the things we enjoy working on together, and I was hoping that my energy would be high enough that I could really help her, not just watch from a seat nearby. I was thinking I could maybe even cook for her one night, a small way to try to start returning all of the million favors she'd done for me since I'd gotten sick. She'd spent so much time and energy taking care of me while I was exhausted and ill from surgery and chemo and radiation, and I knew she wouldn't have it any other way, but there was a definite imbalance in the relationship from that and I wanted this week to let me try to correct that.Before we left, we'd had some fun reading over fan comments online, gushing over the news that I'd gotten good results on my last scans. They didn't know what that meant, exactly, but they recognized the smile as being genuinely elated and so they were genuinely excited too. I'd tried to temper the excitement in the video, just as Dr. Miller had tried to temper ours, but it had been hard, and I knew that the fans who had no idea just how ugly the original scans were also had no idea just how far I had left to go. Still there was a lot of optimism going around and it was fun to get swept up in it for Karlie and I. It was the perfect way to go into our honeymoon, with the first signs this would truly be the first of many romantic getaways as wife and wife and not one of a handful of good memories to cherish when things weren't so good.There was something very lovely about leaving the cold and snow in New York and arriving someplace wonderfully warm. Although I still wasn't enthusiastic about wearing a bathing suit, I was very excited to change into it and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my skin and lying side by side with my wife on the sand.I'd brought the lovely flowy dress the girls had bought me when we all went to Hamilton Island in Australia, and pulling that on over my bikini made me feel a lot more confident. Tossing a floppy sun hat on my head and painting on some red lipstick made it possible to see my old self in the mirror, for the first time since the Adidas shoot. The flowing lines of the dress hid the angles where there should have been curves, and the hat hid my hair, or lack thereof, and when I emerged from the bathroom after getting ready, Karlie's eyes looked me up and down and ended with a smirk on her face that told me she liked what she was seeing, and that put the biggest smile on my face. She even convinced me to let her take a pic of me with the gorgeous teal water behind me, a smile on my face, my dress blowing in the wind. She handed the camera to Sean, who had come to let us know the island was all ours, and to text him if we needed him, otherwise he planned to stay out of the way since it was, after all, a romantic getaway for a pair of newlyweds. He turned out to be a pretty good photographer, snapping pictures of the two of us embracing, sharing a kiss, Karlie recreating her Big Sur artwork in the sand.I had initially not wanted pictures, not wanting to remember what I looked like but instead remembering the good parts, but those photos changed my mind. We looked fantastic in those pictures, even me, and I knew that the reality was we probably wouldn't forget the negatives. The pictures, though, would remind us of the positives. Radiant smiles and bright sunshine and palm trees blowing in the wind were all things I wanted to save forever. Those pics showed that side of the trip in a way I hadn't been sure the camera could capture. They were enough to convince me to end my total ban on photographs, though I made Karlie promise to delete any that weren't so flattering. I found that keeping a hat on was incredibly difficult in the ocean breeze and eventually decided to let it go, just smearing sunscreen all over my head and hoping for the best, and I was surprised to find there were a few shots of myself building a sand castle that weren't awful at all. They were sort of artistic, and I realized all that time with photographers had made Karlie a pretty good one herself. She knew how to capture the angles to be flattering and represent the subject in a good light, and I remembered thinking the same thing on that road trip that cemented that this was more than just a fling, but an actual relationship in the making.
I knew Taylor was nervous, exposing skin outdoors for the first time since the wedding. When I saw her in that dress though, I saw nothing more, nothing less, than the girl of my dreams. I don't want to say she looked like the old Taylor, because that makes it sound like there was something wrong with the Taylor I saw every day, and there wasn't. My everyday Taylor was a fucking warrior. She was up against the fight of her life, and she was, against the odds, winning. I saw beauty in the ways she had changed. I loved seeing her fill out, not because I loved her butt, though that was a nice side benefit, but because it showed she was healthier. Each scar was a badge of honor. But I knew how self-conscious she was, and I wanted her to know that I was absolutely blown away to be on my honeymoon with the girl in front of me, exactly the way she was. I took a few shots with my phone. I know she didn't want pictures at first, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted these memories. I wanted to remember this moment, our honeymoon, the joy I felt knowing we were together, forever. We had pictures of an island getaway from three years ago, but this time, we were wife and wife, and that mattered far more than Taylor's appearance. And the pictures were stunning. I knew when I posted them on Instagram, the fans would freak out, because they would recognize the girl in the pictures as the one they knew, just as I did.
We took long walks along the sand, and when we initially walked further than my stamina could take, Karlie piggybacked me home to lie on a beach chair and enjoy the sun on my skin while she frolicked in the water. I took a couple videos of her attempts at body boarding, the two of us cracking up so hard, I sometimes forgot I was filming and got shots of the sand or a corner of my beach towel instead of my subject. We made dozens of works of art in the sand, nothing to write home about, sculpture isn't likely to be a future career for either of us, but we had fun doing it. We collected shells and sand dollars along the water, coating the front porch of our cabana in them, and doubling up with laughter when one shell started to crawl away, as the home of a hermit crab neither of us had thought to check for. We built fires on the sand and roasted anything we thought would cook, basking in the warmth as the sun sank below the horizon. I chased her around the fire after she managed to toss a marshmallow into what remained of my cleavage and amazed myself that I could run at all. In a fit of bravery, we made love under the stars, trusting that if there were anyone to see, my team would have told us.On the nights I was tired from too much activity during the day I was reading, for the first time in ages. Just stupid novels that made me laugh. We would snuggle in bed and watch movies some nights, which was such an old married couple thing to do, but I had never felt more comfortable than lying in bed with my girl's strong arms around me, listening to her heartbeat. I couldn't forget that I was sick, but it wasn't the focus of our lives like it was at home, and I loved that. I was too scared to go in the ocean, even with the clear water, because I couldn't risk an infection, but I'd been given clearance to swim in the pool, so we spent some time in the water, where the distortion of the water hid the parts of myself that made me insecure. There was splashing and messing around and lounging on rafts with cold drinks in our hands. And we did, indeed, cook together, reveling in the fact that we still created a beautiful harmony when we worked in tandem. It was one of my favorite things to do because there was no spoken communication needed. We just knew who was supposed to do what when. And actually being hungry sometimes was an added bonus, because it made creating things to eat even more fun when I knew I would actually enjoy eating them.
Our second to last night Taylor sent me off on a late afternoon jog down the beach, and I returned to find a table set up on the sand, surrounded by candles, my wife dressed in a flowy sundress with matching scarf, actual flower petals scattered around like a photoshoot set. She'd laid a similar dress to her own on the bed, and I wondered where she'd gotten it since I'd done most of the packing for the trip. Sean reappeared out of nowhere, the first we'd seen of another human being since arrival, just to take pictures of our romantic dinner for two. I knew Taylor hadn't done all the preparation herself, she couldn't possibly have moved the table on her own, even had she been the strongest she's ever been in her life, but I knew she'd done most of the work. The light in her eyes seeing me emerge dressed in the outfit she'd chosen made me wish every day could be like that one, because there was nothing else in the world that could compare. We ate side by side, facing the sunset, marveling at the show mother nature was putting on for us, shoulders brushing, sneaking small touches here or there, just being in the moment and knowing that we were together, no matter what.
The end of this chemo break didn't hit me as hard as the last one had. It was sad, of course, to have to leave the island and head home to the gray and cold of the city, and harder still to think that the next day would bring another round of discomfort and vomiting and exhaustion, but it was worth it because enduring all of that would let us have more weeks like the one we'd just had, enjoying the simplicity of each other's company and the beauty of nature and life. It helped that we had Karlie's fashion week debut as a designer coming up, and coming off that week I was really optimistic that I would be strong enough to attend, even with the specter of chemo cycle three looming large. I felt stronger coming off that week than I had since before surgery, which seemed crazy to me. I wondered if maybe I had just gotten so used to being tired and weak that any sense of wellbeing at all made me feel strong, but I was willing to take it if it meant even a slight improvement in the chemo experience.My pre-chemo blood tests were the best they'd been since before round one. The team had been right, the sun and relaxation had done a lot of good in my life, and it made both of us happy to see. I'd also gained weight while we were away, and although I was still hovering under my target during treatment, I was the closest I'd been in months. It seemed like everything was falling into place to make this my most productive round ever. Plus, for the first time since that first infusion, there would be only one visit to the hospital per week, since I wasn't doing radiation this round. Just chemo on Mondays and the rest of the week for myself. Karlie had physical therapy twice a week, having done the exercises on her own while we were gone, just making sure to keep up the strengthening so that she wouldn't have any additional problems from the break down the line. She was having some discomfort with certain movements that they suspected was due to a tendon having lost some flexibility while it was immobile and that would ease with continued stretching, but they wanted to keep an eye on it just in case. Other than that and the scar on her forehead which was continuing to heal under the care of Dr. Webb's scar cream, there was little to show she'd ever been hurt. She'd taken to rubbing the extra cream on her fingers into my own scars, and although it wasn't helping as much as with hers, it did seem they were starting to calm down and become less glaring.My team was really happy to see the two of us arrive tanned and relaxed from our trip. I was the healthiest I'd been in months and they were optimistic that would help me through the next round. Dr. Miller stayed all through pre-meds looking at our photos on my iPad, and Makenna, Deshaun and Andy all popped in from time to time to see as much as they could while caring for other patients. The time away from chemo seemed to have allowed my body to reset just a bit. I thought that over time the reactions probably got stronger having the meds build up in my body, but taking two weeks seemed to have allowed some of it to get out of my system. That doesn't mean it was pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but the nausea was a little less pervasive, and the vomiting a little less violent, the intestinal symptoms less extensive. One symptom that hadn't gone away was the low-grade fever I seemed to run with each of the last few infusions. As long as it stayed low, it wasn't anything to worry about. Fevers are part of your immune response, and apparently it meant that my body was working to fight the cancer cells, which was a good thing. But it was something to keep an eye on because chemo fevers made it harder to detect infection related fevers.I spent the rest of Monday lying around the house while Karlie tried to make me comfortable and also force me to eat. I ran out of cartridges for my 'inhaler' and with Mike off duty she ran out to get some herself, praying that no one felt the need to capture a photo of her going into the dispensary to pick up my refill. She was more willing to risk getting caught than risk me going back to the way chemo used to hit me without it, which I think is a mark of true love. She's always put my needs above her own, even in the earliest days of the relationship, and I was really glad I'd gotten to do a few small things to do the same in return while we were on our honeymoon, because now we were right back to her taking care of me. We slept on the air mattress even though the vomiting hadn't been so bad, and I was grateful at four am when my stomach chose to remind me that I was back in chemo mode.Tuesday was its usual haze of sleep, eat, meds, repeat. Karlie conducted all her business meetings over FaceTime from the music room, taking advantage of the soundproofing to avoid disturbing me, though still close enough to respond to a text if I needed her. She also went down to swim in the pool, a space we hadn't used much since I'd been sick, though I could, if I wanted. I went down to the pool area, just to be with her, but I fell asleep while she was still swimming laps, waking up only when she gently shook my shoulder, trying her best not to drip on me. We made our way to the elevator hand in hand, and I laid in the bedroom while she showered, taking yet another nap. She understood, like she always did, but I still hated sleeping away our time together. It seemed like I was always too tired for everything, but as side effects went, it wasn't even top five worst. That was the saddest part of going back to chemo after our vacation, getting right back into the exhaustion.Wednesday she had the final meeting with the folks at Adidas to prepare for the fashion show. She would be meeting all the models and choosing the final outfits and making sure everything fit everyone. She wanted me to go with her but I still wasn't feeling one hundred percent after chemo and with just over a week before the show, I wanted to conserve every tiny sliver of energy I might have to be able to go. I didn't care if I had to stay backstage and wear a mask, I wanted to be there to support her, no matter what it took. I was so insanely proud of all the work she'd put in, and the designs she'd made, and I knew she was going to blow everyone out of the water with her work. It wasn't the usual fashion week couture, but it was awesome ready to wear and I thought it was a great representation of who she was to design an entire line with accessibility and comfort in mind while still creating something that would make a lot of women feel confident in their clothes which should, in my opinion, be the goal of fashion. Sure, couture looks great on models like my wife, but real fashion should look good on real women, and that's what she made.Thursday and Friday she had different shoots, one for L'oreal and one for Swarovski. The Swarovski one was going to be really fun, since Martha was also involved. It's always more fun to work with friends. In between set-ups they would FaceTime me to see how I was doing and just say hey. Meanwhile, I was at home actually spending time in the music room, actually working on some writing. The honeymoon had left me in a love song mood and I wanted to try to capture it. That meant spending a bit of time trying to get Ed or Jack on the line to test somethings out, but each time they both told me that I should do it myself. They were right of course. This was my love story. My ode to Karlie. But it was nice to at least get feedback even if they staunchly refused to be cowriters. And just to talk to friends. They all wanted to know about the trip, not the details of the private stuff, but the fun little things we'd gotten to do, and the reminiscing was perfect for keeping me in the right place to get the song written the way I wanted it to.For fun, when Karlie got home we went to town posting honeymoon pictures on social media, enjoying the reactions from fans and giving them something to squeal over. I knew I would enjoy seeing the edits they would come up with for weeks to come, and especially since I actually felt good about the pictures we'd captured. It was the first time since the wedding that we had lots of material to give them, and I knew they'd have a field day with it. It was something I was looking forward to, very much. I missed them, the fans, while I was sick and staying away from music and the spotlight. They were still supportive and lovely, and I lurked a lot when I was too tired to be doing something but well enough to concentrate on what I was reading and seeing. I knew they missed me too, they said as much in all their posts. They wished us well, in most of them, and sent thoughts and prayers my way. It meant a lot, knowing they cared. I know they'd always said they would, but when it's up against it, sometimes people can't handle it. I had friends I hadn't seen since the diagnosis, who I suspected just didn't know what to say, how to be around me knowing I was sick. I was sure there were fans who were the same way. They still cared, but they didn't know what to do about it, and were afraid of saying the wrong thing.The weekend passed quickly, as they always seem to, and then it was time for my second infusion of the third cycle. If all went well, I hoped to be cleared to go to Karlie's show on Thursday night. It was one of the first shows of the week, and wouldn't have made much of a splash at all if not for Karlie's name being attached. Being the only non-couture brand showing did attract some attention, but the reality of Karlie Swift-Kloss designing was the majority of the buzz. It was totally unconventional. The whole way of debuting it. Which was really cool to watch. As an outsider to the industry, I didn't realize just how out of the box it was until she showed me the line-up for the week. I thought I would burst with pride seeing my girl take on the establishment to show off her athletic wear on normal women's bodies in a prime spot at Fashion Week. There would be media coverage, of course, anything we did publicly attracted attention. And Derek was going to be front row with me both shielding me from the rest of the attendees for safety, but also covering the event for at least print if not television.The infusion itself sucked. My pre-tests were fine, and pre-meds were normal, just a little sleepiness while I waited for the actual infusion. But I felt sick less than twenty minutes into it, and nothing seemed to make that feeling go away, although meds were able to slow the projectile vomiting somewhat. I couldn't remember the last time it had made me so sick. I felt like it would never end. I had to stay an extra two hours after the actual chemo infusion ended for fluids because I'd been so sick they were worried it might dehydrate me too much, and I was too sick to really care. I wanted to be in my own bed, but at the same time I was pretty much going to be miserable either way. What little energy I could devote to more than just trying to breathe through the nausea told me that it was hurting Karlie a lot to see me so sick and uncomfortable but be completely helpless to do anything more than hold the basin for me and rub my back. My team tried everything they could think of to make it stop, pushing stronger and stronger drugs into my IV to no avail. I thought they were going to admit me, and I almost didn't mind. If admission could make it stop, it was worth it. But by the end of the two-hour fluid infusion, I had only a mild fever and nausea, having gone a full half hour without even the dry heaves. I still felt horrible, but they thought I was stable enough to be sick at home, given that home was less than ten minutes away. They warned Karlie to call if I got sick more than once or twice the rest of the day, then sent us home.
It was awful seeing Taylor react so strongly to the chemo. It seemed like nothing they tried worked, and she was clearly just miserable. She didn't seem to care what they did, which shows just how ill she really was. The fever that had accompanied the last few infusions returned, but at least those were the only two main symptoms. It seemed that her stomach was so affected even her intestines felt bad for her. The hardest part for me, always, was not being able to make it better for her. I could sit with her and hold her and rub her back and clean her up after, but I couldn't actually take away the pain or nausea and I hated it. I hated that she had to go through this. But mostly I hated seeing the fight go out of her, even for a moment, as the team discussed the possibility of admission, something I knew she wouldn't want. She was too sick to care what they decided for her, and that was the scariest thing of all.

She slept a couple of hours at home, but as soon as I tried to get some soup in her to go with her meds, it came right back up. It was by far the worst reaction she'd had since the first time, and I was at a loss as to what to do next. I called Dr. Miller's office but even they didn't have much to offer other than injectable meds. Neither they nor I wanted to force her to travel back to the hospital once again, and I lamented that we hadn't left her port accessed. If we'd left an access tube it would be no big deal to push some meds into it. Taylor had done that herself on the first day she had it, after the radioactive iodine. But short of taking her back to the hospital, I was going to have to do it myself, and I wasn't sure I had that in me. I knew, from experience, that port access didn't hurt Taylor. I'd seen it done quite a few times, and Andy and Deshaun had both explained exactly what they were doing and what they were going for when they did it. Make sure the needle hits the back of the port. Pull back on the plunger to check for blood return, then push it back in. If it's easy to push, then you're in the right place and can continue to push the meds. All of which was lovely information when the professionals were doing it and I was merely an observer, curious because it was happening to my wife, not because I expected to have anything to do with the process myself.

We were lucky. After that bout of vomiting things started to ease for her. She still felt gross and spent the entire day on the air mattress in the bathroom, but there were only two more episodes of vomiting, one around dinner and a three am wake-up. Given how things had gone, I promised myself that I would learn what to do for her in the future if it ever came to that. I didn't love the idea of stabbing my wife with a needle, but I thought it prudent to at least find out and try it. The team had offered to let me try the access before, and it seemed like something I should maybe know, if it would allow me to take better care of her. She didn't seem to mind the idea of me being involved in the process, though I intended to ask her as soon as she felt up to actual conversation other than calling my name when she needed me and thanking me for taking care of her once it had passed.
This time the sickness lasted into Wednesday, the first time that feeling had carried past mid-Tuesday. But just when I thought I was going to be nauseous forever, my symptoms did a one-eighty and I felt completely better. By Wednesday lunch I was the one doing the meal prep while Karlie reluctantly took care of business in the office. I felt weaker than usual for a Wednesday, but having kept down next to nothing for a day and a half I wasn't totally surprised by that feeling. Karlie had broached the topic of learning how to access my port herself if it ever came to that, and I thought it was sweet she even wanted to try it. She once considered growing up to be a doctor, and although that's more a nurse or physician assistant type task, it is something a doctor would know how to do in a pinch. I couldn't picture my Karlie actually being able to do it, she's so reluctant to hurt me, but I certainly didn't mind letting her try if she wanted to give it a go.Thursday morning was better. I was still a bit tired from the previous couple of days, but not bad. I planned to just chill at home and probably even take a nap in the afternoon to be ready to go out for Karlie's show. I'd spent an inordinate amount of time picking out a dress to wear, and a scarf to match. I'd hired the same makeup artist from the Adidas shoot to make sure I looked as me as humanly possible. I had debated off and on wearing a wig. After all, this would be my first scheduled public appearance since the diagnosis. The first time the public would be getting me and not just a photograph or a video since I'd lost my hair. But in the end, I went back to what that vlogger had said – if I was comfortable with how I looked, then the people around me would be too. And having worn a wig exactly once since this all began, for my birthday, on a whim, I was pretty sure I'd be worried about losing it or it going askew. I was comfortable with my abilities with scarves since I generally went with those or hats. And this event was too important for a beanie. It called for more formal headwear even if it WAS an athletic-wear show.I hung out backstage with Derek and Karlie and her family before the show. They weren't staying with us since I was in the middle of treatment, but there was no way they were going to miss this milestone. My dad had considered attending as well, but decided to leave that to the Klosses this time around, confident that another opportunity would come. I was doing my best to avoid the crowd, staying back and letting the chaos happen around me. My counts had been good Monday, so I wasn't overly concerned, but caution was always good under the circumstances. The models were gorgeous, all of them. I was startled to find that in addition to adult women, there were also girls of different ages modeling the kid's versions of some of her designs. Karlie had pushed for diversity of all kinds in her models. She had models in all stages of survivorship from cancer. Different heights and weights and ethnicities. A couple of models with intellectual disabilities. A model showing off the more conservative workout scarf she'd requested for those who wore them for religious rather than medical reasons. The kaleidoscope of humanity in that space overwhelmed me in the best possible way. It highlighted how beautiful all women are in a very real way and made my heart burst with pride to be married to the woman responsible for it.Her hands shook with nerves as she reviewed her note cards. She was supposed to make a speech at the end of the show, just thanking everyone for coming and thanking the models for being a part of it, and thanking Adidas for letting her take control of the line and the event, but that's not really her thing and she was definitely apprehensive having to speak publicly. I hadn't helped her with the speech other than listening to her go over it again and again, trying to ensure it was cemented in her brain in case she blanked when confronted with the crowd. I told her if she got nervous to just look at me and imagine we were back in our living room, just the two of us. I would be surrounded by our family, so even if she saw those around us, it would be only those who loved her as much as I did. When the time came for the show to start, we all gave her hugs as we filed into our seats, the last to take our places before the show began.The show itself was breathtaking. I'd seen everything before of course. And although I was an outsider in the fashion world, having attended only a handful of shows over the years, I knew this was something special. Not just because my wife orchestrated it, but because it was different, unique, and would make people talk. If the fashion world had the equivalent of watercooler talk, this show would be part of it for the rest of fashion week. Maybe all the fashion weeks overseas, though Karlie wouldn't be there to hear it. Tears of pride streamed down my face as the crowd rose to its feet when she was announced as the designer and gave her signature panther stride down the runway, nerves forgotten as she got to do what she was born to do. She met my eyes and I could see she was misty too. This wasn't just me loving and supporting what she'd done, but industry insiders and even a few representatives from her other major campaigns. They came for her name, but they stood for the work she'd done. She did an admirable job with the speech, emotion creeping in a little but not overshadowing what she had to say. We stayed up way too late sharing champagne and celebrating with our family and a few friends, and it seemed to me that the hell I'd been through at the beginning of the week was worth it if it led us to this moment.
I couldn't believe the response to the show. I expected a few of my industry contacts to show up so it wouldn't just be Taylor and the family. Maybe a few interns from the major magazines just in case it mattered. But there were a lot of big names in fashion there. A lot. People I had only hoped knew I existed. And here I was parading a mish-mash of humanity in workout clothes down a runway that was used to high-fashion models in couture so out there it would never see the streets. And not only were they present to clap politely, they stood and cheered and applauded until their hands hurt. I blacked out a bit for my speech but I think that was good, since if I'd been able to really think I might have gotten nervous. But I did what Taylor told me and locked eyes with her for the duration, and the crowd response indicated I hadn't just spouted gibberish. I felt like I must have hugged a hundred people that night, and although Derek ran interference for Taylor, I know she ended up having contact with a number of visitors as well. Largely well-wishers who just wanted her to know they were happy to see her out and about and doing okay, or who had seen the video where she revealed her scan results and were happy she was showing signs of improvement. I felt bad that we kept her up much later than she was accustomed to, but she was so happy, it seemed a shame to make her go to bed.
Friday I slept until nearly noon, unusual for me on a Friday, but not too bad when I considered what a big day Thursday had been. Karlie spent the day mostly talking to her team about how to capitalize on the success of the show, and accepting congratulations. We'd never imagined it would blow up the way that it did. I thought it was going to be amazing, but that's at least half wifely bias. But the whole day was like that. I started to get tired in the early evening but pushed through to make her something to eat so she wouldn't have to take time away from her adoring fans within the industry. I ended up going to bed alone that night, my wife still taking in all the positive press in response to her work.I woke up Saturday with a slight sore throat, and a minor case of sniffles. My first impulse was allergies. But it became clear as the day progressed that that just wasn't the case. By noon Karlie was taking my temperature every half hour, watching for me to develop a fever. She'd already called Dr. Miller's team more than once by the time it appeared in the middle of the afternoon, along with a headache and that slight dizziness that comes with having your head all stuffed up. Getting sick on chemo is a delicate proposition. On the one hand, keeping me away from the main hospital building was a goal to avoid exposure to anything worse if the illness I'd contracted was mild. On the other, there was a possibility that my body wouldn't be able to mount enough of a defense to fight off the infection, and so even a mild germ that wouldn't affect someone healthy like Karlie at all had the potential to turn much more serious for me.
I tried to hide it for Taylor's sake, but I panicked the second she told me she didn't feel well. All the warnings we'd received not to let her get sick came flooding back to me. Worse, I felt like it was my fault, since if she hadn't come to my show, she probably wouldn't have been exposed at all. Her immune system was so weak from fighting the cancer and enduring the chemo. But I knew she knew all that and tried not to scare her as much as I was scaring myself. The important thing was to keep in touch with her team and monitor her closely for any signs she was getting sicker. It was so difficult to find the line between, 'she's sick but okay at home,' and 'she should really be in the hospital even though there might be worse germs there than there are here.' She seemed lethargic to me, but no worse than post-chemo. She was still eating, although only soup, everything else was too hard to swallow. When she started to run a fever, I began to think perhaps I should take her in, but her team cautioned me to be patient and wait and watch. By the time we were ready to go to bed, Taylor had a headache and was totally stuffed up, but her fever had stayed stable below the critical level, and the team assured me she would probably be fine overnight.

I will never know what made me wake up to the incredibly faint touch at about four in the morning. But when Taylor whispered my name and said "something's wrong" I was up like a shot. Her breathing was too fast, too shallow, and her skin was clammy and hot though she was shaking like a leaf. I was torn as to what to do. I knew she needed to be in a hospital, now. But did I carry her to the car? Call the on-call oncologist at the institute? Call Dr. Miller direct? An ambulance? As soon as I turned on the light and saw just how pale she'd gotten, I stopped thinking and started doing. We were in the car driving to the main hospital before I made contact with Dr. Miller who arranged a direct admit. The minute we pulled up to the instructed door, a team of doctors and nurses surrounded us, getting her into a bed with an oxygen mask on before she was even through the door of the building. I handed my keys to someone in scrubs, not much caring if they kept the car. I wasn't leaving my wife's side for anything.

They forced us apart long enough to get her into a gown, wires underneath painting her heartbeat in bright green on the screen by her bedside. There was a mask on her face to give her oxygen, and a clip on her finger to tell how well it was doing. They'd hooked her up to multiple IV bags, though I had no idea what each one did, I could only hope they were medicines to make her better. Her beautiful blue eyes struggled to focus only for a second before giving up, and I realized in my blind panic I'd forgotten to grab her glasses. I'd texted her family while they got her settled. It had been hard to know what to say, but I'd gone with the truth. She was sick, and I was scared. Really scared. The doctors tried to explain what was happening and what was wrong, but their words washed over me like waves on the shore, leaving behind only the faintest impression. I heard antibiotics, and blood tests, and infection. I know I answered questions. How long had she been sick? How had it begun? Where was she in the treatment process for the cancer? But I honestly couldn't tell you what I said or what good it did.

Eventually they left us alone in the room, beeps and blips confirming that although Taylor was very, very sick, she was still doing okay. Numbers flashed on the screen and I suddenly wished I knew what they meant. Were these good numbers or bad numbers? Her heart rate and breathing both seemed fast to me, but was that because she was sick? I felt so lost and helpless, with nothing I could do but hold her clammy hand, pull her blankets up a bit higher, and hope. I sent prayers into the sky toward any deity that wanted to listen, to please, please take care of my wife. I texted Derek to please go by the house and get some things for us. I was still clad in pajamas, there had been no time to change. I realized I wasn't wearing actual shoes, or a bra, and my hair was probably all over the place. It didn't matter. Nothing did, except Taylor.

I didn't think I was capable of sleep, given how anxious I was to know exactly what was wrong and that she would be okay, but I must have fallen asleep, because I was awakened by alarms going off, loud, horrifying sounds and before I could even register what was happening my hand was wrenched from Taylor's and a big teddy bear of a man was bodily removing me from the room and I knew somehow that those alarms were for Taylor and then I was screaming her name and fighting the man who held me trying desperately to get back to her because she needed me goddamn it she needed me and why couldn't I go to her she couldn't leave me she just couldn't I couldn't lose her she had to be okay she just had to because I couldn't live without her...

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Time has a way of playing tricks on you in a hospital. Everything happened so fast after the alarms started going off, and yet, it seemed like time had slowed to a crawl while I waited to find out what it meant for us. I know I was asked for permission to treat Taylor, and I'm sure they tried to explain what they were going to do, but the only thing I know is that I begged them to save her life. I never learned the name of the man who practically carried me out of the room, but I know he went above and beyond taking care of me while I freaked out. I fought him pretty hard and I wish I knew who he was to apologize to him for the bruises I'm sure I gave him, but he held me tight, and once the fight had gone out of me, he let me turn around and cry on his shoulder and then gently guided me to a bench before going off to do whatever his actual job was at the hospital. I was still slumped on that bench, my face in my hands, once again sending prayers to whatever deity might be able to influence how she was doing when Derek found me, carrying a bag of things he'd grabbed from the house back when I thought we were just going to be admitted for a few days until Taylor felt better.

He ran to me as soon as he recognized my bun. He knew the fact that I was alone and not in a room with Taylor wasn't a good thing, and seeing my head in my hands and my puffy red eyes was all he needed to know something was really, really wrong. I wasn't able to produce coherent sentences, and even if I had, I had absolutely no idea what had gone wrong or where Taylor was or even if she was still alive. That killed me. The possibility that the next doctor to approach me might bear the news that she hadn't made it. That my smart, sassy, strong wife might be gone, just like that. That I might have slept through it. That she might be alone. Derek was still holding me when a man in green scrubs came to find me. I have never before in my life felt my knees go weak like they did in that moment. If Derek hadn't been there to support me, I would have just fallen into a puddle right on the floor of the hospital hallway. I wasn't at all prepared for anything he might have to say. I wasn't even sure I wanted to know. As long as he didn't say the words, I could still believe that my wife was alive.

"Mrs. Swift-Kloss?" I sort of nodded in response to his question, but I guess it wasn't definitive enough, because he looked to Derek for confirmation. Receiving it, he continued, "I'm Doctor Shah. Your wife is being transferred to the critical care unit in critical but stable condition. She is on the borderline between severe sepsis and septic shock. Her treatment is complicated by the fact that she has a penicillin allergy and is immune compromised from the cancer treatment. However, we are giving her the best medical care we can and will continue to do everything possible to help her fight the infection. For the moment, that means we've put a tube in so that we can use a machine to help her breathe. I won't lie, Mrs. Swift-Kloss, your wife is very sick. But for the moment, she is doing as well as anyone with her diagnosis can. A nurse will be along shortly to take you and your..." he trailed off, again looking at Derek who without hesitation supplied 'brother,' "up to see her in critical care as soon as the transfer is complete."

For the third time in less than an hour tears sprang to my eyes. She was alive. She was in no way out of the woods, but she wasn't gone. I wasn't going to have to make the call to her family, to our friends, that less than two days after one of the best nights we'd shared since she'd gotten sick, I'd lost her. Not yet. Derek pushed me to take a moment to change, maybe put on shoes in place of my leopard print bedroom slippers. He promised he wouldn't move from the spot where the doctor had left us, arguing that it wouldn't help Taylor get better for me to refuse to change out of my jammies. When I returned, he was still standing exactly where I'd left him. I'd been gone two minutes max, just enough to do what I had to do in the bathroom, put on workout clothes, brush my hair and emerge, and I hadn't missed anything. The nurse walked up soon after to lead us up to the critical care ward.

I felt so incredibly apprehensive going through those double doors, for a moment it felt like I couldn't breathe. Derek squeezed my hand, grounding me, and we proceeded to Taylor's side. There was a nurse in rose colored scrubs checking a monitor, blocking my view. When I could finally see Taylor, it seemed like there were tubes and wires everywhere. I couldn't imagine what they all did, but I was sure each one was doing something to keep her alive. The nurse gave me a small smile and introduced herself as Priya. She encouraged me to sit, to hold Taylor's hand and talk to her. She explained that although Taylor had to be sedated because of the ventilator, she could likely hear me and would be able to know I was there, and would be comforted by my presence. She told me to feel free to ask her anything, but all I wanted to know was if Taylor was going to be okay, and I knew nobody knew the answer to that question. As soon as I took Taylor's hand and spoke her name, the sound of her heartbeat changed on the monitor, slowing just a touch. Priya said that meant she felt better, knowing I was there, though how she knew I have no idea. Derek set our things on the floor by my chair and squeezed my shoulder.

He knew I wasn't going to leave Taylor's side for anything, so he took himself down to the cafeteria to get me some coffee and something to eat, leaving it just the two of us. I wanted to tell her I was sorry, I should have never let her go out to that stupid fashion show. I wanted to tell her I loved her, that I needed her, that she had to fight, because I couldn't do it for her. I wanted it to be me, lying sick and weak in that bed, because that would be easier to endure than worrying if she was in pain, wondering how she got so sick so fast, worrying what this might mean for her, for us, for the future. Somewhere in the distorted time of hospital life I realized I hadn't checked my phone in hours. When Derek returned with food, I handed him the phone, unlocked, and told him to do what he had to do to make sure the family knew. Priya continued to filter in and out of my awareness, checking things and adjusting tubes, and changing IVs. Derek left for a bit to call Nick and some of our other friends in the city, to take care of the cats, to pick up her family at the airport. He'd run into Mike at the house when he'd gone to get our things, and I knew that somewhere, hovering protectively nearby would be the entire security team. I felt like I should say something to them. I felt like I should somehow DO SOMETHING, anything. But all I could do was sit, my hand holding Taylor's, hoping I was offering some comfort.

Priya lifted the blanket to check Taylor's feet and I couldn't help but gasp, they were mottled purple. "Does it...is she...does she...is she in pain?" I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. Those feet did not look healthy, but if I'd been asked when it started, I wouldn't have had an answer, it had never occurred to me to check them. I was assured that amongst the many medications Taylor was receiving was one for pain that ensured she was not in any distress. I listened to the sounds of the ventilator, pushing air into her lungs and then drawing it back out, the beeping that represented her heartbeat, the sounds of people padding gently through the halls of the ward, alarms going off in a room that blessedly wasn't ours. Another doctor came in to say he was taking over her care for as long as she remained in critical care. As her wife and medical proxy, the time had come to make some hard decisions. There was a stronger antibiotic they could try to combat the infection. But like any strong medication, it carried risks. I wish I hadn't asked what those were. Very gently, he explained the pros and cons. Their goal was to keep her on this side of the border between severe sepsis and septic shock long enough for her extremely weakened immune system to mount a defense and fight the infection. The longer she remained sick, the more likely severe complications were. Complications like vision loss, tissue loss and death including amputation, brain damage, needing to re-learn the basics like speech and feeding herself and walking, if she lived to find out how they affected her at all. But the stronger drug had its own potential complications. Kidney damage, long term pain disorders, and severe hearing loss could result. But there was still no contest. None of those would matter if she didn't survive. I consented to whatever they had to do to save her life.

There was one tiny bright spot in all the gloom. They found the source of the infection. A tiny spot on her back that looked for all the world like a zit, but which actually hid a massive infection below the surface of her skin. They planned to have a surgeon excise it as soon as possible, eliminating the original source so her body could fight the bacteria that had leeched into her bloodstream to make her so sick. There was no earthly way of knowing how she'd gotten the initial wound, but one thing was sure. It hadn't been attending my fashion show that had made her so sick. They said there was no way we could have known what was happening, Taylor was so often in pain in random places, she wouldn't have had any way to know the pain there was caused by something other than general chemo effects, or perhaps the continuing death of cells after radiation. We were, they said, very lucky that she'd developed respiratory symptoms. It was unusual for it to happen that way, but was likely what saved her life thus far, because without those symptoms we might not have noticed she was sick until it was too late.

It was around the time they were giving me this news that I heard a voice I recognized in the hallway. I stuck my head out of the room "Mama, over here," and saw the one woman Taylor might want by her side more than me. Mama Swift had arrived, driven directly to the hospital by one of Derek's friends. Derek remained in the waiting area, greeting well-wishers if they appeared and fending off those we didn't know. Nick, I was informed, was at our house, cleaning from top to bottom to rid the house of the offending germs, and taking care of the cats. Papa Swift and Austin would be along within an hour as well. I broke down yet again in her arms. Having her there was both comforting and alarming. No matter how old you get, sometimes there is nothing more effective than having your mom there. But she wouldn't be there if we were sure Taylor was going to be okay.

She was so glad to see Taylor still alive, she almost didn't mind seeing her with all the tubes and wires. The one statistic that still wasn't where they wanted it with treatment was her blood pressure, which was still dangerously low. The best treatment for that was a blood transfusion, and her team was hopeful that I or a family member might be able to make a directed donation. If it turned out she and I had the same blood type, they wanted to do a whole-blood transfusion, because although it was rarely used, an infusion of white blood cells, especially white blood cells that had already encountered the same bacteria, were known to be helpful for fighting infections in those with immune compromises, like Taylor. If mine wasn't a match, they hoped maybe Austin or one of her parents would be, though they had less chance of having met the same bacteria before. Still, even their healthy white cells would help. With Andrea there, I felt like I could step away to be tested for the match.

By the time I got back, the waiting area was swarming with friends of ours. Although no one at the hospital had spoken outside about who was currently being treated, it had become pretty easily extrapolated as Swifts flooded the hospital. Scott and Austin had arrived while I was giving blood and were with her and her mom. I was informed that the hashtag 'Pray4Tay' was trending worldwide as swifties and casual fans banded together to do the only thing they could do to try to help. I asked Derek for my phone back and asked everyone to say something to her, since they'd assured me she would know I was there, I hoped that maybe she would be able to hear the force of all the voices of people who loved us enough to just keep a vigil in the hospital waiting room. They saw the gauze and wrap on the inside of my elbow and after I explained, expressed hope that it would turn out I was a match and they were permitting the donation. I'd given the blood anyway, figuring even if Taylor couldn't use it, it couldn't hurt. Many of our friends headed down to donate as well, though Derek hung his head sadly as the call went out to go and give. The US still has very stupid rules about who may donate. Never mind that he's in a committed monogamous relationship and his blood is totally clean. I gave him a quick hug and told him I wouldn't have survived this far without him, and then I headed back to see how my wife was doing.

Miraculously, I saw them hanging a bag of blood with my name on it above her head. We'd been a blood type match and my blood had been rushed through testing. It made me feel good to know that my blood was helping her fight when there was nothing I could do to make her better. As I started playing the video of our friends' voices, a machine began to beep, a steady, slightly angry sounding beep that was, given the context, alarming. But it turned out to just be the machine that was feeding her having run out of whatever it was putting into her stomach. She'd gotten the feeding tube she'd hoped to avoid, but she needed it if she was going to be strong enough to defeat this. I hugged her father and Austin and set about explaining as best I could what her situation was. As wrenching as it had been for me to hear, it was harder still to see the men in her life, the two guys whose entire goal in life was to keep her safe and happy, face the reality that she was teetering on the edge. Austin swore under his breath and while either of the parental Swifts would ordinarily have had something to say about it, not a word was uttered in reproach. He'd merely said aloud what we were all thinking. Scott broke down at the sight of his baby girl so sick. He hadn't been around as much to see her through chemo and the effects of all of that, but they'd kept in touch enough that he knew she was fighting through it as best she could, right up until this stupid infection knocked her down.

Dr. Miller stopped by to check on her, which reminded me just how precarious the situation was. Because being so sick meant postponing the rest of her treatment indefinitely, if there was still a Taylor to treat. She couldn't undergo more chemo until she was fully recovered, likely a month or two in the future. She actually gave me a hug, assuring me that this happened, sometimes, and that there was nothing she or I could have done. Unfortunately, immune compromise is just a side effect of the treatment, and given the source of the infection, there was likely nothing anyone could have done to prevent it. She assured us all that she would continue to monitor Taylor while she was being treated, she was still very much an active member of her team, and would do anything she could to help us. There wasn't anything, of course, but it mattered that she cared enough to come by, to check in. She hadn't been on-call in the night when I'd called the Institute for the direct admit, but it appeared that as soon as she could, she'd come over.

We were cleared from the room while they performed the surgery to remove the pocket of infection from her back. Compared to the thyroidectomy, the surgery took almost no time, just enough for us to join the well-wishers still crowding the waiting area and assure them that although we loved them all and were grateful for the good thoughts they were sending Taylor's way, they should go home. Nothing good was going to happen that night, and we'd just as soon assume nothing bad was going to either. As the last of our friends dispersed, I was beset by the reality that for the foreseeable future, the was my home. I would leave this hospital only if I could take my Taylor with me. My parents planned to return to the city in a day or so to pick things up for us if we needed them. This wasn't going to be a quick healing process like I hoped, all I could hope for was that healing would take place at all.

* * *

We settled into a routine of sorts. She was never apart from Andrea and I at the same time. Scott and Austin were happy to be the runners, getting us food, going home for clean clothes, or phone chargers, or making statements to the media. We didn't want to. If they hadn't been snapped arriving at the hospital that first day, we likely could have kept what was happening on the down low. But everyone knew that her whole family wouldn't all show up at once if she wasn't seriously ill. We still kept the details vague, but at the same time, we couldn't hide the fact that she was in a very perilous place. Those first few days, she continued to get worse. The purple splotches on her feet began to deepen in color and spread up her legs, first to her ankles, then her calves, then appearing at the tips of each graceful finger. My blood wasn't enough to maintain her blood pressure, so Austin donated as well. She wasn't exactly responsive, held in a sort of limbo by the sedation, but occasionally she would whimper, or her hand would flutter gently, and I would know she was still in there, somewhere. Priya and the other nurses kept a close watch and would give her more pain medicine if it appeared she was at all in pain, which made me feel slightly better.

Physical therapy came twice a day to move her limbs gently and keep her from getting stiff. At the same time she would be given gentle sponge baths and repositioned in bed to avoid bed sores. That was almost harder than just watching her lay there, watching them move her like a doll, while she offered no resistance. Periodically, bags would empty and new ones would be hung, and it didn't seem like there was any particular time of day for any of it, though I'm sure there was. I realized just how much I'd lost track of time when I went to go get a coffee and get some air and discovered it was three in the morning. I didn't know how long we'd been there, not any longer. Not the date, or even day of the week. My time was measured by the slow, even breaths the ventilator pushed in and out, and the beeps and blips that signified there was some life left in the body on the bed that vaguely resembled the love of my life.

Only the four of us were allowed in the room with her, and mostly not at the same time. When my family came to visit, I met them in the waiting area. It was hard to explain to them where she was, when I knew so little. My father did come back in his capacity as an emergency medicine doctor, but all he could do was affirm that she was getting the best care possible. He wasn't a miracle worker. He reviewed her charts, and the best he could offer was that she was holding her own. I only wished there was something we could do, all of us. I knew Scott, and Austin, and Andrea all visited the hospital chapel. The Swifts aren't even particularly religious, but I envied them any kind of faith at all. I found it hard to believe that if there were a higher power up there, he or she would let Taylor suffer like she had. Let her continue to struggle through cancer treatments, build her up with the news that she was finally getting better, only to knock her down with a bacterial infection that could kill her, or leave her with lasting damage beyond anything I'd even thought to worry about.

The rest of my family went home again after that, but my dad continued to check in, even speaking with her doctors from time to time, in a professional capacity. He came with her main doctor one day, calling the four of us together. Her team believed she was reaching a turning point, and felt it might be time to take steps to move that along. They wanted to switch her from an oral breathing tube to a tracheostomy for more stability, something I'd resisted because she already had so much scar tissue in her neck. For the first time since she was admitted, I cried. It was just too much. I knew my dad wouldn't be advising it if it wasn't absolutely necessary, but that made it all the scarier. He broke out of doctor mode to hold me while I cried, but it didn't fix it. I knew if the time came, I would sign the papers. I would sign anything if it was the choice between saving her and losing her.

* * *

I guess, in a way, my prayers were answered after that conversation. It didn't happen all at once. But slowly, her blood pressure began to rise to normal, which let her heart rate slow to where it should be. They were able to turn off the mechanical part of the ventilator and found that she could maintain oxygen levels breathing on her own, with a reasonable breathing rate. And so they were able to back off the sedative medications that were keeping her unresponsive. As those processed out of her system, she became responsive enough for them to take the tube out and allow her to breathe on her own again.

The first six times she woke up, it was all new to her. They'd warned us that after so much time with the breathing tube in, she might struggle to speak. Her voice was hoarse, but not as bad as after the thyroidectomy, but she could speak. Her voice was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard, breathing tube rasp and all. Each time she awoke, I had to explain what had happened. How sick she'd been. The infection that had almost killed her. The week she'd spent in critical care, walking the fine line between life and death. The first few, she didn't stay with me long enough to cover all the trauma her body had been through. Sometimes I wondered if she was listening to me at all, even though she'd asked a question. She remembered bits and pieces, hearing us talk to her. She remembered Austin crying, but not why. She remembered my dad talking to her and telling her that it was going to be okay. But she also remembered being scared, and not understanding, and beeping, and pain, and screaming. I had to apologize for that last one, since I was pretty sure I was the only person who'd been screaming nearby.

She was weak, and uncoordinated after her week under sedation. She could barely take two steps from her bed to a chair. It took her twenty minutes to feed herself a cup of jello because she refused to accept help, or spill even a little, but struggled to get the spoon to mouth coordination going so soon after waking up. It seemed like she spent at least as much time sleeping as she did awake, especially those first few days. She was confused a lot, asking the same questions over and over, but then seeming unable to follow the answers. Still, she was undeniably my Taylor. Her dry humor was still intact as she joked over the stupid jello. She didn't ask about the cancer. I guess she didn't want to know. That was good, because I had no idea how to answer.
So much of my time in critical care, even after I was 'awake' is a blur. Everything seemed fuzzy, like I was watching it through a dream sequence. And hearing it, well, half the time I swear they were looking at me like I was crazy, and they kept asking if I was listening. I couldn't always tell what really happened and what I dreamed. I don't know how many times Karlie, and my mom, and my dad and Austin had to explain what had happened to me. Between the medications and having been so ill for so many days, it seemed like nothing worked right. I could speak, but my own voice sounded foreign, and I couldn't muster much strength behind it, but yet, my family kept telling me to keep it down. It was a little hoarse from the breathing tube, but nothing like after surgery. My feet hurt, like they do when they've been asleep, and they looked crazy, all splotchy and purple. There was purple on my fingers too, but not as bad. And they told me it could have been so much worse. People lose limbs being only a little sicker than I was. But mine would make a full recovery, eventually, though there might be a little scarring. My kidney function was remarkably high considering all the work they'd had to do between chemo and the meds to fight the infection. My eyesight was terrible, but no worse than it had been before I got sick.But then there was the hearing test. I could hear, obviously. I'd had conversations, confused though they might have been. But at one point the tech stopped the test and reminded me to click the button every time I heard the tone on the left, too, and I knew then that something wasn't right. The tests revealed some minor hearing loss on the right as well, but the left, I had only about thirty percent of what I should have. That's why I'd been missing chunks of explanations and why I'd gotten so many weird looks, and even why my own voice sounded weird. Anything said on my left was getting lost in ambient noise. As a musician, I was devastated. I play by ear, a lot of the time. Writing, well, I mostly hear that in my head, so that might not be such a problem, but how would I know if I'd gotten the recording where I wanted it if I couldn't hear it? I didn't cry until they got me back to the room where my family was waiting for me, but I guess they could see in my eyes something was wrong. An audiologist came in to explain the results in depth.
The antibiotics they gave Taylor were of a kind known to cause hearing loss, especially in high doses. The likelihood of antibiotic ototoxicity, a fancy word for destruction of hearing due to those kinds of medications was even higher because of the kind of chemo Taylor was on before she got the infection. That kind of hearing loss is permanent. They couldn't get her hearing back. But, because she had residual hearing in both ears, it was likely that hearing aids could restore it. And if that failed, cochlear implant could be a last resort option. Her audiologist didn't think that would be necessary. He showed us his own hearing aids, which he'd had since he was sixteen and made the mistake of holding a cherry bomb in his hand a bit too long before it exploded right next to his ear. And then he showed us a video of himself playing bass for a local band. He explained that he used custom in-ears to play that combined usual monitors with the hearing aid technology. Seeing that made her smile.
Of course my audiologist was a bass player. But it was what I needed. If the audiologist had been an athlete, or a painter or something, he never could have convinced me. But Dr. Reddy was the perfect match. Someone who would understand on a personal level the loss I was experiencing. He explained that a non-musician would probably have tried for years to compensate for the loss using the residual hearing they had, and just nodding and smiling. But he completely understood that for me, being able to not only hear, but hear pitch accurately, and hear the balance of instruments and all the variations in tone and frequency was integral to my way of life. And he intended to help me get there. He explained that it takes time to find the right brand, and style, and fit, and then longer to get them perfectly calibrated for a musician's ear, but, the good news was, we could start right away. For many people with hearing loss, getting hearing aids is a shocking experience, because they've lived with the loss for so long, things seem uncomfortably loud. It wouldn't be so bad for me, because a week ago, I could hear normally. But he cautioned that I might find that the sound seemed unbalanced or uncomfortable at first while they worked on programming them exactly the way I needed.Dr. Miller came by just as we were trying out the second pair. The first ones had been uncomfortable in my ears, and that wasn't something that could be changed by programming, but the second pair, though imperfectly balanced, did actually help me hear. I knew she'd come into the room, even though my back was to the door. First time that had happened in days. It was my first day back in the regular ward. All of the doctors I'd worked with kept telling me how well I was doing. I found it hard to see getting out of breath using a walker to get myself to the bathroom as doing well, but even Dr. Kloss assured me that my recovery was bordering on miraculous. My father-in-law wasn't much of an expert when it came to oncology, but his time in the emergency room had brought him quite a few sepsis patients over time. So when he told me this was an abnormally good outcome, I believed him. Dr. Reddy actually clapped with glee when I turned to see who had come into the room. Dr. Miller came over to give me a hug, and expressed amazement that I was sitting in a chair, lending further credence to the idea that I was ahead of the curve when it came to recovery. I was still on IV antibiotics, though not the same ones that had taken my hearing, and still being fed through a tube in my nose as well as trying to feed myself. It was those things keeping me in the hospital, they expected for another few days.Dr. Miller wanted me to know that although I'd had to cut the third chemo cycle short and wouldn't be able to resume for at least a month, maybe longer depending on how my recovery went, she was still confident in the treatment. Before I left the hospital, she wanted me to get a PET scan, just to see where we were, so that the team could make adjustments. They were likely going to have to change my drug cocktail slightly. We couldn't risk dropping my white count so low with the fourth cycle. But she wanted the most up to date information before making those decisions, along with possibly Dr. Park, since I'd responded well to the first two cycles with radiation. Most important, for the moment, was that I continue to get stronger, so that when we COULD start cancer treatment again, I would be as ready as possible to fight.I got visits from other members of my team, one or two a day while I was finishing up the antibiotics and getting ready to go home. I was working twice a day with physical therapists, trying to get stronger. It was exhausting. Just trying to get to the bathroom took every ounce of energy I had. More than once, I'd had to get my mom, or Karlie, or a nurse to help me back to my bed. There were times I didn't really want to talk to anyone, though I found it comforting to have them nearby. Austin was particularly good at that, just sitting within arm's reach, reading, or watching something on the iPad. Sometimes we'd start a movie together, and even though I almost always fell asleep just a few minutes into it, he was always willing to watch again with me when I woke up, no words needed. And my dad was the one who would stay at night, once it was clear I wasn't letting this infection take me down, so he was there to hold me when I had nightmares that I was getting sicker again, or that recovery was the dream and I was really still sick. Karlie still didn't like to leave me. But she couldn't just live in the hospital. It wasn't that I didn't want her there. But I wanted her to work out, and go home and let the cats know their mommies were coming back. I wanted her to see people who weren't wearing scrubs and masks and yellow gowns over their clothes. I wanted her to breathe non-hospital air.And I wanted to go with her. I was going to need a lot of help, when I didn't have nurses or techs anymore. I knew my family would stay as long as I needed them. I also knew Karlie would try to take care of me all by herself. I hated feeling helpless. I hated that conversations lasting more than fifteen minutes had a greater than fifty-fifty chance of me falling asleep. I sometimes woke up and forgot, and would find myself halfway to the bathroom when I realized it wasn't a good idea. Or a doctor or nurse would try to talk to me from my left, and I would realize I hadn't put in my hearing aids. I knew that it would one day become as natural as wearing my glasses. It was nice, I thought, to be slightly functional without them. I was pretty blind without my glasses, but at least if I kept the speaker on my right and focused, I could get through a conversation. It wasn't music, never would be, but it was something. I was still nervous about that. Music. With my hearing the way it was. Dr. Reddy was sure he could get my hearing aids to work like my ears used to. But when I couldn't do anything else, when I couldn't concentrate enough to read, or do puzzles, or even watch TV, that was always where my brain went. The what-if.
I ran into Jack and Lena getting coffee the morning Taylor was slated to be discharged. I knew she would be exhausted, just by the process of getting her into the car and getting her home. But I also knew my wife. And I knew she was going to have to try out the music, sooner rather than later, if she was going to get over the hump of worrying that she couldn't do it anymore. The infection and the medication to treat it might have taken her hearing, but it hadn't done anything to her musical genius. That, I knew, was still inside her. And it wasn't going anywhere. She just needed to prove it to herself. Jack agreed to come over the next day and play around a bit with whatever she had. And in the absence of anything of hers to work on, he said he would bring over some of his own stuff. Ella's album was done, first single due in a week, so there wasn't any of that to play with. Ed's album was coming out the same day as Ella's single. I knew that had to be eating at her as well. Here were two of her closest musical friends, getting ready to re-join that world, while she was dealing with a setback in her treatment and permanent changes to her body. Her therapist had been by twice since she'd gotten out of the critical care unit and back into the regular ward of the hospital, and I'd stepped away to let her say anything she needed too. I'd been to see mine three times, and she'd only been out a week. But I wanted to make sure I was in the right place for her.
I knew everyone expected me to be fragile. And the nightmares said maybe I wasn't handling what happened as well as my waking mind liked to pretend. But honestly, I was more worried about how Karlie was coping. I had known she would beat herself up about the fact that I got sick, and was incredibly relieved to know that it hadn't been connected at all to the fashion show. That had been such a good night. Such an amazing accomplishment for her. And that was what I wanted to talk about and focus on. It was going to take time for me to feel better. And even more time for me to build back what limited strength I'd had after two and a half chemo cycles. It seemed I was going to have to really practice patience while I healed. But while I stayed home and struggled to build enough strength to get from my bedroom to my living room, Karlie could be out accomplishing things. Not having treatment for an entire month meant she could travel for work, and not worry about missing something for me. If I could convince her to do it. And to do that, I had to be okay.I probably slept for two hours after the twelve-minute drive home from the hospital. It had been nice, but surreal to get home and find all three of my security guys prepared to welcome me home and make sure I was comfortable. There were cards all over the table from friends, and Tree had spent quite a bit of time compiling tweets and tumblr posts from fans who'd wished me well. Fans. I needed to let them know I was okay. That I was out of the hospital and getting better. I didn't know what they knew. How much they'd been told. I'd kind of forgotten that they might even know I'd been sick. And that told me just how sick I'd been. But I was home now, in a bed that didn't beep, where the lights turned off all the way, and no one was going to wake me up at 2 am to find out how well I was sleeping. I still had oral antibiotics to take, an physical therapists coming to the house to help me continue to get stronger, but all that was worth it if I got to be home. Even Karlie seemed inclined to go to bed early that first night, and I don't think I'd slept as well the entire two weeks in the hospital as I did that night, with my head on my wife's chest, still able, in spite of everything, to fall asleep listening to her heartbeat.

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Waking up in my own bed shouldn't be disorienting, but putting my feet on the floor and feeling carpet under them instead of hospital slipper socks and cold tile was a welcome source of confusion. Karlie wasn't in bed with me, unsurprising since there was a good chance I'd been asleep for twelve hours or so, but I couldn't figure out where she was. I was used to being able to hear her moving around the house, unless she was in the soundproofed music room, and I missed that. I knew I wasn't supposed to try much of anything without someone to help me, but I really needed to pee, so I put on my glasses and gingerly made my way to the bathroom. Business concluded, I closed the lid so I could sit while I figured out what to do next. I wanted to shower. It seemed like no amount of warm, fragrant showers could wash away the slightly dirty feeling that came from having spent a little over two weeks in the hospital. They'd been giving me sponge baths all along, and one of the nurses had helped me shower the day I was discharged, but I still just felt...hospitaly. Still, I was very aware of my own limits and knew that even with the lawn chair Jeff had helpfully put in there when he and Mike and Sean had banded together to prepare the house for my return, trying to do it myself was going to be an epic disaster."Morning, love," read a handwritten note on the vanity counter next to my hearing aids. "If you want to shower, just yell, I'm only downstairs. Otherwise, if you feel up to it, put these in and take the elevator down, I'll make breakfast. Or lunch. Or whatever. I'm so glad to have you home *heart*" As if on cue, my stomach growled. Breakfast it was. I did want to hear my wife in the kitchen so I put in my hearing aids and turned them on. I stuck my feet into a pair of slippers and made my way to the elevator, where I slumped against the wall. I'd only been home a day and was already frustrated with how easily I got tired and how difficult simple things were. I had a feeling I was going to make myself crazy fighting my own limitations, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I was going to get stronger gradually, and pushing too hard was only going to make it worse. I was definitely going to be my own worst enemy for a while.Karlie's face lit up as the elevator door opened. I guess she'd heard it working, because she was right there to greet me and help me to the chair in the living room I'd watched her cook from when I'd been banned from her immediate presence by the radioactive iodine. How could that have been only a few months before, when it seemed a lifetime ago? Still, once I was settled in the armchair, she kissed me deeply. "You have no idea how much I've missed that," she sighed. Part of me wanted to just stay like that. The two of us sharing an armchair in our living room, limbs intertwined. Because in that moment, I could pretend things were normal. Like nothing had changed. But my stomach growled again and so Karlie pushed herself up to go into the kitchen. Hungry though I was, it was hard for me to eat much, so she just made me some scrambled eggs with cheese and some toast, but she brought the plate and then sat with me while I ate. When I'd finished, I started to get sleepy, and the next thing I knew I was waking up under a blanket on the couch, with Meredith sleeping on the sofa back above me and Olivia curled up in the hollow under my legs.
The woman on the elevator might not have looked exactly the same as on our wedding day, couture lace gown and elegant up-do replaced with mismatched pajamas, fleece beanie and pink camo slippers, but she was just as beautiful. She looked too thin, too pale, and too tired, but she smiled at me, parting rosy lips to reveal perfect white teeth and none of that mattered. Meeting her lips with mine still felt the same as it had when we were young and unsure where we were going, but sure it was right. It still made the same blessed butterflies take flight in my stomach, and made the same warmth spread from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. Long slender fingers still tangled in my hair, and she still made the same low moan deep in her throat that I'm still not sure she's aware I can hear. But just eating eggs and toast left her exhausted enough that she fell asleep before I could even clear away the remains. I lifted her gently from her chair to the more comfortable couch and spread her favorite fleece over her. Watching her sleep was much more pleasurable knowing it was a healthy rest.

I'd invited Jack over to work with her in the music room, but I realized what an impractical invitation that had been. I was confident she would want to, but had no idea if she had the stamina to get anything done, or even when she'd be awake. I texted him while she was sleeping on the couch to see if he was still interested, even if I couldn't guarantee when, or for how long, and he had replied with a question of if he could just come over and maybe make use of the music room until she woke up. Then she could work with him however long she could stay awake and timing wouldn't be so much of an issue. It was a deceptively simple solution. I told him to come on over, and he arrived with a huge duffle of supplies. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what was in there, but ushered him into the studio and shut the door, allowing him to work in soundproofed bliss until Taylor was up to join him. She slept through it all, her body still working to build back the strength she'd lost to the infection. I realized he didn't truly know why I thought it was so important for her to get back to work so quickly. It was one detail we hadn't shared with the world yet. Only my family and hers and her doctors knew about the hearing loss. I wondered if I should tell him, clue him in to exactly why he was there. But I decided it was her story to share, unless once she woke up she wanted me to be the one to clue him in.
Karlie was sitting in my chair working on her laptop, three different pens sticking out of her bun, her tongue poked out in concentration. She had no idea I was watching her, her fingers flying across the keys, nose wrinkled over a particularly difficult question. I realized she was squinting a bit at the screen and made a mental note to have my girl's eyes checked, though it could have been part of her concentration. Either way, it was adorable. I was content to just lie there for a bit, watching my girl at work. It had been a while since I'd had the opportunity. I felt pretty good, actually, for having been so sick. As long as I didn't need to go anywhere or do anything, it was a sort of pleasant exhaustion. I wasn't nauseated like during chemo, there was little pain, and with my glasses on and hearing aids in, I could see and hear. I was going to have to work to calibrate them, the tapping of Karlie's keyboard was way too loud, as was Meredith's purring, but I couldn't hear the signal on the washing machine at all and only knew it had gone off because Karlie set aside her laptop to go move the clothes from the washer to the dryer.
"Look who's up," I spoke softly not to startle Taylor and then thought how absurd that was. If she didn't have her hearing aids turned on, she might not be able to hear me at all. That was going to take some getting used to. She'd always had really acute hearing and been able to hear me moving anywhere in the house. And now, without her hearing aids, she might not hear me right next to her. Fortunately, they were on and she smiled, gently, reaching her hand up to pull me down for a kiss. That was one thing I loved about recovering Taylor, she was very affectionate. She hadn't been the one to suffer through worrying that the last kiss we shared might be the last one ever, but she felt extra clingy, just as I did. She'd slept the night before with her head on my chest, and I wondered if it had been satisfying or sad. I knew listening to my heartbeat was one of her favorite things, and I worried that maybe she'd lost that.
After Karlie and I kissed, I could see her eyes go misty. I was okay. But I knew she was still coping with the fact that there had been a while when I wasn't. I told her I was okay. I was alive. She took my hand and put it on her chest, over her heart, and I realized the unspoken question, what she was too afraid to put words to. "I can. I still can. Even without them." My eyes grew misty too, realizing what she was afraid I'd lost. I'd worried too, laying my head on her chest the night before, and been relieved to still be able to listen to my favorite sound. It had to be the right, for me to hear it, but I could, and that was what mattered. I suspected that we were in sync enough that even if I'd suffered the greater loss on both sides, I would have been able to feel it, use the residual ability to hear through bone conduction to pick up the beat, even if it didn't sound the same. But with all the things I'd lost, that wasn't one of them. She kissed me again, then, slow and deep, as though the union of our lips was the only thing in the world that mattered. She didn't try to take it anywhere though, just letting our mouths be the focus, no need for anything else."Jack is in the music room," she said when we finally broke apart. "I know you need to prove it to yourself, that you've still got it. You won't be whole until you do. Ed's busy with his album release. I hope that's okay?" She looked so apprehensive, as if she was worried I'd be mad. Or maybe that wasn't it. She was maybe worried that trying to prove that I could still write, still record, same as I always had would prove I couldn't. I assured her she was probably right, that taking the time to test things out was probably for the best, and let her carry me bridal-style down to the music room, saving whatever energy my nap had given me for the studio downstairs."Hey there, stranger," Jack smiled, coming over to give me a hug. "It's so good to see you." We hugged tightly, enjoying the reunion. He gave Kar another hug and she told me she was off to work out while we worked, and she'd just be downstairs if I needed her. We sat on the music room couch. He knew only the basic details, what was made public. He was among those there in the waiting room the first day, after someone caught my mom and then father and brother arriving, concern etched on their faces. He knew I had a severe infection that got into my blood, that it took a lot to help my body mount a defense, and that although it was going to take time, I was going to be okay, at least when it came to the aftermath of the infection. But he didn't know the one card I was still holding close to my chest. The reason he was there. He saw me take a deep breath and gulp, and reached out a hand to hold mine, knowing this was probably a hard story. He and I have talked through a lot of those, working together. It's rare for me to be able to write a song about something that's ended without breaking down at some point, he's held me through more than his share of tears.I guessed he'd noticed the hardware in my ears. It wasn't crazy conspicuous, and once my hair grew back you probably wouldn't notice them most of the time. But they were there, and new, and I figured he was observant enough to know. Still, I reached up and removed the one in my right ear and held out my palm, upturned, the hearing aid lying there, a catalyst to a conversation I wasn't sure how to start. He glanced at the device in my palm, then met my eyes, wordlessly encouraging me to speak."Without it, I can hear about seventy percent of what I should be able to. The left one is worse, less than thirty percent there. Without that one, I'm effectively deaf on that side, since I can only hear things that are super loud. I can't make out speech at all, over there. On the right, I can carry on a conversation if I concentrate and look at the speaker, even without them." I put the hearing aid back in, letting him digest what I'd had to say so far. He'd squeezed my hand a couple times in encouragement. He knew this wasn't a conversation I'd practiced much, but one I was probably going to have to have a lot. One I would one day have to tell the world. But not yet.He tapped my forehead "Do you still hear the music in here?" he asked. I nodded. "Then we'll make it work, even if you can't hear it here" he gently brushed my left ear with his right hand. With that he asked if I had anything to work on, and I sat at the piano and put my fingers to the keys for the first time in weeks. We tried. We really did. I had ideas and Jack and I can usually fall into sync very easily. It didn't take long for me to get frustrated. Nothing sounded right. The upper register wasn't coming through hardly at all, and if he tried to play a bit of bass, it was crazy loud and uncomfortable. I hated it. I couldn't write at all that way, not being able to hear half the music and being bombarded by the other half."Auuuuuggggghhhhh!!!!!" the scream of frustration ripped out of my mouth and before I realized what I was doing, I grabbed the bottle of water off the top of the piano and threw it with all the strength I could muster, making Jack duck or risk a water bottle to the face. He put up his hands in the clear 'don't shoot' position, and he backed out of the room as I picked up and threw journals and pens and a vase of flowers that made a satisfying shattering noise and a generously sized hole in the wall. I found myself yelling obscenities that would have made a sailor blush. But the anger and fight that had overwhelmed me for a few moments was gone as quickly as it had come and left me utterly exhausted. I had tears streaming down my face and I was shaking with the effort when Karlie dared to come in and survey the damage. She didn't say a word, just pulled me close to cuddle me on the couch while I recovered from the sudden burst of emotion.
When Jack came running up the stairs, I thought maybe Taylor had passed out or wasn't feeling well. I should have anticipated anger and frustration. We knew going in that her hearing aids weren't calibrated the way she needed them to be just yet. But even knowing that my wife had a tendency to wing phones across the room didn't prepare me for the way she'd destroyed the music room. None of that mattered though. Those were just things. I could probably get Jeff to patch the hole she'd left in the wall without even calling in contractors. I'd have to do something about the glass on the floor and the water from the flowers, but it was all savable. What concerned me was the way her wrath seemed to have also affected some of the instruments. She hadn't gone guitar smashing or anything, but I didn't know if any of them might have been damaged. And Jack's gear, I didn't know if she might have gotten any of his things caught up in her momentary rage, but I certainly didn't want my invitation to result in damage to his things. I was sure she wouldn't either.

Mood swings were a predicted side effect of her illness; especially given the loss she'd suffered. I didn't think she'd truly mourned that yet, and thought this might be part of the grieving process. The doctors couldn't fix her hearing. Not completely. They could do their best to correct it with hearing aids, but it wasn't the same and never would be. So if she felt a little rage about that, well, I couldn't blame her. I wished for the billionth time that I could take it from her, or fix it. I would give up one hundred percent of my hearing if it would get hers back. I would hate to live in a world where I couldn't hear her sing, but it would be worth it to know she still could, and didn't have to worry about her ability to do what she loved. I knew she'd be okay, in the end, once they got her hearing aids where they needed to be. She still had the music in her, and once she knew she could let it out and still have it turn out like she wanted, she would be able to be the same Taylor. But for how, all I could do was hold her and hope she understood how much I cared.
* * *I apologized to Jack the next day. We returned his gear on the way to my appointment with the immunologist, yet another specialist who basically was supposed to check my blood counts and figure out when I got to a place where I was strong enough to resume treatment. That was the real frustration. Having survived the infection and still not being 'better.' I feel like such a different person than I was six months ago. Like a lifetime has passed. I know I'm lucky, really, to still be doing okay, but sometimes I feel like I've lost so much. A lot of it will come back. My hair, my strength, my curves. Assuming I beat the cancer, someday all I'll have left of this journey will be a few scars, a pair of hearing aids, and the memories. But I barely recognize the woman in the mirror some days. My therapist and the doctors at the hospital all said it would be totally normal for me to have crazy mood swings and be angry and frustrated as I healed, but I guess I thought I'd already dealt with enough mental health issues that I would feel it coming or something. But it caught me completely off guard, going from happily writing with Jack to suddenly going all Hulk on the music room. My therapist and I are gonna have a lot of dates coming up I expect while I deal with all of this.Karlie had given me a new shoulder tattoo that morning, this one a rainbow unicorn because she said they didn't have pegacorns. It actually made me feel a bit more secure, it's become our thing, Karlie's way of saying she has my back no matter what I'm going through. The immunologist's report was largely good news. I was building my white counts back up slowly but surely, and showed no signs of infection. I was pretty tired, but Karlie took me to Dr. Reddy's office as well, where she had a brilliant idea for calibrating my hearing aids. She handed him a copy of each of my albums. We'd tried calibrating them to new music, and speech, and television shows, but obviously, my own songs were the best way to get it done, because those songs, especially the ones I'd played recently, I knew inside and out, top to bottom. I knew every note, every tiny background noise. From the starting of the turntable in I Know Places (no, it's not a pen click), to the mbira in Clean, there isn't a single sound I wouldn't know I was missing if the frequency wasn't getting transmitted, and I know exactly what the balance should be. I threw my arms around my wife, grateful that while I was still recovering, she could demonstrate her brilliance and help me get to a better place.
I couldn't believe we hadn't thought of it before. It was Jack's suggestion really, though he'd told me to take credit for it, having her get her hearing aids set up while using the music she knew the best – her own. She was so excited, even though it took hours to get it right, so that she could hear every note and random background noise and things I couldn't even hear with my relatively good hearing and hear them with the right balance, so that the correct sounds were more dominant and others took a background role. I got worried when I saw tears form in her eyes, but they were good tears, ones that came to her eyes when she first got to hear Welcome to New York sound exactly the way it had the day the album was released. She was fully exhausted, but there was one more appointment we had to make – Dr. Miller and the oncology team. Because as much as it sucked, she still had cancer to contend with, beyond the infection and the aftermath of that.

But Dr. Miller and her team had more good news. The PET results from her last day in the hospital had shown even fewer affected lymph nodes remaining. The ones under both arms remained, as did three in her groin and two near her spine. But her legs remained clear, and the numbers were much lower in the remaining areas. In spite of everything and the pause in her treatment, Taylor was continuing to get better. They hoped that by adding radiation back for the last round of chemo, the shift in the chemo drug cocktail would have minimal effects on its ability to fight, and that she still might have only one round of chemo left. Ideally, there would be nothing left within a month after the end of round four, but if they got it down to one or two affected nodes, they could be removed surgically to finish the eradication of the cancer cells. After that there will be maintenance chemo, a much lower dose, lower side effect drug to ensure that any missed cells are caught. Right then that sounded like heaven, having my wife get to finish the harsh primary chemo and achieve remission.
I fell asleep on the car ride home from the hospital. I knew I would. In fact, I slept most of the rest of the week, other than having Jack back over to get a couple things we missed cleaning up the music room and apologize once again for my behavior. He actually helped Karlie patch the hole I put in the wall while I watched from the couch. And when he played back the recordings from our work that day, it sounded like I'd heard it in my head, and I knew it was going to be okay. I was still going to get frustrated. I still needed to mourn the loss I'd suffered and get comfortable with my new reality. I needed to balance my need to find the good with the fact that it was okay to be angry that I'd been dealt such a shitty hand. It was okay to be sad that I couldn't hear my wife in the shower without my hearing aids in, if I wasn't turned the correct direction. It was even okay that I'd had a bit of a breakdown. The one thing I wasn't ready for, not yet, was telling the public.As a compromise, and because my therapist said it would be good for me, I called at least one friend each day the rest of the week, just to check in. They said I didn't have to tell everyone that I spoke to that I'd suffered hearing loss, though it would help me get used to it myself the more people I told. It was more about the fact that they estimated only half of them would even notice the new hardware in my ears. The majority of my friends would probably just be glad to see me upright and infection free and getting stronger. Yes, it was part of my life, but thanks to technology it didn't define it. Years ago, it might have spelled the end of my music career. Now, it was just an inconvenience, something I could live with, though it wouldn't be my first choice.
I was proud of Taylor. Each day that week she called at least two friends on FaceTime and talked to nearly all of them about ALL of the effects of the infection and the medication it had taken to save her life. As the one who authorized the use of the stronger antibiotics despite the risks, it matters to me to see her adjusting and moving forward. I was waiting for the day we fought and she threw it in my face that this was my fault. I knew it would happen, though who knew what I would do to make her angry enough to cut that deep. But for the moment it was going well. She'd actually giggled talking to Ed and hearing her first British accent with the hearing aids.

Cara had somehow found out by the time Taylor called her on Friday, so when she answered, she put on her best American dialect just to mess with her. A typically Cara response which made Taylor double up laughing because for just a second, she thought maybe somehow it was the hearing aids translating the accent before she realized it was just Cara using her acting chops. That's one thing I love about Cara, she didn't treat Taylor any differently because she was sick. Some of our friends hadn't known how to act, and Cara just acted like Cara, a bit mischievous and cheeky. She treated Taylor like anyone else, and let Taylor be the one to limit what they do if she needed to. For Taylor, besides Ed, who she'd been a bit apprehensive about talking to just because as a musician she knew he would note the loss in a way that not everyone would, she was most nervous about telling Abigail and Brit, two friends who'd known her the longest. But they were both just happy to hear from her, and while they were saddened by the loss of her hearing as everyone was, they were just glad she was healing.
I did well, I thought, with passing on the news. My therapist was right. The more people I told, the less difficult it became. Still, there was one other group that needed to know. My team. The last I'd talked to them had been before I got sick with the infection, and though they obviously knew I had survived and was doing alright, none of them, whether publicity or music related, knew the story I'd told to about a dozen of my closest friends. Tree actually flew in to meet with me in person. She'd been worried about me as a friend too, not just as her employer. I was wearing my wife's workout gear and a scarf when she came over and she was so concerned about my overall health that we were probably twenty minutes into the conversation when she noticed the small hunks of beige plastic behind my ears. She was the first to figure it out that way, and I decided in that moment it was much better to tell people about it than let them make the discovery on their own. The way her face became etched with concern was not my favorite moment. Being able to explain that I could still hear well enough to write and record felt good, better than dealing with the same pity face I get when people realize I have cancer.It was good, in a way, that I got to test that out, because it told me I wanted to go ahead and tell the public what was going on with my hearing. It wasn't going to get better or go away, and I wanted the fans to know from me rather than seeing it in the aisles at the grocery store. No one needed to see headlines about how my hearing loss meant my career was over. Far from it. The more time I was forced to spend away from the music and away from the fans, the more I knew I wanted to get back to it as soon as I could. Whenever the cancer was gone and I was cleared to see groups of people again from an immune standpoint, I planned to get back out there. It was going to take time to get my stamina back, especially after the infection, as well as treatment, but it was a definite part of my plans, and one that felt more and more possible now that we were seeing results from the cancer treatments as well as being over the infection, at least for now.Tree stuck around to help me film a new video for the fans. I ended up starting the conversation similarly to how I had with Jack, though I started with the hearing aids out. It was weird talking to the camera without them, though Tree and Karlie both insisted I sounded normal. I explained the basics, that I'd been extremely sick, that there was nothing we could have done to prevent it, and that some difficult decisions had been made in order to save my life. Among those was the decision to use a powerful class of antibiotics that unfortunately carried a risk of ototoxicity (I had to practice saying that a lot before I could get it right) which was damage to my ears. There was an even higher risk of that for me than for some because of the kind of chemo I'd been taking, and unfortunately I did suffer that effect. I explained the difference in my hearing on each side and how the hearing aids worked and how we'd used 1989 to help me get them set properly so I could hear just as well as I always had for music purposes, and couldn't wait to feel better enough to get back to writing and recording. The comments flooding in were overwhelmingly supportive, but my favorites were the ones from fans with hearing loss who loved learning about mine and how I coped, and I even heard from one fan who had always wanted to be in a band but didn't know how he would make that work, and was excited to look into the custom in-ears like Dr. Reddy used and that I would be getting when it got closer to tour.I still got tired every ten minutes, or so it seemed, but really, it was a pretty good week. I got a lot more comfortable with who I was in the aftermath of the infection, I got good results from all my doctors, and I got to talk to my team and fans and let them know that even if I wasn't "better" yet, I was getting there.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I began to think, as March wore on, that I might lose it. I was bored out of my mind, but anytime I tried to do anything more taxing than watching TV, I'd get so exhausted I had to take a nap. It was more than two weeks before Karlie would let me shower without her at least in the bedroom so I could yell if I was going to pass out or something. I went back into the music room only once those two weeks, to determine that my destructive rage had done serious damage to only one guitar, though a couple would need new strings. The patch Karlie and Jack had made in the wall looked pretty good, most people wouldn't be able to see it unless they knew where to look. I was still embarrassed that I'd freaked out like that in front of Jack, even though he claimed it was fine and no hard feelings even though I tried to murder him with a water bottle.I'd spent some time chatting with friends, and my family had stopped in to see how I was doing. It had been nice to just spend some time the five of us. I caught them all sneaking glances, I think just confirming that I was really still there. That I was really okay. Austin struggled a lot with how I'd changed. All along, our whole lives, even though he's my younger brother, he's always been my protector. He couldn't protect me from cancer, and he couldn't protect me from the infection, and he couldn't protect me from hearing loss. My parents were the same, though they handled it better. They told me that parents always want to protect their kids from everything that might hurt them. That maybe one day Karlie and I will know what that's like. But they can't. And although it hurt to watch me struggle, and have to mourn the loss of something I used to take for granted, they were thrilled that I was around to have to mourn that loss. Nobody said it, but I knew they were all picturing the alternative. Without the antibiotics that stole my hearing, they would be mourning the loss of me, rather than it.Austin and I had a heart to heart on the rooftop, just the two of us, Mom, Dad and Karlie giving us some space. It was hard for him to admit how scared he had been, how much he'd thought he might lose me. It was difficult to listen as he explained all the things he'd thought about at my bedside. The idea that he wasn't going to get a niece or nephew. Trying to be the strong one for Karlie and Mom and Dad if they lost me. The music the world would never get to hear. I had no idea my baby brother had such a capacity to be morbid, or such a vivid imagination, but he couldn't do much else while I hovered on the razor-thin line between life and death. I had such fuzzy memories from that time. Just snippets of conversation and crazy dreams. But I didn't have any memories of the sorts of dreams that reflect having crossed over. I hadn't seen my grandmothers, for example, or a bright white light, at least not that I remembered. There have been so few times that I've seen my baby brother cry, but he did that day on the roof, letting out the fear and relief. It was healing for both of us I think, to get to talk it out. He was curious about my hearing loss, what it was like, and I didn't really know how to describe it. On my left, it was like I was wearing a very good earplug that blocked almost everything. Really loud noises could still get through, but even those were muffled. On the right it was more like when your ears haven't popped after a particularly long flight, like to Australia. You can hear, but it sounds weird, and you sometimes have to work harder to comprehend. Except mine were never going to pop and go back to normal. I shuddered a bit to think about what a plane flight might do to me.Karlie didn't ask what we'd talked about, but she gave me a long hug when we got back down, knowing from our faces that it had been a hard one. Dad didn't stay long. He and Mom had spent the most time together over the last few weeks that they had in years, so I wasn't surprised that now that the danger was gone, they weren't really into continuing to be in the same space. Mom and her boyfriend seemed to have quietly ended, and it wasn't a conversation I was up to have, maybe ever, with her. I wanted her to be happy, of course, and Dad too if he found someone, but even with as long as they'd been split, it still seemed weird to me to picture them with other people. They've always been good about spending time together for us, be it holidays or big events like Austin's graduation, but other than that time at Thanksgiving when they worked together on the candy turkeys, they mostly avoided each other. Still, I knew if I needed him he'd be back in a second.I had another blood test with the immunologist, and another good result. My counts were better than they often were during treatment, and while I knew that was a good thing, seeing my counts rise, because it meant I was getting stronger, even if I still got tired easily, it was also a bit of a downer because it meant I was going to have to resume chemo soon, and that wasn't a pleasant thought. Even with the optimism that this might be my last cycle, and the fact that we were changing to a slightly less punishing drug cocktail to try to keep my numbers up, it was still something I was dreading. I'd had almost a whole month without vomiting and nausea and pain, and I liked it. I even thought I was starting to grow a tiny bit of peach fuzz, though it might have been wishful thinking, since the doctors said it would take me three to six months after completing chemo to start growing hair in earnest.The physical therapist who came to the house was proud of my progress getting stronger and building stamina. It was nowhere near where I'd been six months ago, but it was starting to look more and more like it did during my first two week break from chemo. I could walk on the treadmill for nearly thirty minutes without dying, and even do a bit of yoga for strength. Karlie would often come down and walk with me, or stretch side by side, happy to "workout" with me again, even though she saved her more strenuous workouts for when we weren't side by side. She didn't want to emphasize how much more she could do than I, given how proud she was of how hard I was working. She made sure to tell me she was proud of how much I listened to my body as well. Every time I laid down for a nap, she would kiss me and tell me it was good, sometimes laying down with me for a bit, or sitting just across the room with her laptop getting some work done.I felt like such a bad wife, I had no idea what was going on in her work life anymore. All through her planning with Adidas, I'd been part of it, even if it was just her coming home and gushing about whatever they'd come up with in her meeting. It seemed like she never got frustrated with everything that was getting thrown at her. I know she was working hard on a few different campaigns, plus some kind of technology thing I couldn't begin to comprehend. She was still trying to do Kode with Klossy again this summer, that much I knew, but this was something in conjunction with one of her campaigns, which one though I had no idea. Even though I'd been home for weeks, it still seemed like everything was in a fog. I couldn't remember things like I usually could, and I didn't know if that was an after effect of the drugs, or the illness, or what, but it was almost as frustrating as how hard I had to work just to do normal things like make a sandwich.She had a meeting one Thursday, and I encouraged her to go. I was still napping quite a bit and I assured her that was probably all I'd get done while she was gone. At most I might try to get up on the roof deck as it was a really nice day, and maybe read a bit if I could concentrate enough to do it. She made me swear up and down I wouldn't work out without her, or go anywhere alone. I was starting to feel a little smothered, but then I would try to climb two flights of stairs in one go and have to sit down at the top for five minutes to recover, so I couldn't totally blame her. On the plus side, I was starting to gain some actual muscle tone, and gain some weight, which was definitely a good thing. I wasn't skin and bones anymore. The purple splotches had faded from my hands and feet, though there were some pale spots left behind that the doctors weren't sure would ever darken back to match the rest of my skin tone. My list of scars continued to grow, but I honestly couldn't be bothered. There are worse things. I wasn't in pain, so it was all good.Unfortunately, that was going to change. They wanted to give me a shot of the white cell booster two weeks before starting chemo, so I was going to have to get that Monday and I was dreading it. I wasn't sure which was worse, the constant nausea of chemo or the pain of the white cell booster. I was already starting the pain pills from the dispensary to try to build up some in my system before the shot, but I knew that even that wouldn't stop it entirely. I completely understood why it was necessary. As much as I tried to assure Karlie that I wasn't fragile, wasn't going to break, I knew that the reality was the infection HAD weakened me. In ways you could see but also inside. I might not be able to fight off the next one, if there was a next one. I had barely made it through the first. It was scary to realize that I still had the other battle to wage, to try to defeat the cancer once and for all. But I didn't have to do it all at once, or on my own. I had Karlie and my family and our friends behind me, and if there was anything they could do to help me do this, they would.I wasn't up to cooking a full dinner for Karlie, but I wanted to do something nice. Something maybe a little romantic. We hadn't done more than make out in so long. I didn't know if she was worried she'd break me, or if she wasn't seeing me the same way, or what was happening, but I needed her, all of her, and I hoped she felt the same. I hoped it was being afraid I wasn't up to it rather than not wanting me. Her kisses said she did. They still made me weak at the knees and gave me that warmth that comes from within. They still made me feel things, like they had that first night, when we were both younger and carefree and thought we had decades. I hoped that wasn't something you could fake. It took me almost the entire day to shower and get dressed and actually do my makeup. I ordered in from a vegan place down the street, but planned to plate it nicely and put out candles and make it pretty. She'd know it wasn't mine, but I hoped she'd appreciate the thought I put behind it. She deserved a nice night too, and I was finally able to try to give her something in return.I hung an outfit for her in the workout room, having left a note on the door into the building from the garage to make sure she knew to go there. With a work meeting I figured she'd be wearing a suit, but it could just as easily have been yoga pants or jeans, and I wanted her to know coming in that there was something special upstairs. I wished I could do more. In another life I might have whisked her off to Paris for the night. But for now, takeaway vegan and me in a dress was the best I could offer.
I came home from my meeting feeling more stressed than I'd gone into it. They needed me to be more available for travel for shoots and I just didn't know how I could make that happen. Taylor was still recovering and she had her white cell booster and I couldn't leave her for that, and then chemo would start again, along with radiation, and the fact of the matter was that Taylor and her health mattered more to me than campaigns. I'd thought about backing away from the fashion world more and more, and it seemed that decision was being made for me. Adidas was still willing to work around me, for which I was intensely grateful, and Swarovski and Express seemed to still want to try to make it work, but a lot of the smaller ones were pushing back. I wanted to maintain ties with L'Oreal, they were a great company and landing them was an amazing opportunity, but if they needed me in Paris before Taylor completed treatment, it just wasn't going to work out. I wasn't leaving her, not like this, not when we were this close to the end. Not when she'd almost died. The only thing worse than losing her would be not being there if it happened.

I saw the note on the door and wondered what it could be about. She would have texted me to pick something up on the way home if that was what she needed, or sent out one of the security guys. I figured it said something like she was taking a nap, or she'd taken out her hearing aids and needed me to know so I wouldn't freak her out by sneaking up on her. I didn't expect it to say there was something hanging in the workout room and to please put it on before I came upstairs. There was a complete outfit, dress, shoes, even what to wear under. Sexy and lacy, it wasn't what I expected. I wished I had time to shower and do my hair to match with the beautiful outfit (and lingerie) Taylor had picked out. I couldn't imagine what she had planned for us, but I could only hope she hadn't worked *too* hard at it. If the lingerie was any indication, she was finally feeling up to something more than kissing. I hadn't wanted to push her, to make her do more than she was capable of while she healed. But I needed it, so much.

Taylor looked beautiful, lit by candles, a pretty patterned scarf on her head, perfectly coordinated to her dress. She was barefoot, her feet still not up for heels after the damage from the infection, but she was coming to learn I loved her like that. That I loved her just as much barefoot in holey sweatpants as I did carefully made-up in designer clothes. There was a pretty meal laid out on the plates at the table, but if my stomach hadn't growled at that moment, I would have gladly feasted on the woman seated there, rather than the dinner on the plates. It made her giggle, her smile lighting up the room, and for a moment she looked exactly the same as she had when we met. My Taylor. I still couldn't help but steal a kiss from the woman I loved before chowing down on the meal she'd set up. I knew she hadn't made it, but that was just fine. She'd worked hard to make it a special night for us, a reminder that we were still the couple we'd always been. Older now, probably by more than the six months that had officially passed since our wedding date, but still very much in love.

She still wasn't able to eat huge amounts all at once, but she made a fair dent in the food on her plate as she asked me about my meeting. She had so many questions. Who had been there, what had it been about. I realized just how out of it she had been as she healed, as half the things she wanted to know were things I was sure I had told her, sometime, since she'd been home. But still, she seemed to savor every word, like I was describing a once in a lifetime opportunity instead of a more than frustrating meeting with my team which had at one point brought me to tears. She had no idea how much I needed this little date night. It was hard, admitting I'd cried in a business meeting where I was supposed to be calm and collected and in control, but it also actually felt kind of good. I guess that was what my therapist had been saying all along. That I would feel better if I could talk to Taylor about the things that were going on in my life instead of just all the crap that was happening in hers.
I hated knowing that Karlie was under so much stress, especially when I knew the root cause of it all was the fact that I was sick. That I had been so sick. That I was still sick. If I wasn't there, or if I were healthy, most of the conflict from the meeting that she had found so incredibly draining wouldn't have been an issue. Massive amounts of travel had once been a normal part of her life. Crisscrossing the globe, living out of a suitcase, that was her world. Forgetting which language to order coffee in, and being surprised by the layout of the hotel room, that was her normal. For much of our relationship we'd texted before calling because neither of us could remember what time it was where WE were, never mind where the other was. I felt like I was holding her back and complicating things that had never been complicated before. And there wasn't anything I could do to fix it because she wasn't going to go anywhere. I knew that. We'd promised forever and meant it. And I couldn't fix all the things that were happening in my life that made hers hard. So I stood up and walked behind her and rubbed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head and enjoyed the slight hum that she made as I hit a particularly tense knot and eased it away. One strong hand reached up to grasp the back of my neck and pull me down into a kiss, before she smirked at me and told me she was ready for dessert and took my hand to take me upstairs.* * *Besides the white cell booster, I also had yet another meeting with Dr. Miller, Dr. Park and both the chemo and radiation teams to plan out the next round. They'd had time to plan what they thought would work best to tax my body a little less, while still aggressively trying to kill the last of the cancer cells. Radiation would occur the same way as in round one. Nothing at all the first week while the chemo built up in my system, then every weekday for the rest of the chemo round. Because they were changing the dosage and the drugs I was on, this round would be five weeks instead of the previous four, but the hope was still that it would be the last. I would have my blood tested before chemo as usual, but also on Thursdays at my radiation appointments. If my counts dropped below a certain threshold, I would be admitted to finish out the course of treatment where they could keep a constant eye on how I was doing. It still wouldn't guarantee that I wouldn't be exposed to germs, but they would maintain infectious disease protocols to keep me as safe as possible. I didn't particularly want to spend possibly weeks in the hospital, but I also for sure didn't want to repeat the Critical Care Unit experience.They were backing off a bit on the dose of the part of my chemo cocktail that was most likely to drop my counts, but bumping up the dose of another of the drugs. The goal was for the different balance of them to keep my counts higher while still offering the same fighting power. To further prevent the fluctuations in my counts and also maybe space out the side effects, the plan was to do longer infusions on more days of the week of the drug they were increasing, letting it build up in my system more gradually, rather than flooding it all at once on Mondays. Every change they made had pros and cons, but the way they explained it, it made sense that the slower approach might be an improvement. In order to allow for the slower drip infusion and more frequent doses, they wanted to set me up with an at home IV pump. I could either leave my port accessed on Mondays after the main infusion and then attach the at home system on Wednesdays and Fridays as well, or Karlie and I could access it ourselves at home and then de-access after each one. They recommended new access each time because there was less risk of germs somehow by not constantly having a needle in my port, but if we weren't comfortable trying it ourselves then it would be better to leave it in than be nervous about it all the time.Karlie bravely said she'd try it as long as she could try it out with supervision the first time. She'd said she would earlier, but that had gotten lost in everything else that happened around us. If it didn't work, we weren't that far from the hospital and could go in to have it professionally accessed the first Wednesday and then leave it in for Friday's infusion as well. I wasn't excited about getting infusions three times a week, just because to me that meant even more days of feeling gross, but if doing it this way made it less risky and might just maybe get this over with, I was willing to try it out. I did somewhat wonder why they couldn't just remove the last of the cancerous lymph nodes BEFORE the last round of treatment. There weren't that many anymore, looking at the PET scan. What had once been a frightening amount of red splotches had become a seemingly manageable number. Not that I was eager for more surgery, but it didn't seem to me that I would miss them all that much, and if the end result was remission, I wasn't really clear on the advantages of waiting.
I could sense that as Taylor listened to the changes in the plan for her final round of treatment, she was getting overwhelmed. It sounded like a lot, compared to how we had been doing things. Three infusions, plus five radiation treatments, every week. Plus me playing nurse at home? I was sort of surprised she didn't look more terrified. I'd had some experience being around medical stuff like that on bring your daughter to work days with my dad and stuff, but watching it done and doing it myself were two very different things. My biggest fear, of course, was hurting her. She had assured me tons of times that it really didn't hurt much when her port was accessed, and her team assured me that the worst that could happen was I wouldn't get the needle into the back of the port and it simply wouldn't work. I would know almost immediately, they claimed, well before I went to attach the IV. And even if I attached it, I would just get a bunch of flow warnings from the IV pump, but it wouldn't harm her in any way if I got it wrong. That was one advantage of the port. Low risk for Taylor, even doing things ourselves.
I could tell Karlie was conflicted about doing the IVs at home this time around. Because it meant she was going to have to be the one to access the port, and the one to hook me up. She hated seeing me in pain, and even though most of the time I barely felt port access, every now and then there was a bit of pain from the insertion. Compared to the pain I was anticipating from the white cell booster shot in the next couple days, a little needle stick was nothing, especially in my port. I was actually kind of pleased when they said they wanted more blood tests and that they could use a regular port access to draw it, because it meant she would get an extra practice run with someone from my team before we tried to do it at home, on our own.
They wanted one last set of labs showing her counts before the white cell booster they gave her took effect. Which meant Andy, the king of port access, escorted us both to a small exam room to give me my first lesson. My hands shook, and I thought maybe I couldn't do this, after all. How could I aim properly if I couldn't hold my hands steady? But Andy assured me it was normal for a first time, to be nervous, and that I would do just fine, he was there to talk me through it. Taylor planted a kiss on my lips and told me she believed in me, so I laid out the supplies and washed my hands thoroughly, making sure everything was as clean as possible. While I washed, Taylor took off her sweatshirt, revealing a tank top underneath. It still fit more loosely than it might have, but she filled it much better than weeks ago when she was newly home. The faded remains of the pegacorn were exposed on her shoulder and that helped steady me as I walked back to where she was. Andy usually accessed her port with her sitting up in a chair, but he suggested it might be easier on us both if she laid down, it would help her stay still for me and give me a better way to keep her top out of the way and keep a clear sterile area.

Andy had one of the kits like they give you to do it at home so I could truly practice how it would go. It seemed like there were so many pieces and parts, all in this plastic package, I didn't even know what they all did. But Andy encouraged me to spread out the blue square to give myself a sterile space to lay out the rest of the supplies. It seemed crazy to me that you just dump them all out, but he explained that the fewer times I touch things, the less chance I have of contaminating them, which did make some sense. He showed me how to put on the gloves without touching the outsides and it was crazy difficult. I felt like I was taking an hour, while Taylor just lay there, encouraging me. But I eventually got them on so I could move on to swabbing her chest with the disinfectant, starting at the port and moving outward in a circle, so the cleanest bit of the swab would always touch the access point. There were two of them, and Andy cautioned me to use them both, every time. He had Taylor hold her shirt out of the way, saying she could help me a bit by giving me a wide space to work with around the port. Port needles are different than regular IV needles, because the needle sticks out perpendicular to the tubing, instead of in-line with it, to make getting them to the right place in the port easier. The goal, if you do it right, is to actually poke the back of the port with the needle. You can't go too far, because the back of the port is metal, so it's not like I could stab her or anything.
I heard Andy say "it's always the hardest the first time. Just spread the skin over the port, hold it secure in your left hand, and push the needle into the center of the port with your right. You've got this." I was steeling myself not to flinch if it hurt like hell because I didn't want her to freak out, but she actually did awesome. I was super proud of her. Then she had to check the connection by pushing a bit of saline into the port with a syringe attached to the line, to see if it went in easily, and then pull back on it to see if blood flowed into the tube. She made a sound of pure delight when both worked just like they were supposed to. From there, she just had to position the tubing so it hung downward, put a bit of gauze under the plastic bits you use to hold the needle, and seal the whole business down with the clear plastic stuff. Andy took over from there, actually doing the blood draw for the labs, but once he was done I wrapped my wife in a huge hug. She'd done amazingly well for her first time accessing a port. I knew how nervous she was, but honestly, it had been just as good as some of the ones I'd gotten from the professionals, if a bit weird because I was lying down.
I left the meeting cautiously optimistic. There was a plan for how to move forward, and a plan to handle what-ifs and deal with possibilities to prevent the worst and maybe even a plan for how to reach the end of this part of the journey. It wouldn't be over. Even if they declared her in remission, there would be ongoing maintenance chemo and blood tests to detect any recurrence, and PET scans, and working to get back to where she was before this all started, when we thought she was perfectly healthy, maybe as healthy as she'd ever been. But it would be a milestone we could mark, something we could hope for, that no longer seemed as far out of reach as it once had when I saw those first scans riddled with red and it looked like there was maybe more cancer than Taylor. And I had been able to access her port without causing much pain, which gave me more confidence that when I tried it again in a couple weeks for chemo, I could do it again.
* * *The pain began right on schedule. Karlie and I were in the middle of making lunch, quesadillas for both of us, though mine had tons of cheese and chicken besides the fresh salsa and homemade guacamole, while hers had minimal cheese but lots of veggies. It started how I remembered, with light muscle pain, like when you're getting the flu. It was a little bit more alarming now that I'd fought the infection, because what if I was ACTUALLY getting some kind of illness rather than just getting the beginnings of the effects of the white cell booster? But I still took a couple pain pills and hoped for the best. By the time I'd finished eating, it actually hurt my jaw to chew. Karlie carried me to the bedroom and placed my phone under my right hand and the remote for the TV under my left so I didn't have to move more than a finger to change the channel or adjust the volume, and it wouldn't take much for me to contact her if I needed to. She was just going downstairs to clean up after lunch, but then she'd be back in case I needed something. What I needed was for someone to knock me out so I would sleep through the excruciating pain part of the experience, but no such luck.After several hours, not even the medical marijuana was helping. It was all I could do to lie there, in pain, and occasionally ask Karlie to help me use the bathroom. I really had no idea what she was doing around me. She would come in and out of the room periodically, checking on me, but where she went in between was a mystery until she carried me out onto the terrace and handed me a small baggie. "I know we promised Dr. Miller you'd stick to the medical stuff, but it's not working. Please don't ask how I got this." I have never, in my life, seen my girl look like that, before or since. I realized I probably really didn't want to know how she got it, but I was willing to put money on it being either Cara or Ed who had the hookup. Still, it did its job. Within a couple hits, the pain was down to a manageable level. I could walk myself down the stairs by the end of the joint, take myself to the bathroom."Who do I thank for this?" I asked, rejoining Karlie in the living room, having walked there under my own power. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a kiss, taking a moment before revealing it was Ed who'd told her how to get what we needed. It had been quite a week. I was tempted to suggest she join me for the next one, given the stress she'd been under at work. But we'd also reconnected in a powerful way, and that was worth a lot. My girl had gone outside her comfort zone pretty far in the name of helping me, once to perform her first medical procedure, following in her Dad's footsteps, and once to perform her very first drug deal. I made a joke about how she was growing up so fast, and she punched me lightly in the shoulder, and it made me think how much I missed the teasing. It was something that had fallen by the wayside since I'd gotten home from the hospital, and it was nice to see us falling back into it. Still Karlie and Taylor. Two girls lucky enough to have fallen in love with their best friends, and privileged enough to marry them. I wasn't looking forward to starting chemo again, but I was definitely enjoying the slightly increased feeling of hope that came with the possibility it might be the last first day of chemo ever.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When the nightmares started again the weekend before resuming chemo, I wasn't even surprised. We'd talked about it in therapy a bit, the likelihood they would come back as it loomed closer. I'd even had Karlie come to a session with me so we could talk through how I was feeling together. It had been a good session, and an important one, but also draining, emotionally and physically. When we'd gotten home after, we'd just laid on the bed, holding each other, lost in our own heads, trying to process all the things we'd said, the fears we'd put to words. It wasn't easy for either of us to say aloud the things we worried about. I was particularly concerned about getting infusions three days a week. Given how strongly I usually reacted to day one, it seemed disingenuous to have more infusion days in the name of keeping me stronger through the next round of chemo, but I knew my team at the hospital wouldn't be trying it if they didn't think it would work. I didn't want to have to be admitted. The hospital was boring, but yet, strangely full of activity. I was willing to seclude myself in my house and never leave over spending weeks in the hospital, even send the cats back to Martha's place. But more than anything, I didn't want to risk infection again.That was, I think, the basis of the first dream. I dreamed I was performing, at the center of a huge stadium, surrounded by fans holding signs and waving glowsticks, but it was like the dream was on mute. I couldn't hear the crowd, and when I strummed the guitar hanging from my back, I heard no sound. I shouted for them to turn up my in-ears, but nothing changed. I popped out the right one, figuring seventy percent loudness would be better than silence, but there was still no change no matter what I did. I woke up to Karlie shaking my shoulder. I'd apparently been screaming in my sleep and scared her. I'd rolled over so my right ear was in the pillow, so I hadn't been able to hear her call my name, which didn't exactly make a dream about being trapped in absolute silence any easier to deal with. She'd been so sweet to stay up with me just talking for an hour after that, proving that I could still hear her, but she had her own crap to deal with, still battling with her team to figure out a schedule that would allow her to not completely stop working while she took care of me.She'd come home that night emotionally exhausted and cranky and we'd fought over stupid, petty shit that had escalated to me throwing things and her calling me a bitch and going for a run that lasted three hours and ended with her sheepishly calling me to send a car because she was somehow in Prospect Park and she was so, so sorry. I hated the fact that while she'd been running across Manhattan, and apparently the Brooklyn Bridge, I'd finally been able to write a song the way I used to, when I was a teenager and everything that happened to me was grounds for an emotional breakdown and therefore a song. It had taken me less than half the time she'd been gone to get it written and a demo recorded, and I knew the fans would love the way it used the harsh electric guitar to evoke the way my emotions felt, raw and unbridled and angry. But I hated that we'd had to fight to get me back into the music room. I hated even more how surprised I was when she called because I'd just figured she'd come home a while ago and was waiting for me to emerge so we could talk, because she knew I was processing my emotions the way I did so she could process hers the way she did and we could finally talk about what we'd really been angry enough once they were out.The second nightmare came that night. She left me. It was all too much and she told me she was leaving while I was face first in the toilet heaving up everything I'd eaten ever, or so it seemed, and when I looked up all I could see was her flawless ass walking away from me with a suitcase, and she refused to turn around when I called her name and every time I tried to stand up and run after her I would feel sick again and have to go right back where I started. That one was so real that when I woke up, this time crying more than screaming, I actually was halfway to the bathroom to throw up when I realized that my stomach was fine, though I was having trouble stemming the tide of tears flowing down my face. She assured me, of course, that although she might have run, and farther than anticipated or than she should have, she would always come home. That she'd meant every word of the vows she'd made, and that even when she was angry, she would only leave long enough to cool down and talk rationally. Intellectually I knew that was true. Karlie was the most loyal person I knew, and I couldn't imagine her just walking out on me. Even if she hated me, she'd give me warning.The next night, I discovered I wasn't the only one struggling. Karlie wasn't as prone to nightmares, outbursts of emotion or anxiety as I was, but that night when I woke at about three a.m. I discovered her half of the bed empty, a trail of turned-on lights leading the way to the workout room, working her way through a series of yoga poses. At a loss as to what to do, I decided to join her, and we posed in parallel. It felt odd to work out in pajamas, but there really wasn't any reason we couldn't. She stopped abruptly in the midst of a warrior series to come over and wrap me tight in her arms, a hug so strong it almost felt like she was trying to crack a rib. And then she'd kissed me deeply and led me back to our room to deepen it into something more, and I'd been left breathless and satisfied but also curious about her choices in stress relief in the early morning hours. Though there had been sounds of pleasure, the only words spoken came as we lay curled together, exhausted anew by our various workouts, when she said "you'll always be my Taylor" before passing out.I didn't get the chance right away to ask what in the world had brought that on, as our morning was something of a disaster. Karlie had somehow turned off her alarm or forgot to set it and had completely slept through a fitting for Diane Von Furstenberg and had rushed out without even bothering to shower to grovel and apologize and try not to get fired. She'd returned in the evening bearing takeout, the sunshiny smile on her face a complete turnaround from where we'd been in the middle of the night, and definitely a change from how stressed she'd been in the morning, when I'd wondered if her brow would ever unfurrow from under the bangs she was still wearing to hide the scar from December's Christmas décor fail.It was fading, slowly, from bright angry red to ever softer pink, and I'd noticed we both had a tendency to stand in the mirror side by side as we applied scar cream and compare the healing process for our various marks. The scar at my throat was still taking its sweet time fading from view. I was used to it now, no longer grimacing when I caught it in the mirror. I no longer looked like the near victim of a botched throat-slitting attack, and my port insertion scars were healing as well. The worst one was the one on my back from the infection, both because it was recent and because it wasn't the nice flat line of a planned incision, but rather an uneven pucker created as they carefully worked their way around the pocket of infected tissue trying not to let it burst and spew even more bacteria through my body. I caught Karlie sometimes running her thumb over the spot where the scar was raised, through my shirt. I didn't think she did it consciously, but it happened to fall near where her hand would naturally lay across my back anyway. It was weird, this subtle reminder. I was pretty sure it would be a thing when we were old and gray, if I lived that long.Diane's people had been completely understanding. They'd worried that something was wrong, that I was sicker, again, than usual, or that she'd hurt herself. But they also understood the stress she was under, and though pushing back the fitting to the afternoon had been inconvenient, it hadn't been the end of the world. She'd also talked to her therapist, about the fact we were both having nightmares, and had come out of that meeting feeling good, since her yoga method of coping had been praised, though using words in addition to the physical would be even better. But at least she'd done something productive to cope, which made her feel she might be able to do it again. She did tell me about the dream that had woken her up and sent her off to do yoga at three in the morning. I wasn't dead, this time, which was nice I guess. But I was sicker than I'd ever been, even when I'd had the infection. But this time, she'd been able to tell something about it wasn't real, which is how she'd been able to calmly get up and work out instead of waking up screaming. I was proud of her for that. Being able to tell it wasn't real. I hadn't quite mastered that myself.* * *There was something almost comforting about reporting to the oncology floor again. Because weirdly, going back to chemo meant I was healthy. You know, for someone with cancer. It all felt so familiar, yet so alien. I wore a mask from day one. Part of the increased caution around my immune system. My team was the same as always. Andy and Deshawn burst into the room before Karlie and I could even begin to get settled shouting "CREAM FILLING!!!!" and sandwiched me between them in a huge hug. I realized I hadn't seen them since I was discharged from the hospital, when they'd come to check up on me after I began to recover. I hadn't missed this place, or the way my stomach reflexively turned over just entering the ward, but I had, indeed, missed them. I'd seen only the members of my team who had letters like MD after their names for my planning meetings, so this was nice, reuniting, although I thought it might have been even nicer to go bowling or something. They had a port access kit with them but stepped back to let Karlie give it another supervised go before we tried it on our own on Wednesday.I tried to remember the steps too, just in case, because Karlie had enough to do without also trying to read the instructions. I tucked my scarf out of the way and pulled my shirt down as far as I could, trying to give her maximum working space. I kept my right hand free just in case she needed me to hold something while she carefully put on the gloves under the watchful eyes of my team. They'd scheduled me to come in a little early, and I had another long afternoon in the hospital planned, just like my first infusion months ago. They had to observe how the new cocktail and I got along, and the new infusion rate was much slower as well to try to reduce the effects and keep me stronger. They knew it would take Karls a lot longer to access my port than Andy who quite frankly would have had the needle in before Karlie even got the gloves on. I'd used numbing cream before we left the house, more for her benefit than my own. It really only hurt for a second when she put the needle in, but since the part she struggled with the most was the idea she might hurt me, I figured letting her numb it wouldn't hurt anything.She carefully cleaned the area starting at the port and spiraling outward, just like they'd told her the first time. The goal was for it to be just her and I talking though it, with the team only stepping in if she forgot something important or was doing something unsafe. She had a hard time getting the needle out of the package with her gloves on, so the team said it was possible for me to peel apart the plastic as long as Karlie was the only one to touch the contents, and as long as her glove didn't make contact with my hands at all. We tried it and it worked pretty well, actually, though I had to anchor my shirt under my left elbow before I could try to use both hands on the plastic wrapping of the needle. She still got it in on the first try, though in fumbling to attach the saline syringe to test the placement she almost pulled it back out, which freaked her out and almost made her pull it out in her panic. Still, she had it in perfectly, the saline pushing through easily and strong blood return when she pulled back. She slid the sterile gauze under the flaps she used to grip the needle for comfort and placed the dressing over top. It was a little wrinkled, but not uncomfortable and still sealed, just not as tightly as sometimes, and as it didn't need to last longer than the day, it didn't really matter. I couldn't shower with it like that, but I wasn't planning to until it was de-accessed anyway, so no harm done. Most importantly, other than coaching us through how to let me help, the team hadn't had to intervene at all.I could see how proud of herself Karlie was when she earned high-fives from all three of us once she'd disposed of all the wrappings and her gloves. I hadn't felt it at all, which I knew made it a better experience from her perspective. Andy quickly stepped in to do the pre-chemo blood draw, just to make sure my numbers were where we needed them to be, and then Karlie and I had some time to ourselves while we waited for the results. The following Monday we would use this lull in the action to head to radiology for Dr. Park's team to run radiation, but today was just about getting chemo started again. I didn't like having time to wait around, but that's just part of the process."Is it weird, being back here?" She asked me, cuddling up to me on the bed. We were planning to watch a movie while we waited, knowing there was going to be a good bit of lead time before we even started pre-meds, and then lots of waiting around during the longer infusion. If all went well, I wouldn't have quite the same violent reaction to the chemo I'd been having to the old regimen, and would maybe feel a bit better as well. If that was the case, I might actually be able to spend my afternoon doing more than just sleeping and vomiting, which would be a plus. Makenna came in to give me a hug and bring me a home-made blueberry muffin, figuring I should eat while I could, even if I risked getting to see it again later. Dr. Miller brought the results of the blood test herself, having wanted to be really on top of it going into this round. The numbers were the best I'd had since before the very first cycle, so even though I hated it, the break and the white cell booster had done their jobs.I was taking different pre-meds as well, a stronger antihistamine to prevent a reaction because that was one of the risks of upping one of the drugs I was on, developing an allergy to it. Having gone through one reaction to the adhesive in the dressing over my port, I had no interest in repeating that experience with a medication reaction as well. That didn't sound pleasant at all. The pre-med infusion lasted longer, with the result being I actually fell asleep. I didn't even wake up when they switched over the drip to include the new chemo meds. It was nice, in a way, sleeping through the first hour and a half of the infusion. Even when I woke up, I didn't feel immediate nausea. I didn't want to let myself get too complacent and think it wasn't going to happen, but just waking up, with chemo flowing into my body and not feeling totally awful, that I liked.The infusion itself was scheduled to last six hours, with a three-hour waiting period after the IV bags were empty. It was, actually, a gentler infusion than I was used to. I didn't throw up for the first two hours, though shortly after I woke up from my nap, I began to feel the effects. A new one that I hadn't had before is that it made me feel really, really warm. I was stripping off clothes down to a tank top and a pair of shorts that were in my bag of alternate clothes. These days, we always brought extras in case of vomit incidents, but this was the first time I'd ever had to take clothes off for temperature reasons. I've always been cold. In the summer, it wasn't unusual for Karlie to be wearing capris and a tank top while I wore long pants and a sweater. But here I was, even taking my scarf off to expose maximum skin to the air. When I told Makenna about it, she pushed some more antihistamine into my drip, concerned that the warmth might be a precursor to an allergic reaction. She also brought me a popsicle, the first time I could remember eating something without being totally terrified during an infusion. Shortly after I finished the treat, it turned out the temperature change simply herald the usual stomach and intestinal symptoms, which hit nearly simultaneously.By the end of the infusion, I almost didn't care I wasn't going straight home. The reaction had been as strong as ever, just delayed a bit. I was tired. I'd forgotten how much just sitting around attached to a drip could take out of me. I wasn't feeling any better about doing the at home infusions. I supposed it would be nice to be able to take off my clothes entirely if I wanted with only Karlie to see me, maybe even take a cold shower if we got the dressing on right. But since I was still having pretty bad reactions, doing it two more times a week wasn't exactly something I wanted. Getting home was lovely. Getting to lie on my own couch while Karlie made me some food for a dinner I didn't want to eat. Veggies and noodles, as close to chicken noodle soup as Karlie could get, knowing she'd end up eating most of it.I hadn't missed our nights together on the air mattress in the bathroom, but the one upside was that I didn't end up having a need for it until the following morning, perhaps a side effect of the delayed and protracted infusion. But my Tuesday was actually mostly more pleasant than usual, I was less completely exhausted, able to actually help Karlie with lunch, though I still took both morning and afternoon naps. I was still really really warm, like I was having my own personal summer. Karlie was wearing long pants and a sweat shirt, while I wore shorts and a tank. Ed was in town supporting his new album and I really wanted to see him. Karlie was a bit nervous about it, he was in the middle of a tour and thus exposed to all kinds of germs, but he assured Karls that he would shower and let her take his temperature when he arrived, he just wanted to get to hang out with his best friend. She agreed, reluctantly, though once they hung up she told me she was actually looking forward to having him come over. I took some time to go down to the music room and re-string a couple of guitars. I wasn't sure I was ready to work, but Ed can't come over without us making some kind of music-adjacent noise, and I wanted to at least have things tuned, if only to make it more pleasant for me when he decided to fool around, though I realized there might be an advantage to hearing loss, as I could just turn off my hearing aids if he decided to persist even with everything out of tune.Karlie came down as I was finishing up the second guitar, and when I looked up I caught her with this fond look on her face. "Thinking of playing tonight?" she asked, coming over to sit beside me on the couch where I'd been tuning the last guitar. She kissed the top of my head, bare for the cooling effect."If I don't, Ed will," I smiled and then met her lips with mine. "I promise. No rage. I think I'm calibrated pretty well, actually. But if not, I know Dr. Reddy can do some more work to get it there." She pulled me close and we sat like that for a few moments, just enjoying the comfort of being together. Sometimes silence can be beautiful when you share it with the love of your life.We were interrupted by my phone ringing on the top of the piano, Ed calling to say he was about to turn onto our street and did we want to come get him or send him the door code? Karlie went down to greet him, admonishing me to stay upstairs until she was sure he was safe. She really did make him shower in the bathroom by the front door, which I thought was ridiculous, but she had to do what she thought was best, and as long as we got to hang out, and he didn't mind, I didn't see the harm. It gave me time to put on an old sundress that hadn't fit since I was a teenager and find a pretty scarf to go with. I'd found that I honestly felt better when I dressed up a bit. I was tired, from chemo, but I felt okay, and I was actually quite happy with the recovery time. I was nervous about doing an infusion ourselves the next day but if my team thought it was what was best, I had to trust them. And in the meantime, I felt good enough on a Tuesday to have a friend over, so I was happy with that.He bounded up the stairs with energy I hadn't seen from my Teddy in years, and I was so happy to see him doing so well. He smiled broadly through his thick glasses and wrapped me in a tight hug. It was gratifying that he didn't treat me like I might break. We'd talked since I'd been out of the hospital, but not seen each other in person, and I didn't know how it would go. But it was still just Ed and Taylor, like always. As I turned away to lead the way into the kitchen where Karlie had set up stuff to make pizza, because everyone loves pizza, I was a bit startled to feel a calloused hand rub over my right shoulder."Fake," he said, and I realized he was noticing the latest design on my shoulder, a rainbow coming out of a smiling cloud. Karlie had put it on Sunday night before we went to bed. "Gonna get a real one, eh Tay?" he asked and I realized that if I got through this, I just might. I didn't know yet what design I would pick, but after everything I'd been through, the idea of tattoo needles wasn't so scary. And of all the things that had come out of this crazy rollercoaster, Karlie's unwavering support was definitely the one I was most eager to remember.The three of us had a good time making pizzas. It was a good idea Karlie had, buying some dough from a local pizzeria and then letting us make our own with all different toppings. Hers, predictably, had more veggies than anything, with little bits of mozzarella thrown on just to hold it together, while Ed's put a Chicago deep-dish meat lover's to shame with the volume of meats on top of his crust. I went creative with barbeque chicken, mozzarella, onion and green apples. It was delicious, even if both my dining companions poked fun at my inclusion of apple on pizza. There was something really nice about sitting around the table with my wife and best guy friend, like we would have any time. Through all of this, other than helping me out by coming to chemo and having a minor meltdown when he saw my scans, Ed had always treated me the same as always. He'd never seen any need to act like I was fragile or about to break. I'd wondered if that would change after how sick I'd been but he still saw me the same.He and I went down to the music room, just the two of us. Karlie said she'd come down later but she knew we needed some musician to musician time. He was my friend before I ever met her. He'd seen me through the mess that came before, celebrated with me when I found her and fell, hard, and been prepared to put me back together again if it didn't work out. He'd also been one of the first to offer support and approval once he met her, which is why it was so cool that he'd been able to be part of our wedding. But now things were different. I'd almost died. That was still a weird thing to think, but it was true. I'd come closer than I wanted to for another sixty years or so. I was a little apprehensive, being down there with one of my usual writing partners, for only the second time since I'd been home. It hadn't gone particularly well with Jack, and I didn't particularly want to repeat that experience with Ed, though I knew he'd be just as gracious about it as Jack had been.Just like with Jack, I started out just sitting on the couch to talk. Unlike with Jack, the elephant in the room had already been addressed, at least a little. He knew about the effects of the antibiotics, and the hearing loss, though we hadn't talked in depth. I encouraged him to ask questions, to talk to me. But the main question he had was one I was still struggling to answer. "What's it like?" I could give him the clinical evaluation – 70% residual hearing on the right, 30% on the left. But that didn't fully explain it. I tried the 'ear-popping' analogy, but it still didn't fully explain what it was like not to be able to hear like I used to either. And then trying to explain how the hearing aids worked when I didn't fully understand myself, was tricky as well. His curiosity came from a place of love, and wanting to comprehend where I was, as his friend, sister, and cowriter, so it was welcomed. And he came up with an interesting way to try to approximate it, making use of the different channels on a sound board, which was a very Ed approach. By playing a song we both knew well through the sound board, he could run the sound output to headphones at a comfortable volume for himself, then reduce the different sides to the percentages I had.That was weird. Watching him try his best to experience what I did. I wasn't sure I liked it. It was one thing to explain, but another to know he would understand the loss in a way almost no one else did. It made me feel very vulnerable. But it was the look on his face as he restarted the track with the volume adjusted downward to just 30% in the left channel and 70% in the right that broke my heart. I could see realization dawning on his face of exactly what my world sounded like without the hearing aids. And it wasn't pretty. I will give him credit. He never quite hit the 'pity face' that happens so often when people learn you've lost something, or have cancer, or a disability, or whatever. He didn't even listen to the whole song. Just pulled the headphones off and shook his head as if to clear it. We sat in silence for a bit, but then he began a new recording, and grabbed one of my guitars off a stand and began to strum an intricate melody. I knew him well enough to hear the pain in the notes, the depth of emotion behind them. I sat at the piano and added harmony, a repetitive sequence that could be looped, using the technique I learned from the musical genius across the room, so that I could move to the keyboard, layering in percussion. His melody was too lengthy to loop, so he continued to play himself while I threw in a final layer, electric guitar, more complex than he had ever heard me play. I'd been practicing when I could, knowing I wanted a harder edge for the next album. Something a bit more rock and roll, that showcased my ability to play in addition to lyrics and melody.When Ed and I write, it is often spontaneous. We don't sit down anymore just intending to write a song. We just jam, and sometimes it becomes something useable and sometimes it gets added to the hours of recordings I've never used for anything. They all have titles, like "the one with the minor chords that sounds weirdly happy" or "after the key lime pie," that I use to try to find them again later if I want them. But this one I knew would be something. Probably mine, since there was a lot more angst happening in my world just now, and this was definitely going to be one of those heartrending songs that the fans adore but that are super hard to play live because emotion. And we hadn't even written the lyrics yet. Playing it back, especially the last bit that had all the instruments told me this was definitely going to be a full song. Ed could feel it too, I could tell, and despite the emotional beginning to the session, it ended on a strong high note, knowing we'd made something worth saving and improving on.Upstairs, Karlie had decided to bake cookies while we'd been working, and the whole house smelled like chocolate. They were 'healthy,' made with applesauce and almond flour, but still really yummy, and a nice end to the day. Ed offered a strong bear hug on the way out the door, saying he was in town another day or two and to call if we needed anything. As soon as he'd gone, Karlie pulled me in and kissed my head. "You two write anything good?" She smiled brightly, a full-on sunshiny smile upon hearing that I thought we probably had. For the first time since all of this started, I thought I had finally come up with something album worthy. And for the first time in a while, I let myself believe that sooner rather than later, I'd be able to actually write and record and tour an album. I had a new adventure awaiting me in the morning, as Karlie would access my port and we would run an infusion from home, which wasn't exactly something I was looking forward to, but I'd had a good day with my girl and my best friend and the music, and there wasn't much more I could ask for anytime, cancer or not.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Accessing my port for the first time at home was an adventure. I took a shower to already have my skin as clean as possible for maximum infection prevention, while Karlie unpacked boxes and boxes of at-home medical supplies. So much packaging goes into it, it's crazy. We must have had ten or fifteen boxes to put out for recycling, plus all the assorted wrappers that kept each piece of equipment sterile. It seemed crazy how much was needed for a three-hour infusion, twice a week at home. But keeping everything sterile was crucial, especially given my history with infection, so all those little plastic packets were weirdly reassuring.We'd considered our options for where in the house we wanted to do it. The bedroom seemed ideal since that was likely where I would want to be during the infusion. Comfy, close to the bathroom, easy closet access if I got cold or hot. But the bed wasn't a really great place to lay out a sterile field to put the supplies on, and it was a weird height for my enormously tall wife. In the end, we decided that it would be easiest if I could actually lay on the kitchen island, because the counter height was tailored to the fact that both of us are pretty tall, and there was lots of wide open flat space. So Karlie had also gone over the entire counter with disinfecting wipes, following the directions on the package to make sure they really killed all the germs they were supposed to. After all, the kitchen is home to tons of germs. It definitely felt weird to boost myself onto the counter and lay down. Not a thing I'd ever really considered as a likely activity. But the marble quickly adjusted to my body heat, and it really wasn't bad.Karlie took her time laying everything out, dumping the contents of all those packages on the sterile square that existed just for that reason. Tubing and needles and gauze and gloves and dressing and sterile swabs and saline to flush the port with. Upstairs we had all the infusion bags set up: two of pre-meds, a bag of the chemo cocktail, a saline in case I seemed dehydrated, and also extra antihistamines and even an epi-pen in case I seemed to be having an allergic reaction. Not that my team expected us to need any of that. But they wanted us to have it just in case. Which I guess was smart. Karlie was prepared to watch for signs that something was different than normal when it came to side effects, and really, aside from not particularly wanting to a do the infusion at all because vomiting and exhaustion, I wasn't worried. Which was odd for me, but I chalked it up to how much I truly trust Karlie and my team. They wouldn't have set this up if they didn't think it was going to go perfectly.The first tricky part was exposing the right amount of skin around my port. I'd chosen a low-cut tank top and an easily maneuverable bra to try to make it easy, but no matter how I pulled and tugged and tucked, the shirt would always shift back into the space Karlie needed to put the dressing, so I finally pulled my shirt off and lay on the counter in my bra. Without the shirt holding it out of the way, however, the strap was too close to the port as well. Add "lay completely topless on the kitchen counter" to the list of new experiences. At least it was with my wife, and there was no danger of us being surprised. It wasn't my best look. But it did give Karlie plenty of space to work in, and she finally felt satisfied enough to put on her gloves and start swabbing. I knew she had to be nervous, doing this without Andy to guide her, but I also knew she could handle it.
I was so worried I would do something wrong accessing Taylor's port. Or setting up the pump and meds after. I mean, they gave us so many fail-safes, intellectually I knew that wasn't possible, but there was always that little bit of worry nagging at the corner of my mind. I wanted this to work. She already had to go to the hospital for infusions once a week and radiation every day. I didn't want her trapped there for two more infusions a week as well. But that didn't make it less nerve-wracking. I knew that if something didn't go as well as hoped we still had plenty of backups, whether it be the equipment not working out, or if Taylor were to have a reaction to something, they'd given us tools to deal with that too. I'd seen her through all kinds of reactions when we were in the hospital. The regular chemo side effects like nausea and vomiting, but also the allergic reaction to the dressing on her port. I'd triple checked the home care company had sent us the right kind three times, just to be safe. And I knew that any reaction she might have wouldn't be my fault. But that didn't stop me reversing our roles and being the anxious one, just a bit.
She honestly did such a good job. I was really really proud of her. She got the needle to the back of the port on the first try, and even though I ended up having to hold the saline syringe while she adjusted a little, and push it through for testing purposes, it went a lot more smoothly than the last time we'd done this at the hospital. She got the gauze just where I needed it so it would be comfortable, and it was definitely record time, not counting all the attempts before I finally took my top off. She even got the dressing on smoothly enough for me to be able to shower in it if I wanted, or even lay in a bath if I thought it would help make me feel better. I could finally put my clothes back on for the infusion. Even home alone with my wife, being half-naked in the kitchen just felt weird.Upstairs, we had to set up an IV pump with the bag of pre-meds. The pump is programmable, and we had instructions for how to program each phase of the infusion, so that the pump would control the flow rate and also alert if anything weird happened, like air in the IV line or the tubing getting twisted and not allowing the meds to flow properly, and also the end of the first bag and time to switch to the second. The first hour and a half with the pre-meds went pretty well, the two of us cuddling on the bed watching Friends.  I even ate a little breakfast, just some oatmeal and a banana which I fully expected to see again later. Just as we were both starting to drift off, the pump beeped to let us know the pre-meds were in and it was time to swap bags. The chemo bag came with all kinds of bright red and orange warning labels. I tried not to read all the ones about how you should avoid skin contact and how long Karlie would need to wash with soap and water if she were to come into contact with the medicine inside. Nothing like giant alert labels to remind you that you are literally pumping poison into your veins.The switch wasn't too hard, just unscrew one tube and hook up the next. Hit a few buttons on the pump, and then wait. I was more apprehensive than normal about this one, just because we were at home and this was the first time I'd done an infusion of just the one drug and I didn't know if that would be better or worse. There were anti-nausea meds on standby that Karlie could push into my IV if I needed them, and of course I could use the medical marijuana vapor as well to try to keep the side effects to a manageable level. But it was weird to do this without an entire hospital of medical professionals to help me if something was off. I knew, intellectually, that lots of chemo patients did this from home. That some people do infusions daily. That changing things up might be the best thing for me, to finish off the cancerous cells once and for all. But having always done this from inside a hospital, it was still a little weird. I'd thought a lot about how I wanted to do this. Did I want to be on the air mattress in the bathroom for maximum access to the facilities there? Did I want to be on the master bed for comfort? Maybe the guest room so that I would never associate this experience with our room, and our bed? I decided it didn't make much difference where I was. I was going to vomit, pretty much guaranteed, so I might as well be comfortable when I did. We did spread an old quilt across the bed so that if I couldn't make it to the bathroom or couldn't tell it was coming until too late, we could just peel that off rather than remaking the entire bed.We got to watch all of Notting Hill before I was forced to revisit my breakfast. I thought that might be something of a record for the delay between starting the infusion and the nausea hitting. I started to get that now familiar hot feeling, so Karlie added another dose of antihistamines just like Makenna had the last time, to make sure I didn't have an allergic reaction to the meds. There was no way to know for sure if that was what was happening, but we wanted to stop it just in case. It didn't help me feel less hot though, so I decided to maybe try taking a cool shower, since I could. That ended up being rather nice, actually, letting the water run over me in the middle of the infusion. And convenient, when I threw up, to be right there to clean up after. Still, there were no intestinal symptoms at all, for once, and I concluded that since this was only one drug out of my cocktail, it apparently wasn't the one that caused that particular effect. I wasn't as tired as usual either, though the extra antihistamines in my pre-meds and during the infusion made me sleepy, it wasn't the kind of deep fatigue I usually got from a chemo infusion.Somewhere around hour three of the planned four-hour infusion Karlie got a work call and I told her to go ahead and take it. She could go into the guest room and still hear if I needed her but do what she had to do for work. It wasn't a bad plan, actually, letting her work while I literally sat in one place trying not to vomit. That was one upside of being at home for the infusion, the fact that Karlie could work and get stuff from other parts of the house and do what she needed to do while I did treatment. And she was still never more than a flight of stairs away from me in the event I needed her, which mostly I didn't. There was only so much she could do, other than follow directions for which supplemental meds to push when and rub my back. I couldn't eat while the infusion was running, even Karlie knew better than to try, but as soon as it was over she appeared with soup and half a sandwich, the other half in her hand as she ate a little as well. My team was proven correct again, as the at home infusion of only one drug took a lot less out of me than usual. By the evening I felt able to eat, maybe not just anything, but most normal foods, and they even stayed down. They were right, it was a much more gentle experience than my regular Monday treatments.*          *          *Friday's infusion had been even less eventful, just two bouts of vomiting and a lot of napping. Karlie had needed to do the needle placement twice after the first one failed to push or produce blood return, but once she took it out and tried again it was fine, she just hadn't gotten it all the way to the back of my port. I was really proud of her for trying again. I knew that was one of her fears, doing it wrong and hurting me, but she didn't. It wasn't quite right but it didn't cause any harm, and at this point a needle stick is the least of my worries. How much things change in the span of a few months. I felt warm through the infusion but not as bad as the previous two, so no cold shower this time around. I actually felt good enough during the infusion to go lie poolside while Karlie swam laps, a far cry from the infusions where I couldn't stop projectile vomiting long enough to apologize for puking on my girl. I slept a bit on the couch for the afternoon, but was even able to help Karlie make dinner, albeit just by sitting at the counter and passing her ingredients as she worked. That was one thing I was really proud of her for. When we'd married, I'd been the cook and she'd been the baker. She'd learned a lot over the months since then, and could make a lot of different things, not just baked goods, but actual dinners as well.The weekend was spent at home, trying to keep me away from the germs of the world, since we didn't know yet if the change in my infusion schedule had possibly solved the problem of my falling white counts. I did a little facetime with Austin, just to check in and let him know I was doing well, and he told me about a new call back he was going for the next week for a movie he was really excited about. His part was tiny, as the boyfriend of the daughter of the main character, barely appearing in like three scenes, but the names attached to the film were huge and it sounded likely to become a big-budget hit, so it might get him onto more screens across the country than ever before. And they were going to do a blind read, so unless they just recognized him, if he got the part it would have nothing to do with sharing my name, which made him super happy. Mom was out in LA as well, so they were going to have dinner together, and I told him to give her an extra hug from me. I was going to call her, of course, but it wasn't the same as an actual hug. Dad was on a golfing trip somewhere in Mexico, so I just sent a text saying I hoped he was having fun. It was interesting to note that for the first time since I was diagnosed, my whole family was across the country. I kind of liked it, because it meant they thought I was doing okay, far enough out of danger they could travel. After how sick I'd been, I'd expected the reverse to be true, that they would all hover in Nashville, anxiously anticipating Karlie's call. But they trusted my team just like I did, and although I imagined that if my counts came back low they'd be on their way in a heartbeat, they weren't afraid to be hours away.The next week started radiation again. I'd kind of hoped never to lie on that table again, never to watch that arm circle my body, sending pulses of dangerous protons into my body. But I'd responded to it so well before, with the change in the chemo cocktail they thought this would give me the best chance to eliminate all the remaining metastases and get me to a place where I could stop the high-dose infusions altogether and drop back to maintenance chemo instead. They wanted me to avoid surgical removal of the lymph nodes for a number of reasons. The risk of infection from surgery was greater than the risk from chemo or radiation. Avoiding opening up my body to germs was a major goal for the remainder of my treatment in the wake of the infection I'd already battled. Losing lymph nodes carried risks of its own for lasting effects to how my body processed lymphatic fluid, ones they didn't want to take if they didn't have to. There was an unfortunate likelihood that I would carry effects of this the rest of my life, beyond the scars and the hearing loss. Effects I wouldn't see until I was older. The longer treatment went on and the more medication I was forced to pump into my body, the stronger the likelihood that I would one day battle against the very treatments that had saved my life. So minimizing those was a balancing act, and one my team took very seriously.I didn't love going back to the hospital every day. Going only once a week had been a nice reprieve. But the treatments weren't bad, and everyone was so nice and welcoming. They were quick and over fast and then I could go back to my regularly scheduled napping. Monday infusions continued to be the worst, by far, with the other two for the week being not so bad. Karlie was getting to be a pro at port access, her hands didn't even shake anymore, though we did have to scrap one access kit entirely after she accidentally knocked half the contents off the counter and onto the floor. And there was one slightly painful incident when Olivia decided my tubing looked like a fun new toy and tried to rip it out of my chest. Definitely not a high point of the treatment experience. Still, it's just an amusing anecdote in the story of my treatment.It was, I suppose, I good thing that there was nothing much exciting happening. Toward the middle of the third week of radiation, I started to get red splotches where the beams were aimed, and a bit of discomfort under my arms as the cells began to die off again in earnest. There was a spot on my back that hurt as well, and which scared me a little, since that was where the infection started, but when I told my team and showed them where it hurt, they indicated the pain was exactly where the lymph nodes in my back were being treated. They did a scan, just to be sure, but there was no evidence it was anything other than more cancer cells responding to treatment. In a way, the pain was welcome, since it meant treatment was working, and compared to the dreaded white cell booster shots, it was almost negligible. I only even mentioned it because of the infection, my anxiety spiking with the idea that there might be something wrong with me besides the obvious. But it was reassuring to know that everything was proceeding as well as it could. The hardest part, as usual, was waiting to see if this would be enough.I tended to forget there was an extra week of chemo and radiation at the end here, since I was used to the four week cycles. I should have ended at the end of April, if we'd been able to stick with the same schedule. But I would have to go one week into May to get all the way through. Which was a small price to pay for maybe being done for good with the infusions and daily radiation treatments. But on the other hand, the end of these treatments came with the potential for yet another surgery, which wasn't such an exciting prospect. They were going to get rid of the diseased lymph nodes once and for all, one way or another, at the end of this chemo cycle. And that part was kind of exciting. But having them removed wasn't something I was looking forward to. The fourth operation in less than half a year. Thyroidectomy, port placement, surgical excision of the infected tissue on my back that almost killed me, and now possibly lymphadenectomy of nodes from four different sites in my body. That would mean at least four new incisions, four new scars. And yes, worth it to get them and their cancerous cells out of my body, but definitely not an exciting prospect.The month of April passed quickly once treatment started in earnest. The shorter breaks in the action meant it actually seemed to go by faster it seemed. I was totally caught off guard when Karlie mentioned in passing that the Met Gala was coming up. She'd gotten invites from a few of her contracts, but hadn't accepted any up to that point because she wasn't sure she wanted to go stag. I was definitely not able to even consider it, not in the midst of a chemo cycle. Not that I really wanted to. I encouraged her to do it, to take one of them up on their offer and just enjoy the event. I would hopefully be able to join the next year. Some of our friends were coming into town for it and I wanted to see as many of them as possible, and I knew that was going to cause her anxiety even though my team said it was fine to have people over as long as they were careful. But Karlie wanted the first one after we got married to be one for the both of us. She wasn't super enthusiastic about getting questions about me on the carpet either. So this would be a Gala the two of us would sit out.It was Cara who called first, saying she had to come over, had to talk to me about a part she'd gotten, and forgotten to tell me about. She said she was sorry, and I couldn't figure it out. What in the world would she have to be sorry for when it came to a part she was playing in a movie? She pulled up to the house wearing jeans and a hoodie with the hood up, and I wondered why. No one much cares who is spotted entering or leaving my house these days. Now that Karlie and I have been married for months, there's not much hanging around by the paps. They respect my privacy during treatment enough to let us be. Even when she got inside though, she kept her hood on, and it only made me more curious. She apologized again, the moment she walked into the living room, where Karlie and I were eating popcorn and watching Friends. "I should have told you before I did it. I know it's not what you wanted. It's for a part, I swear to God, Taylor." Then she pulled off the hood and the beanie underneath it, and then I understood.She was as bald as I was under that hat. Her freshly shorn scalp was pale, evidence it hadn't seen the sun, hadn't been like that long. I was right. She did look like a badass. I'd known she would, from the day she shaved mine. All I could do was laugh. She seemed so genuinely concerned that I'd be mad or something. It wasn't like she'd decided to deliberately defy me, or done it to hurt me. On the contrary. She'd done it for a part playing someone not so unlike me. And knowing me and what I'd been through, I expected her to be able to play the part really well. So even though I didn't particularly want to see my friends shave their heads in tribute to me, I couldn't fault her for doing it for the reason she had.Karlie joked she felt like the odd one out, with her long blonde hair flowing over her shoulders. It was weird, a good kind of weird, not being the only bald one in the room. I took my own scarf off. If it was good enough for Cara, it was good enough for me. Karlie took a picture of the two of us, bald heads together, laughing at Olivia after she tried to leap from a chair to the fireplace mantel and failed. It was cute, really, so I let Cara post it on her Instagram. I did my makeup and let Karlie take another of the three of us, with her in the middle so Cara and I could balance on either side. I hadn't posted a selfie in ages, but it seemed like the right moment. Before that, the only pictures of me without a scarf, hat, or wig were from our honeymoon and the Adidas promo shoot. And none of them were on my own account. Karlie had posted the honeymoon ones, and Adidas the others. So this was kind of a big moment for me. The last step I hadn't taken. It kinda seemed like it was time. Yes, I'd posted the initial video shaving it, but that was the only time I'd shown the fans what I looked like, who I saw when I looked in the mirror.The picture caused quite a stir on social media, in no small part because it had been quite a while since my last post. I'd posted the video after I got home from the hospital, explaining that I had lost some of my hearing and used hearing aids now, but it had been almost two months since then. That was sort of crazy to think about. That I'd been so wrapped up in my own shit that I hadn't even thought to update the fans and let them know I was doing okay. That was going to have to change. They'd been so supportive of me through everything, I couldn't help but feel like I'd let them down. I'd promised to keep them informed and then kind of disappeared. It was so lovely of them to have stuck around. I wanted to do something special, but wasn't sure what. I was so close to maybe having a big announcement. If everything went according to plan, I might get to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear. 
It was so nice to see my girl come out of her shell a little. Cara had warned me before she came about what she'd done, so I knew what to expect. I really didn't think it was going to be a big deal, though I knew Cara was worried about it. Taylor might not have wanted her to shave it initially but that was months ago, and it wasn't as though she'd done it for any reason remotely connected to what Taylor was going through. It was a pure coincidence that she'd gotten this part and was filming it now. It had been months since the day we'd called Cara to come do what neither of us could bring ourselves to do. Most of the time, it wasn't a big deal anymore. She was still Taylor, hair or no hair. Beautiful, inside and out. I would never have said it to her, because I knew she still wanted to get back as much as she could to her old self, but it really didn't matter to me if it ever grew back. As long as I had her, none of the rest of it mattered at all. But seeing her throw her head back and laugh with Cara, head uncovered, a rare sight outside the bedroom, where she did at least sleep with it bare, well, if anyone had bothered to look at me, I'm sure I was making heart eyes all over the place.
Cara, Karlie and I ended up having a really nice afternoon, once Cara was sure I wasn't mad at her for shaving her head. It was fun for both of us not to be the only ones in the room with bare scalps. Made us both feel more comfortable. I wished we could go out, but we were headed into my last week of chemo and radiation of the cycle, maybe ever, and there was no way we could trust my counts to be high enough for public interaction. They'd stayed up more than usual, thanks to the new chemo schedule, but they still weren't good enough for me to just, do things. I had to plan ahead, wear a mask, interact with nothing and no one. It sucked, but was definitely better than being in the hospital or getting sick again. So instead, Karlie went out to get stuff so we could go up on the roof deck and roast hot dogs and veggies and stuff over the fire pit. It was as close to 'out' as I could get.I couldn't drink, not with the infusions happening so close together, so none of us did, but we still ended up laughing hysterically after Karlie lit her veggie kabab on fire and ended up screaming like a little girl and running around with it. And Cara threatened her with a hot dog, which totally grossed her out, since it's not even recognizable as far as what kind of meat it is. It was a pretty chill evening, the three of us just hanging out. Both Cara and Karlie made instagram stories of our cooking efforts, and for the first time I didn't shy away from being in the shot. It had taken me almost the entire duration of the planned course of treatment to be confident in who I was, and how it had affected me, but since I was finally there, I figured I should embrace it. It made me wonder about the fact that I hadn't wanted anyone around me to shave their heads. Like, Cara having done hers made me feel more confident, like I wasn't alone. But it was what I hadn't wanted. I was still glad Karlie hadn't done it, even though she offered. She would have been absolutely stunning bald, of course, because she's Karlie, but I still didn't think it would have helped quite the way Cara did. Maybe because as soon as the Met was over on Monday Cara would be heading on to Cannes and I wouldn't be seeing her every single day the way I did Karlie. Maybe Karlie was too close to me. But I was glad I'd gotten that little boost from Cara going into the last week. There was no guarantee that it was the last one ever. Once treatment had been over for a week, I would get a PET scan to see where I was. Then we'd set a date to surgically remove any remaining lymph nodes and possibly schedule one more round of chemo after that to just make sure any residual cells were gone. Then there was maintenance therapy to consider. Just because I was hitting a 'last' didn't mean it was for good. Not yet, not for sure.When Cara headed out for the night, it seemed to me the hug was just a little longer, a little tighter than our usual. "You've got this, Tay. Love you." Karlie walked her to the door, and I fully expected it to take a bit. They would confer about how I was doing, the steps that came next but that we hadn't discussed, and then Cara would hold her tight too. It was funny, the way certain friends had become huge parts of our lives, while others had faded. I was really glad to have Cara around. She's been a friend for a while, to Karlie even longer than me, and she's one of the people who has been a steady presence through treatment. She was there for my surgery and she's here as I hopefully approach the end, and I doubt that if this had happened a few years ago that it would have been like that. I'm not glad it happened, but I'm glad if it had to, that it happened when it did, the way it did, because I've had the right people around me to help me get through it. My wife, of course, but friends like Cara and Ed who drop in and out but provide huge boosts when they're around.

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May fifth. Cinco de Mayo. Not even a big holiday outside of American college students who want an excuse to binge on tequila and US Mexican restaurants that enjoy the sales boost that comes with that. But also possibly one of the biggest days of my life. I didn't know for sure if it was going to be an occasion to celebrate, but I hoped it was. My last scheduled radiation treatment and last at-home chemo infusion. I didn't want to let myself get my hopes up too much. Though my scans before this round had been great, and shown real progress, there had still been quite a few red spots. Under both arms, by my spine and in my groin. It seemed unlikely that those would all have vanished after only five weeks of treatment, when it had been over five months since I started chemo and radiation. But the next steps weren't set in stone. There might be surgery to remove the ones that were left. Maybe just radiation, or just chemo. The fact that radiation effects carry on weeks after the last actual treatment meant that we could just do nothing, as scary as that prospect was. It was entirely possible that after my PET scan they would just wait a month and do another. As much as I never wanted to do another infusion for the rest of my life, it was absolutely terrifying to think about stopping them while even a single cancer cell remained.The treatments themselves were uneventful. Even Karlie's port access had become fairly routine. I no longer had to strip entirely, and we'd found a good rhythm for it. In fact, she was able to have me sit up for the last few, placing the needle with a practiced hand. I joked that if modelling and computer science didn't work out for her, nursing would be an option. There were no celebratory cupcakes at my last radiation treatment, a clear indication no one thought this was really the end. That was okay. At least I knew what to expect now. My team had been right. As inconvenient and uncomfortable as three infusions a week of chemo were, it really was more gentle on my system. My white counts had stayed higher this time around compared to any other round of chemo, and I'd lost less weight than I expected, given that I now got the pleasure of puking three times a week instead of just one. Because of the new infusion schedule, I needed to get the white cell booster on Sunday or Monday instead of the usual Wednesday. It had to be at least 48 hours after my last infusion for maximum effectiveness. If I was going to have to endure the pain, I definitely wanted it to work as well as possible. Which left us with two options. They didn't do outpatient procedures like that on Sundays, so I could come in and get it Monday, then return Friday for my PET scan, or, I could let Karlie do it Sunday and get a one day head start on getting it over with and feeling better. I honestly wasn't sure Karlie would even agree to it. It isn't administered through my port, so she would have to actually give me a shot, and a slightly different type as well. Plus there was the fact that it caused pain after the fact. She hated knowing the chemo she gave me made me sick, never mind the excruciating pain of that one.Still, she gamely agreed to practice injecting a little saline into my stomach, a couple inches from my belly button. It was harder for her than the port, I could tell. It actually took a lot less prep than a port access. Just a couple swabs with an alcohol wipe, fill and check the syringe, inject contents and discard. And with saline, the only pain came from the initial stick with the needle. Easy. Who would have thought I'd ever say that? But it was. She was still nervous though, so Deshaun suggested she try it on herself, or let me do the same for her. I couldn't demonstrate that port access didn't hurt because she didn't have one, but I could just as easily try it out on her as she could on me. I could tell that made her nervous too. I couldn't blame her. Nursing is definitely not a future career option for me. Not one I ever considered even before music became my future. But she figured it was only fair and gamely let me pull on a set of gloves and give her shiny abs a swab. Let's just say I should stick to my day job. Karlie was MUCH better at it than me. But my complete ineptitude did prove the point. Even as much as I sucked at it, it wasn't bad. Not bad enough she couldn't handle doing it to me. It made her feel better, knowing that it really wasn't that bad. The white cell booster comes in a pre-measured shot, so there wasn't even any measuring to do. Just swab, un-cap, and stick. We left my last radiation treatment with two of the pre-filled syringes, just in case one was defective or something."Do you think that was it?" Karlie asked on the way home."I don't know. I mean, I hope so. But you just never know, do you?" We both went quiet for the rest of the ride home, letting Mike just drive. When we got to our door, he got out to open the door for us, something he hasn't done in a while, not since Karlie and I have been married, because he knows how much she enjoys getting to be the perfect gentlewoman. But he wanted the excuse to be close and offer a hug. This has been hard on him, and Jeff and Sean too. They're well paid to protect me, and they do an amazing job at it. Every now and then I get a glimpse into what they're actually protecting me from, and it's terrifying. But they couldn't do anything about this. We're a family, all of us. It may not be quite the same as how I felt seeing my mom be diagnosed and go through treatment, but it's definitely hard. I forgot sometimes that I knew the other side. Mom's treatment hadn't been as bad as mine, and that had been hard enough to endure knowing I couldn't help. This was undoubtedly worse. "Thanks."The final infusion of round four began with Karlie's best port access ever. I was even sitting up. She got the dressing on as well as Andy ever had, and I knew he and Deshaun would be proud. I actually made her take a picture of her accomplishment to show them, the next time we went to the Institute. That was a weird thought. That my next visit might be to say thank you, and goodbye for now. I would never truly be rid of that place. Even if this proved to be my last round of treatment, there would be follow-up testing and monitoring. At first once a month. Then every three. Then every six, and finally once a year. After five years they would deem it unlikely to recur and call me cured. There would be blood tests and PET scans. I'd been doing some reading and they wouldn't even take out my port until after the first year, maybe two depending on my preference. Some people kept them for years. I saw one vlogger online who'd had hers for over a decade. She didn't have cancer, but rather a chronic disease, but still. I guessed it made sense, keeping in there in case they needed it. They would still be able to do my blood draws through it, and all I had to do to keep it functioning was access once a month and push some heparin through it to prevent it from clogging with clotted blood. After this round of chemo, Karlie could totally handle that.It was the worst infusion from a side effect standpoint of the new cocktail. I guess my body just wanted to remind me how exciting it would be if this proved to be the last one. How nice it would be to go more than two weeks at a stretch without vomiting and diarrhea. How much I would sincerely enjoy putting mouth sores and easy bruising and being able to count every single rib I possessed behind me. I spent Friday afternoon lying on the air mattress in the bathroom with Karlie, wondering if this was maybe a ritual we could let go of, sometime soon. I was unbelievably grateful to Derek and Nick for lending it to us. It had made suffering through the effects of chemo slightly more bearable thus far. We really owed them one for having come through for us that first night, when we'd been woefully unprepared for how hard it would hit me. And they were still there, hovering in the background, ready to do whatever they could to help us out. We had a lot of good friends like that. Sure, proximity made it easier for them to be the ones, but Ed and Abigail and Cara and my brother would all drop everything, if I needed them.It was Tuesday when the pain started. We'd come to an unspoken agreement that we weren't going to mess around this time. When the minor aches blossomed into daggers of pain, she didn't hesitate to carry me up to the terrace, baggie and lighter in hand. If, as we hoped, this was the last one, we wanted it to go as well as we could. She stayed with me this time, letting the smoke waft around both of us. It didn't take long for the effects to settle in, for which I was exquisitely grateful. It didn't mean the pain was gone. Nothing could do that for me but time. But it did mean it was much more bearable. It would take a couple more visits to the rooftop to keep it at bay until the worst of it wore off, but at least it let me watch a movie with my girl, or nap with only dull achiness. And it once again brought the welcome boost in my appetite that had been a godsend for keeping weight on while dealing with the digestive effects of chemo, so Karlie had fun cooking anything and everything that sounded good to me. I thought I would cry tears of joy over the tacos she made, even if I was the only one eating the actual taco meat. She'd sautéed onions, bell peppers and mushrooms, which was her main filler along with the lettuce and tomato and salsa. I could tell the contact high from my 'meds' was getting to her when she added cheese and sour cream to her own as well as mine.Once that passed, there was nothing to do but wait. Hopefully we would get all kinds of good news after my appointments at The Institute on Friday. I had a PET scan and blood work, which would, if all had gone according to plan, reveal that my counts were back up and that the last few red spots on my PET had all but disappeared. I tried so hard not to get my hopes up while we waited. I knew there was a good chance I was going to need another round of treatment of some kind before we could call it quits. The infection and its aftermath had slowed everything down, and having to stop in the middle of a round of chemo had probably not helped anything. But at the same time, I wanted so much to be done. I was tired of being tired and sick. I wanted to pick back up working on new music, now that I could hear it the way I needed to. I wanted to be able to go out places and not be scared that my immune system was too low and that I'd get sick. I wanted Karlie to be able to pick back up with her own life and career and school. She'd basically made life stop for me, and I knew how fortunate we were to be able to do that. Most people can't stop what they do for a living for cancer. Treatment is expensive, even with insurance, and jobs aren't usually as accommodating as people would like. But ours were. We had the luxury of doing this the way we wanted, without worrying about how we would pay or if we would lose our jobs. But that didn't mean either one of us wanted to stop for good.* * *Friday's appointment was on a dark, dreary, rainy day. Not an auspicious beginning. As had become our usual, they had me come up a back way, avoiding the waiting room and other patients as much as possible until the blood tests could confirm that my immune system was back up where it needed to be for me to be able to be around crowds. They were tests I'd done a hundred times before. A PET scan and bloodwork and waiting, endless waiting for the labs to come back. I saw my whole team, Makenna and Deshaun and Andy were all part of prepping me for the bloodwork and taking me to radiology for the PET. Dr. Park was in the hallway so we waved hi as I was taken for the next test. Dr. Miller had greeted me when I first arrived and I knew she'd be back once my results were in. It was a weird parallel, sitting in my regular clothes, waiting in a room where I could see a screen I knew they would use to show the results of my scans. Karlie held me tight, holding herself together as well. We were both quiet, trying not to be too hopeful, but also hoping with everything we had that the results would be what we wanted.Two men accompanied Dr. Miller when she came in. One looked vaguely familiar, so I thought he might be the radiology tech who had my PET results, but the other I didn't recognize at all, and I didn't like that. Having an extra doctor there meant this probably wasn't going to be a "congratulations, you're in remission" conversation. I'd known that, I guess, going into it. Had tried to keep my expectations low. But it was still a blow, getting the results before they were even formally announced. Karlie realized what I already knew, squeezing me extra tight and whispering "it's going to be okay, we've got this" as we waited for someone to speak.They told me my blood work was excellent. The booster had once again done its job, and my counts were high enough we could go out to eat after the appointment if we wanted, no restrictions. Which was nice and all, but not the main reason for the visit. I knew they weren't drawing it out on purpose. It wasn't to build suspense; it was just to go over each thing and make sure they didn't miss anything important. But all I wanted to know was what came next. Were we holding to see if the last of the spots would vanish under the lingering effects of radiation? Was I going to do another round of that? Or chemo? Or would we just remove the last few affected lymph nodes surgically? I just wanted to know. For the first time, we didn't have a plan for what came next. The infection and its aftermath had altered the plan, slowed us down and thrown a huge monkey wrench in things, but we'd still essentially gone back to the plan once I was better. But now we'd reached the end of the plan. And I was pretty sure I wasn't fully better, which meant we needed a new plan.The new doctor looked like a doctor from TV. Tall, with jet black hair, perfectly imperfect smile, and the kind of muscles that are defined without seeming like too much. There was a bit of salt and pepper at his temples, just to make him look even more distinguished. His name was Dr. Hernandez, and he was a surgical oncologist. As soon as he introduced himself and his specialty, I knew what the plan was. The time had come to surgically remove whatever cancerous lymph nodes remained. Which was scary, another surgery, but also sort of a relief. By the end of the surgery, I would be essentially cancer free. Dr. Miller had said at the beginning that we would only do the surgery if she was confident I didn't need any more chemo after, because of the risk of infection after surgery. So that meant I'd reached a place in my treatment where the team didn't think there was any risk of further spread, as long as those last few were taken care of. At that point they finally put my PET results on the screen. I was down to just two areas of affected lymph nodes, from three the scan before. Just the ones by my spine and the ones in my groin. Four nodes total stood between me and the all clear.Surgery was scheduled two weeks out, to give me a bit longer with my improved immune system before introducing another two incisions to my already exhausted body. In the meantime, the radiation effects would continue to increase, meaning that perhaps by the time of the surgery, the affected nodes would be smaller, or there might be fewer of them. Dr. Hernandez was still going to take out the ones they knew to be affected as well as a few surrounding nodes just to be sure he got everything. I didn't want another surgery. Didn't want anesthesia and grogginess and another breathing tube. But I did want, very much, to be cancer free. And I also wanted to be done with chemo. It sucked. Radiation wasn't so bad, but chemo was the worst. And if the surgery went well, it was a way for me to be done. To achieve remission. It wasn't a guarantee, because nothing about this was ever guaranteed. But Dr. Miller thought this was my best chance at a full remission. Better than another round of chemo or radiation. The nodes that remained had not, themselves, shrunk at all over the course of treatment. They had been there from the day I'd been diagnosed, and nothing we threw at them had seemed to change them. So it was time to just take them out, so that they couldn't send cancer cells anywhere else in my body once I stopped the other treatments.* * *Karlie spent most of those two weeks working, at my request. I wanted her with me after. Once I recovered from surgery and we were sure I was okay, maybe we could take a trip somewhere, or fall into bed and spend a week pretending to be back in the early days of our relationship, when we needed physical contact like we needed oxygen. But before that, she had a career she was trying to maintain, and so did I. For the first time in months, I felt good enough to actually work consistently.I went back to Dr. Reddy a couple of times for adjustments to the settings on my hearing aids, as I started to spend more and more time in the studio, recording demos and messing around with different sounds. There was a particular violin note, for example, that caused excruciating feedback before adjustments were made. And sometimes the bass line sounded weird until he played a bit with how they were set. I was doing most of the work solo. It wasn't, any of it, production ready. For actual album tracks, I would undoubtedly bring in a producer and a sound engineer. But for demo recordings, I could generally handle it myself, even if I had to use the keyboard to drop in computer generated versions of the instruments I wanted rather than actual musicians or instruments. Back in the day I used to just record piano or guitar versions for demos, describing in words or sounds what I wanted, but more and more I was getting comfortable with layering in the other instruments, even ones I didn't play. I had Ed, mostly, to thank for that. Jack too. I knew I wanted this album to be more of a solo effort. I loved all my cowriters dearly, but I knew this album needed to be mine. Just mine, for the most part.Karlie traveled to Europe for a couple of days. Begged me to come along. But this trip was about her, not us. She needed to go. Needed to remember what her job was really all about. I promised we could exchange videos all day, text a bunch, and Facetime when we were both free. It was the most we'd been apart since I got sick, and I knew it made her nervous. It made her even more anxious that I wasn't having anyone come to stay with me, even though that was silly. Security would only be a phone call away. But I wasn't having my mom, or Austin, or Cara or Ed or Abigail. For the first time since I got sick, I was going to essentially have the house to myself. And that definitely gave her pause. But she needed to go, for her own sake. She sent me dailies sometimes, while she was gone. It was apparent from the pictures that she had aged. She was still just as gorgeous as ever, but there was a maturity to the pictures. I wouldn't have thought you could see through photos how hard on us both my treatment had been, but it was there, in the crinkling around her eyes and the tiny lines next to her smile that would be airbrushed out before the pics made it to the public eye. The changes to me were more readily apparent, lost hair and weight, though I wondered how much older I would be, once my hair grew back and the scars faded into fine white lines.
I didn't want to go. It wasn't that I wasn't into the projects or the shoots. Two of them were science and technology oriented so normally I would have been over the moon to be invited to be part of them. One of the major ones was for L'Oreal, my own commercial, just me, and also a fitting for Dior for later in the summer if everything was still going well. Taylor was even invited, if she felt up to it, which was a fun thing to contemplate. The idea that once she was finished with treatment, we could start being the couple we always wanted to be, publicly. After nearly four years together, and a wedding, it was nice to think that for the rest of our lives, we could hold hands and kiss on sidewalks and go to events together and not only would no one question it, but it would be celebrated in the media. I hated what had forced us to make the call and come out. Wished with every fiber of my being that Taylor hadn't gotten sick. That we could go back to that summer, in 2016, when our biggest concern was if she was going to beard again for the next album cycle and how Josh and I were going to let the 'relationship' quietly fade out, and test out the alternate version of the timeline where she was still healthy. But I loved being married to her. Loved knowing that all my contracts and campaigns wanted me the same as they had before. Loved the confidence that came with having nothing to hide.

Being an ocean away from her was weird. We talked all the time. I'm sure I pissed off some people I was working with because every time there was a break in the action, I was glued to my phone, sending grainy snaps of the dailies, selfies in the makeup chair and questions about her day. I was probably driving her nuts as well, honestly. She didn't need me hovering, not right that moment. She wasn't doing any treatment, spending most of her time in the music room. I would get videos of her goofing around at the piano, singing alternate lyrics to Disney songs, making them all gayer, and asking if the song sounded familiar, because she couldn't shake the feeling she'd heard it before. She never shares any of her songs while they're works in progress, so I didn't expect to get even a shred of a new melody, but it was still fun to see her in the music room, even if she was just fucking around. Showed me a glimpse of what our married life might be once she was better and I could stop worrying, constantly, if she was okay.
* * *It was crazy hot for May the morning of my surgery. It made the news, how warm it was, with the usual reminders to actually do something about your trash so the entire city didn't smell like a dump that were more traditional for July. My mom had flown in the night before, staying once again at Karlie's old place, though it was further away this time. She was going to stay in one of the guest rooms for at least the night and maybe a few after that, just to be there for us. Austin had a couple of auditions in the city coming up so he was going to make use of the Charles St. place and also be able to come over and bring food or a stupid DVD to make me laugh while I recovered. I could tell it made him nervous, a little. He hadn't been there for the previous surgery, but he remembered talking to me after. He wanted so much to be strong and macho about it, but I'm his sister and he didn't like to see me hurting, even if it was maybe going to be the thing that made me better, for good. Karlie didn't like that part either, the part where I was in pain.That morning, before we left for the hospital, Karlie accessed my port. I hadn't known what to expect, if they would let us do that, but they assured us it was common for patients who did regular at-home access to come in already accessed and ready to go. It made Karlie feel like she was contributing to making me better to be able to do that part, and I appreciated knowing that it would be done exactly the way I liked it, with the little flaps to hold on to cushioned with the gauze just so, and the dressing smoothed on with a little extra love. Plus, it would have been weird to thank the nurse at the hospital with a kiss. Especially if it was a guy. One upside to being married and out: no more having to kiss guys for music videos. I shared that revelation with Karlie and she laughed and said she hadn't had enough coffee yet for that, but I knew she was joking. She'd been up for at least an hour and a half before she woke me, getting herself ready for the day ahead, which would be much longer for her than for me.It felt odd entering the hospital through the front door, though once again we were across town at the inpatient hospital instead of the Institute. I knew to expect to see Dr. Miller, she'd been there for the first surgery and would likely be there for this one too. As the one coordinating my overall treatment plan, I loved that she was involved every step of the way. I wouldn't be seeing Deshaun or Andy or Makenna this visit, or Dr. Park, but Dr. Hernandez of course would be seeing me before surgery to make sure I was prepped the way he needed me. They would be doing one final PET scan to be sure of the locations of the lymph nodes, marking me up with sharpie before putting me under so they were confident they were in the right place. There would be a lab tech right there, ready to examine each removed node as it came out, looking for the cancerous ones. They wouldn't be finished until all four that lit up on the PET scan were confirmed to be in the surgical basin and no longer in my body. Only then would they stop.I realized as I changed into the hospital gown that pretty much everything I was wearing, except the shoes, was actually Karlie's. We've always shared clothing, though my pants are sometimes a bit short on her. We would share shoes too except that her feet are bigger than mine. I like to tease her about it, you know, about what it means when someone has big feet. Before she pulled the hospital gown closed behind me, a rear opening necessary for the access to the nodes near my spine, I felt the now familiar sensation of her pressing a temporary tattoo to the back of my shoulder. "It's giraffes again," she whispered, planting a kiss just behind my ear. "This journey began with surgery, and now surgery is going to end it, once and for all. We've come full circle."I took advantage of one of the positive aspects of hearing aid use and just took them out for the PET scan. Listening to music was nice, but not hearing the banging and clicking and thunking of the machine was even better. I knew Karlie was holding them for me in the booth, watching the familiar vignette of me sliding on a table though a giant white donut, and I thought back to the first time we'd done this. I'd had so many of these scans at this point, I'd lost track, but I could still remember how scared I was the first time, not knowing what it would be like, or what the results might mean. I knew she was thinking of the same day, the day we found out I was sick. And I knew that like me, she was hoping that this was the last one ever that would have the telltale red splotches. I almost didn't mind knowing they would be there this time. Hoped that they showed up clearly on the image, all the better to remove the right ones. The fewer they had to take, the better for my recovery. Dr. Hernandez had warned me that this one would probably be more painful than the previous one, because there were two sites and because the one near my groin, especially, would pull when I moved. Also because I couldn't lie on my back, because of the incision near my spine, but I wouldn't be able to lie on my stomach either. Finding good positions was going to be tricky for a while, but I wasn't about to sign up for two separate surgeries just to avoid that awkwardness. I wanted it over with.They didn't even let me up from the table after the PET before Dr. Hernandez was in the room with a marker to write where he needed to cut and aim. It was so different from the first surgery, having all this pre-planning, but I guess that the cancerous nodes don't always look different from the healthy ones once you're inside, and I definitely didn't want to lose more than necessary, since that can lead to permanent problems with swelling. He had me roll to my side and curl into the fetal position to mark for the spinal nodes, just to the left of my spine. Then back onto my back for the inguinal nodes. The opposite order than he would actually operate. There was a good chance he would have to leave drains this time, something I hadn't had with the previous surgery, and that would make it even more uncomfortable to lay in certain positions. As much as possible he was going to try to make me as comfortable as he could, that's why he was going to do the inguinal first, with me flat on my back, then roll me for the spinal. I would wake up on my side in recovery, most likely the only comfortable position for a while. They were hopeful to still send me home the next day but realistically it would probably be two or three before that could happen.Markings done, I was taken to the prep room to meet the anesthesiologist and finalize everything for surgery. Karlie held my hand and Mom sat in the corner of the room as they made sure I was as ready as I could be. My poor mom had been through so many awkward conversations since I started this, and that morning was no exception, as the nurses told me to take off any undergarments I might be wearing since they would only get in the way for the inguinal node excision. Nothing like Mom hearing the medical team joke that I needed to go commando for this, and would likely do the same for a few days after for comfort, as the incision would fall in a potentially uncomfortable spot. They'd already suggested loose sweats or dresses for the trip home, nothing that would possibly be tight on the healing wounds. But Mom handled it well, making it less embarrassing than it could have been. And then they were pushing the first meds into my IV and the world became fuzzy and warm and Karlie told me she loved me, and kissed me, and gently removed my glasses and my hearing aids, truly making everything fuzzy around me.
I was less scared this time. I thought it would be worse, knowing they were putting her under for the second time. That they were giving her a third breathing tube in just a few months. That she would come out of this surgery with two new scars and the potential for new complications. But I felt a sense of peace that was hard to describe, carrying the bits and pieces of her I had to care for while she was in surgery. It was truly bizarre, but I hoped that peace came from knowing that when she healed from this final surgery, she would be healthy again. Cancer free. I hoped it was some kind of psychic sign that this was it. The last step. That from here on out, the test results would always be what we wanted to hear. Andrea caught me smiling as I put her glasses into their case and zipped her hearing aids into a pouch for safe keeping. She, unfortunately, didn't have the same sense of peace I did. Still, she was optimistic, having talked to Dr. Miller that morning about what we were hoping for as the results from this. Having missed the pre-op appointments this time, she didn't have the same grasp of the goals of surgery she had the first time. But she knew Taylor and I wouldn't have agreed to it if we didn't think it was the best course of action for the next round of treatment.

I didn't have any coursework to distract me this time, which was somewhat unfortunate since this was going to be a long surgery. After each node was removed it had to be tested before they could move on to the next one, and then there were two sites to examine and excise instead of just one. They put us in a different waiting room than before, a smaller one, with fewer chairs but a nicer window onto the city. Andrea pulled out a book and I pulled out my laptop to answer some work e-mails. I wasn't going to be doing much work for the next few weeks with Taylor recovering, but I could start lining things up for later in the summer at least. And say no thank you to a lot of the requests for the rest of May and June. My goal was to stay largely available while she was getting better and then maybe be able to take a week or so just the two of us once she was given the all-clear, not only when it came to recovery from the surgery but also an official 'NED' which my dad told me was the new way of declaring remission. "No Evidence of Disease." They didn't like to use "cancer-free" when it came to patients like Taylor who had aggressive metastatic cancer. There was always a chance it would pop up somewhere, months or years from now. That's why they had to be so on top of monitoring her. The longer she went without recurrence, the less likely she was to have one. But it wasn't like hearing after this surgery that they 'got it all' meant she was fine and we never had to worry about it ever again. And that sucked.

Still, once I finished up the e-mails I moved on to some code, just for the immersion factor. It's easier for me to get lost in lines of code than almost anything else, and I needed the distraction. Andrea and I didn't really have much to say. We were both just kind of quietly hoping, side by side, that this would do it. Be as much of an end as Taylor could get. But that was precisely the same thing we'd hoped for the last time we sat together in a waiting room while Taylor was in surgery. At some point Sean came by with salads for both of us, and also ice cream because he knew I usually wanted healthy but that also this might be time to eat our feelings. I honestly don't know how any of it tasted, but I did eat because all I could think was I had to be strong for Taylor, and I couldn't do that if I didn't eat. But otherwise I didn't have an appetite, didn't want to do anything but get word that she was out of surgery and it had gone well and they got everything they could.

I guess I actually passed out in the waiting room for a bit, because the next thing I knew, Andrea was shaking my shoulder because there was a nurse ready to take me back to see her in recovery. She was very groggy and confused, at least in part because the nurses kept talking on her left side and she couldn't actually hear them, which made me mad. As her medical team they should know to talk on her right, I know it's noted in her chart that she can't hear on the left. Once I got her hearing aids in and her glasses on, she felt better mentally but pretty miserable physically. They had her sitting up but with cushions to keep the part of her back where the incision was from actually contacting, but it put pressure on the other incision. They couldn't let her lie on her side yet, because they'd just got the breathing tube out and that had needed to be done in a more head-on position, I guess. I hated to see her in pain, and she definitely was. They'd literally maxed out her morphine and she was still uncomfortable. She had a lot more nausea from the anesthesia this time too, probably an effect of the much longer duration of the operation. I didn't get much time with her, they were trying to get that under control and also see if there was anything they could do with the pain.

As I left the recovery area, I found Dr. Hernandez just greeting Andrea, who'd stayed behind this time. So it could be just me and my wife, not that we'd enjoyed it much. He told us he'd only had to remove two extra nodes in each location and that it had gone well. He'd needed a longer than planned incision on her back, about four inches, because of complications from doing it on her side, but that the one in her groin was actually shorter than anticipated which meant she should have a better healing process there. That had been the one we'd been more worried about because of the difficulty of healing in that location with walking and everything. She had, as expected, a drain left with that incision, but none on her back. They didn't anticipate she'd be able to get up and walk that night, but they were hoping in the morning. If so, she still might get out late the next day, but more realistically it would take two nights in the hospital for her to be ready to go home. It was so much later in the day than it had been with the first surgery, I was shocked to look out the window from her room and see the sun already setting while she was still barely able to sip a ginger ale. This time last operation, we'd been eating burgers with Cara. Now, she was in pain and slightly nauseous and I felt awful.

The one upside was that they'd not had a private room available, but given what we were paying to get one this double room had an empty bed and they offered that if I wanted I could stay with her. It was a no brainer. If she wasn't feeling good, I wanted to be there to help her. I told Andrea just to stay at our place. She was going to feed the cats in the morning and I didn't see any need for her to cross the city for that. Jeff brought me some things from the house I hadn't brought when we thought that like last time, Taylor would be the only one staying the night. I couldn't cuddle close to her, she was too uncomfortable for that, but I pushed my bed up next to hers so we could fall asleep holding hands, and hoped that knowing I was there would be at least a little comforting.
I ended up spending two nights in the hospital, with Karlie by my side. Austin got into town on the second day and between the two of them, they were able to help me walk a bit, though the incision pulled painfully with every step. My back was sore, but not awful, even with the longer incision. By the end of the second day, I barely noticed it, which was a mixed blessing since it meant I would sometimes forget it was there and lean back. It was like having a really bad bruise. You don't notice until something brushes it and then in that moment of agony you remember what happened. But the one in my groin was agonizing. The operation had aggravated a nerve, so besides the pain of having been cut open and had bits of myself removed, I also had nerve pain that would randomly shoot down my leg like someone stabbed me with a cattle prod. The pain would, when it spiked, make me nauseous, so they had to put me back on some of the anti-nausea drugs from chemo, which worked for that but made me sleepy, and then they'd get mad at me for sleeping instead of walking as much as possible so I could go home. It reminded me in the worst way of the time right after the infection, when I was still pretty sick and everything was hard, and it took way more effort than it should have just to eat jello. I felt too gross to eat much, though I was better at making myself eat something than I used to be after the months of chemo nausea.Still, I was relieved when, near the end of the third day at the hospital, they said I could go home. Karlie's abilities with port access were the only reason they considered it. I was trying to tough it out with oral pain meds only, just for the sake of getting released. So I was still uncomfortable, but not so bad I couldn't push through it. And the nausea was starting to go down. But they wanted Karlie to have the ability to give me something stronger if I needed it, though they hoped I wouldn't, of course. I was under strict orders to keep Dr. Miller informed how I was doing, but they trusted us. My incisions themselves looked good, no signs of infection at all, though I was on prophylactic antibiotics because of my history. No one wanted to see me battle an infection again. Least of all me. It took both Karlie and my brother to help me into the car to go home, but it was worth it. Getting home and getting to recover in my own house, in my own bed, without the beeping and constant checks of my vitals was worth it. As much as Mom and Austin had planned to stay across town at Kar's, they both felt better staying with us. Karlie could take care of me by herself of course. She'd been doing beautifully all this time. But it was a comfort to me to know she had backup, and I knew that made her feel better too. Plus, it meant she could lounge with me while Mom made food for all of us, and Mom loved having a house full of kids to cook for, even if we were all grown-up now. Even Dad said he was going to come into town since it's rare that Austin and I are in the same city for long. That was definitely the one upside of all of this. Family time. Or, it would be, once I felt up to really enjoying it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It took about two weeks after surgery to reach a point where I felt human again. The incision on my back was nothing more than a pink line, another scar to let fade with time. The one in my groin was still sensitive, but the nerve no longer shot pain down my leg, so it was a vast improvement. It felt weird not to take meds every few hours. Not to plan around chemo or radiation or even testing. I had only one doctor's appointment on the calendar for the whole month of June. Just one. That was the weirdest of all. Dad had come in at the end of the first week after surgery to spend a couple days as a family. The longer they're apart, the weirder it is to have Mom and Dad together, but even now, as a married woman with a family of my own, I really appreciated how hard they worked to keep things civil so that we could do things as the family I'd grown up with. It had been nice, spending evenings watching movies, putting together puzzles, and staging scrabble tournaments. At the end of their time in town, I'd rented out a small bowling alley so the five of us could bowl, boys vs. girls using average score to make up for the fact there were three girls and only two guys. Austin and Dad kicked our asses. Karlie may be a strong athlete, but she's a terrible bowler. Still, the five of us had fun drinking beer and laughing at the sheer number of gutter-balls we threw.After that, Karlie and I decided to retreat to Rhode Island. We'd spent very little time outside New York since I'd been sick, but that home was where we'd gotten married, and it was getting to the time of year when the beach was warm enough to go and enjoy. We finally got to take the road trip we'd hoped for for our wedding day, Karlie at the wheel, hands intertwined, 1989 playing, just like it did on our first road trip. Those songs had a lot of memories attached to them, from the first time I shared them, apprehensive about how Karlie would receive an entire album of songs about my ex-girlfriend with only a tiny reference to her role in my life, to now, playing them as a throwback to the couple we'd been back then. We didn't know what my next test results would show. If I wasn't in remission, there wasn't a lot else for them to throw at it. It made it harder to take this road trip, knowing that after everything we'd tried, every step we'd taken to make me healthy again, it was still a possibility that it wasn't fixable. But I hoped that this would be a memory we'd love when we were old and gray. That we'd talk about this as that first road trip after I went into remission. We had both been forced to grow up a lot since the previous fall, when that one terrifying six letter word brought our world crashing to a halt. It was crazy to think how much could change between twenty-six and twenty-seven, and how much more I hoped would change before twenty-eight. As soon as we arrived at the house, we changed for the beach and lounging by the pool. I eyed myself critically in the mirror, studying all the remnants of my treatment. I was starting to gain back the weight I'd lost to treatment, which was both welcome and difficult. I needed to gain, for sure. I was far too skinny. Even having gained some back, my clothes hung limply, and I still bruised on my hip-bones just from lying the wrong way on a sofa without enough padding, because of the way they jutted out beneath my skin. But in my job, gaining weight had always been the enemy, observed by people who don't know my business or my life and commented on. Still, I was sure even those assholes would agree I needed to put some on. Scars marked my skin, tattoos in remembrance of battles fought and hopefully won. The old one at my throat that thankfully continued to fade. There would, I thought, come a day when it was only noticeable if you were looking for it. My port still made a small bump under the skin of my chest, the two scars from its insertion barely visible, though the one by my collarbone remained more prominent than the one by its base. The scar from the removal of the inguinal lymph nodes was covered even in a bikini, located where only Karlie and my doctors would ever see, a good thing, as it remained darker and uneven, probably thanks to the way every move pulled on the line of the incision, distorting it slightly and preventing the skin from knitting cleanly. The one on my back was also more noticeable, in my opinion, than the one at my neck or my port scars, due to the length of the incision and the fact that it wasn't conveniently hideable amongst the normal creases of the neck. The worst one, by far, is the one that isn't directly attributable to cancer. The raised, uneven pucker from where the doctors removed the worst of the infection, making it possible for my body to fight the rest. The other visible consequence of that detour along my journey, my hearing aids were barely visible tucked behind my ears. I imagined when my hair grew back, they'd be almost undetectable unless you were looking for them. I knew the scars would fade with time. The old ones below my belly button from before Karlie aren't visible unless you're really looking. One day most of the new ones will all but vanish as well.Karlie started to wonder where I was, what was taking so long and came looking, finding me still twisting in the mirror, examining every angle. It helped that the look in her eyes in the mirror was one of admiration. Sure, she could have said "you look gorgeous" and I would have tried to take that to heart, but the look she gave me, studying me up and down, that said it better and more believably than words ever could. Somehow, after everything, she still looked at me and saw someone sexy. "As tempting as it is to forgo going outside entirely and just keep you all for myself, I think you said you wanted to go for a walk on the beach?"I threw a loose dress over my suit as a cover up, still not sure I was ready to walk the beach in less than that, and pulled a cap onto my head, the most secure cover for my head I could come up with. It was breezy down by the water and I didn't want to have to fight both my dress and my hat at the same time. I wanted to have a hand free to hold Karlie's as we strolled by the water. I wanted to be able to wade in and feel the waves crash on my feet, something I hadn't been able to do since starting treatment. We were even thinking of getting in the pool and splashing around, even though that meant I was going to have to take out my hearing aids because they weren't waterproof. Something I was definitely going to have to look into if I was going to make swimming a regular activity as I worked to regain lost strength to go with the lost weight. I knew I could trust Karlie to pay attention and make sure I could hear her, even without them. This was going to be a good week, I was sure, getting to just be wives. Other than the honeymoon and those short windows between chemo rounds, we really haven't had a chance to just be married. Being in Watch Hill meant that for the most part, we would be left alone. Mike, Jeff and Sean all had plans to take turns watching over us, but it wasn't like at home, or in LA, where there had to always be someone on guard. They could sleep at night, just as we did, and it typically took only one of them at a time, rather than trading off shifts when we were in the city. I knew that as we walked down to the sand, whoever was on duty would be keeping an eye on us, but wouldn't have to be right on top of us, for the most part.We enjoyed the week, similar to our honeymoon in the way that we weren't particularly connected to the outside world. Neither of us answered work emails, or talked to our teams at all. Our phones were on airplane mode, so we could take pictures or video, but we didn't bother posting them, we could do that once we were back at the apartment in New York. No need to alert our fans to where we were. We knew they were eagerly awaiting the results just as we were, but there was no sense in getting them excited for nothing. We didn't know if I was in remission either, though I know we both tried not to worry about it. The scans and tests would come, and for now, there was nothing more we could be doing to make it happen. Dr. Miller had encouraged the trip, saying that just relaxing and having fun, doing what I wanted and enjoying my life were probably the best ways to help me to be as healthy as I could. Karlie even convinced me to take some long walks with short jogs in the middle, trying to help me get back in shape after months of being able to do little more than walk on a treadmill and some pretty basic yoga. And even that, I'd been avoiding since the last surgery. The nerve that had been damaged in the last operation still left some numbness and tingling in my left leg that didn't show signs of disappearing anytime soon, but as long as it wasn't painful, there was no reason I shouldn't do whatever I felt up to. I was cleared from that surgical standpoint. The only clearance I was still waiting for had to do with what was inside. Was it gone? And it was too soon to tell.We could cook together, take walks on the beach, swim in the pool, read, and paint, and watch movies while we cuddled. It felt weird not to have anywhere to be or anything to do. I would mess around on the piano or guitar, not really writing anything in particular, but just because I couldn't stay away from the music. For the first time in my life, I let someone into that process who wasn't a musician. But the look in her eyes, that first time that I said I was heading to the music room, and did she want to read her book there, made it worth the slight uneasiness that came with sharing my work before it was strictly finished. It was a new level of intimacy for us, letting her be present while I worked. As odd as it felt, it also felt right. She hadn't been around for much of my previous writing cycle, the one for 1989. The majority of those songs had already been written when I fell head over heels for her. The couple songs that referenced her had been tacked on in the brief moments we WEREN'T enjoying the bliss of new love. When it came to whatever was going to come next, well, I tended to write at three in the morning in a random hotel room on tour, and with her own work schedule and the need to keep things quiet, if I'd had the pleasure of having her around at three a.m. I was enjoying her presence rather than working. And once tour ended, I was taking a break, so I didn't have the focus I would usually have had, that she might have noticed. And then I got sick and my writing became an afterthought, something I did when I felt okay, but not something that happened as much as it might have under any other circumstances. But now, waiting to see what came next, I could take some time to really start thinking about where the next album would go. There were so many things that had changed in my life since the last one. My perspective on my career had shifted a lot, after spending months facing the reality of my own mortality. I still loved it, and missed the fans, and wanted to get back to it, but awards and critical acclaim held less allure than they once had. Going forward it was about having fun and being in love and writing about those things. Sure, there would be a few songs about the hard parts. It had definitely been one of the hardest things I had ever experienced, or would ever experience. I'd lost a lot. But I'd gained more. Like a wife whose face lit up like a kid's on Christmas morning when I asked if she wanted to listen to the musical ramblings that happened BEFORE the magic. Karlie would sit on the sofa, reading a book, while I played whatever popped into my head, sometimes my own songs, sometimes covers, sometimes innovating something new and recording it for future use. Every now and then, she'd look up from her book and smile, or mention that she liked a particular song, some of which made me laugh because they were actually covers, songs she should have recognized. I forget sometimes how non-musical she actually is, bless her. But all good things must come to an end, and as we moved into the second half of June, the time came to head back to the city for yet another round of tests. We got in late the night before the appointment, having squeezed as much beach time out of our last day in Rhode Island as we could. Karlie and I had talked, and she was planning to pick up her schedule a bit in July, take some time around her birthday so we could see her family in August, and start school again in the Fall. Obviously, if the test results weren't what we hoped, we might have to reassess, but it was time to stop letting my cancer rule our lives. She'd been so fortunate that most of her major campaigns had been willing to work around my treatments and her desire to be with me through that, but it wouldn't last forever. As for me, thanks to the previous few weeks off chemo, I was finally starting to feel like myself again. I hadn't started growing my hair back just yet, which was frustrating, but I could eat, I wasn't in pain, and I was getting stronger each day. It meant I was looking forward to getting back into the studio and taking what I'd written, shaping it into actual songs and actually doing some recording. I'd pretty much decided on a direction for the next album, and was really excited to start putting it together and making new music to share with the fans.* * *Taylor lay on the hospital bed, sleeping. There were a couple IV bags, dripping whatever medicine they contained into her accessed port. I'd seen it a hundred times before, though she rarely slept at chemo. I wasn't sure why she was wearing a hospital gown either, but I figured maybe it was for testing reasons. I knew Dr. Hernandez wanted to check her incisions from the lymph node removal, so maybe the gown was for easy access. She was thinner, again, or so it seemed to me, and I wondered how she'd lost the weight again so fast after our trip. She seemed pale, too, a contrast to the healthy glow she'd had at home when we went to bed, but I figured that was just the hospital fluorescent lighting. I imagined if I could see myself, I would also look pale. Most unusual to me was that her head was bare. She almost never left her scarf or hat off unless we were sleeping at home. Even there sometimes she'd sleep in one if the room was cooler. She lazily turned her head toward me, and her baby blue eyes betrayed an exhaustion that didn't make sense. The more I studied my wife, the more tired and sick she appeared. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her lips were dry and cracked. "Glasses?" she asked, her voice faint and a bit rough, probably from sleep. "Hearing aids?" I found each of the things she needed on the side table and wondered why she'd taken them off.I didn't recognize the nurse who came into the room at all, from any of our previous visits. Where was Makenna? "You're awake, Mrs. Swift-Kloss!" the nurse greeted Taylor, as though surprised to find her conscious. She had a lilting Irish accent I knew I would remember, had we ever met before. "How are you feeling? Not in any pain, love?""Mmm-mmm" Taylor hummed her denial of any pain, shaking her head. "I'm okay, thanks Maggie." I couldn't believe how weak she sounded. She wasn't supporting her speech at all, there was no power behind it. It was barely recognizable as my wife's voice. "It's so hard to breathe." It was only then that I heard how labored her breathing was, saw how her lips and fingernails were tinged purple. "Let's get some oxygen flowing then," Maggie said gently, reaching behind her to pull out a long thin tube which she slipped over Taylor's head, adjusting the nose pieces so they fit comfortably. "There, see if that's not better." Taylor nodded in response, but I could see she was already drifting away, about to fall back asleep. Why was my wife struggling to breathe? What had I missed? "She's asleep, love, can I get YOU anything while I'm here? You really should eat something, Mrs. Swift-Kloss. Watching you waste away isn't going to make letting go any easier on her, is it? You don't have to be strong for her, but she does need to know you'll be okay without her, hard though it will be." And that's when I realized. Taylor was dying. The cancer had metastasized to her lungs, which is why she seemed so sick, and tired, and was having trouble breathing. But she couldn't have gotten this sick overnight? Could she? Why did everyone seem to accept this as fact? Had I blacked out months of this? What year was it? My internal panic was interrupted by Taylor breathing my name "Karlie? Karlie, it's time..."Karlie had slept right through the alarm, and it looked like whatever dream she was having wasn't one she wanted to continue. She looked really upset, and as much as she was usually a bitch to wake up, I was hopeful she wouldn't mind too much, given that I had my tests today and we needed to get ready to go to the Institute. I gently shook her shoulder, saying "Karlie? Karlie, it's time to get up, babe. We're supposed to be at the hospital in an hour." She awoke reluctantly, but when she saw me bent over her on the bed, she smiled widely and pulled me down into a kiss. I wish she was always this happy to see me in the morning. I could tell she didn't want to talk about the dream. I imagined it was one of those nightmares where I was dead or dying, brought on by the anxiety we were both feeling about the tests later that day. Obviously we both hoped everything would be okay, that they would come back NED and I would be free to keep living my life, to start putting this chapter of my life behind me and start planning our future. Music and tours and maybe kids one day. It felt weird to be the optimistic one, but I could understand Karlie's fears too. This was a big deal, possibly reaching the end of treatment. Because just because I had no evidence of disease didn't mean I was cured, or that I couldn't get sick again. It just meant that for the moment, I was as healthy as modern medicine could make me.It felt oddly full-circle to enter the hospital through the front door, ride the elevator up to the main floor for The Institute for Head, Neck and Thyroid Cancer, and sign in at the desk, receiving my usual pair of bracelets, blue with my information, red because I'm still allergic to penicillin. My appointment was another early morning one, to keep me from attracting unwanted attention. There was only one other pair in the waiting area, what looked like a mom and a teenage girl. I offered a small smile, and the daughter gave me an anxious one in return. I hoped, for her sake, that they were wrong. That she was here for a bunch of tests that would rule out the kind of cancer I'd been battling since that day back in September when my whole world turned upside down. If they were right, I hoped hers hadn't spread. That she would have an easier fight than mine.It was weird to have just a PET scan and some blood work planned for the morning. But ideally, there was nothing left to biopsy. There was no need to look at my vocal chords, they were as healed as they were going to get. Dr. Hernandez did plan to stop by to inspect my incisions, but that was more a formality than anything. After everything we'd been through, they trusted us to know if something wasn't healing as it should. I'd invited Mom to come to this appointment. She might not have been present for the first diagnostic appointment, but she'd been at most of the major ones since. She declined, knowing that Karlie and I had this under control. We'd started this as a pair, and we would finish it that way as well. Karlie took my hand in hers and squeezed, leaning to plant a kiss on my scarf-covered head. We were nervous, but maybe less so than the first time we sat in this waiting area. "Taylor?"I grinned widely to see Deshaun and Andy in the room, waiting for me. I gave both of them huge hugs, any anxiety I'd had about this appointment melting to hear them yell "EAGLE!" and perform their signature move once again. We'd left my port unaccessed, unsure how they wanted to do this. We didn't know what order they were going for with the testing, or if they wanted me accessed for the PET or not, so both of my favorite techs got a chance to push a needle into my port. Deshaun drew the sample for the blood work, and Andy was the one to give me the radioactive tracer for the PET. I decided it was never going to not feel weird to have the cold of the tracer spread through my veins. I'd had so many of these I'd lost count, but it still felt disconcerting to be getting cold from the inside out. If this went well, and the results were as we hoped, this would be the routine for all my future visits here. Just blood work and a PET. Radiology was ready for me fairly quickly, so I found myself on the table, handing Karlie my hearing aids, letting her cover me with a blanket because I still got cold during that long slow journey while they got images of every inch of my insides. She bent down to give me another gentle kiss, signed 'I love you' and headed into the booth. She had one last PET scan playlist set up. Although I couldn't hear them as well as I used to, it was sweet to know she was still thinking of me and things that would make this better for me. There were a lot of songs about fighting, and winning, and even my own song, Long Live. I may have teared up a bit hearing the line "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you," because I knew exactly what my wife was thinking when she picked it. That even if the dragon won, we wouldn't change these last few months. We would happily go back and live the alternate reality where I was healthy and none of this happened, but if it had to, we wouldn't change that we'd lived it together. It didn't feel any different than all the ones I'd had before. Just lie back and try to occupy my mind while the machine did its work, searching for any areas where there was abnormally high consumption of radioactive sugar. Red used to be my favorite color, but my goal was to see almost none of it on my scans, when they were all finished.The waiting was harder, this time. It gave me time to imagine all the worst-case scenarios. That the scans still weren't clear. That there were more, new spots, that had grown while we were working to get rid of the ones we knew about. That they'd been hiding there all along, just waiting for me to discontinue chemo so they could flourish. Karlie could feel me worrying. We didn't try to pretend we didn't need to hold each other while we waited. We sat together, holding each other, my head on her shoulder. There wasn't much to say. We knew what we wanted, and what we were scared of, but neither of us wanted to voice our fears. It still felt like that was giving them power, somehow, putting them out into the world. Which was silly, but it still felt that way. We both started when the knock at the door came. Dr. Miller filed in, with Andy and Deshaun and Makenna and also a radiologist I'd never seen before, but who introduced himself as Dr. Singh. This was it. It felt like the room suddenly didn't have enough oxygen. I felt Karlie's hand squeeze mine, a reminder to ground myself. Whatever the outcome was, I had her. We had each other. Dr. Singh smiled. He pushed the USB drive in his hand into the viewer on the wall and pushed a few buttons, bringing the screen to life. "Before I put this up on the screen, I want you to understand that the image on the left is from your very first scan, back in September. The one on the right is from today." I was glad he'd warned us, I guess, since seeing all the red from that first scan would have been terrifying. I suppose I would have figured it out, given the activity in my neck from the thyroid I no longer possessed, but in the moment I was sure I would have just freaked out. And then the image loaded. That scary collection of red and orange on the left, and...none where it didn't belong on the right. I burst into tears, seeing the clean scan. I'd actually done it. Unless my blood work numbers said something different, that scan told the story. I was NED. No Evidence of Disease. In remission. Healthy. Karlie held me tight, wiping her own tears. Dr. Singh excused himself from the room. He wasn't part of this journey like the others had been. But Dr. Miller and the rest of my team surrounded us in a group hug, celebrating the success we'd achieved. I knew it wasn't the end. I'd be back in a month to do this all again. This was the first day of a five year journey to them declaring me cured. But the treatment phase was officially over for now. There was nothing more medicine could do to keep me healthy. It was up to me to go back to the ordinary ways, like eating mostly healthy, and working out with my wife (well, building up to being able to work out with her), and generally taking care of myself. And in the meantime, my body would slowly restore itself to something resembling what it was before a doctor first uttered that terrifying six letter word. My hair would grow back, the scars would fade, and my ribs would become less prominent. It would all just take time. But for the first time since that fateful day in September, I could walk out the door of the hospital knowing I was healthy. I was no longer a cancer patient, but a cancer survivor. Dr. Miller said we would undoubtedly have questions, even now, and not to hesitate to call, or email, because she was still my doctor for as long as I would let her be. It would be a while before our professional relationship ended, as she would still be around for my future scans. But for now, she was sending me into the world to live my life. Karlie finally confessed the dream she'd had. The way that the fears that things had gone the other way turned into a terrifying image of what it might look like to lose me, slowly, and painfully. And it was my turn to hold her while she cried tears of relief that for now, there was no chance of those fears being realized. The team left us to ourselves, telling us to take all the time we needed, just the two of us, with the beautiful clear scan on the wall, reminding us that I was as better as modern medicine could make me.I snapped a picture of the side by side scans, captioning them 'before' and 'after' and fired off texts to all of the people who loved me. My parents and my brother and my in-laws. Ed, who had seen the original before. Abigail, who hadn't, but who knew to some degree what it had looked like. Mom called right away to express her joy at seeing the clean scan. Ed actually showed up at our front door, having flown into town for something completely unrelated which he promptly cancelled, celebrating was much more important. We called an impromptu party for anyone in the area to come share our celebration, partying into the night. I played a bit, and sang, and several others took the mic as well. It felt like old times, and I liked it. The first day of the rest of my life, cancer free. Or, as cancer free as I could be. I planned to post the same pic I'd sent everyone on social media the next day. It would answer some of the questions I hadn't been ready to address with the fans before. Just how sick I had been, and how far I had come. And it would also let them celebrate with me. I wasn't going to be ready to tour for a bit yet, but I was definitely ready to start planning for it, now that I had fewer fears about not being able to keep up, or having to stop in the middle. The album could come together, now that I was healthy. I had so many ideas, and no real clue what direction I was going to take, but I knew for sure I already had one song that was going to be on it. The one Ed and I wrote a while back, the first one after I recovered from the infection. And one song was a good enough place to start.* * *Thank you, all of you, for coming with me on this journey. For loving me and supporting me, and for giving me the privacy to fight this battle on my own terms. You are a constant source of strength and inspiration, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.I'm publishing my journals, because they tell our story at its truest. Better than the media ever could. I'd much rather you hear the words from me, and not from someone who doesn't know me, or us. Thank you for reading. <3 Taylor

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Hey guys! So, it's been a while since these journals were originally edited and published. I never imagined so many of you would want to read them. And since they've decided to bring them back out again, I thought I'd give you guys a couple of little updates to tell you what happened after, when treatment ended and remission started. You know some of this. You watched it unfold. But now you get to see it through my eyes. Thank you again for coming on this journey. YOU are the reason I fought so hard.
 February 2018I couldn't remember having ever been this nervous before a show. I mean, I was sure I had been, when I was sixteen, seventeen. I'd had my share of unfortunate appearances on awards shows like this one. And this time, I could count on my fingers the number of people who even knew I was there. I wiped my sweaty hands on my dress and tossed a grin to my best friend who was carefully smoothing his ginger hair as three different guys tried to thread his in-ears through his tux. I carefully stowed my hearing aids where I knew I could retrieve them and put in my new in-ears, making sure to flip the switch on the pack so I could hear the ambient noise in the room. We'd rehearsed this in secret at about four in the morning, with only the sound guys and the rest of the band, playing to the empty space. And I'd been brought in tonight through a back door, head down, hood up, trying my best to blend into the scenery. Part of the fun was the element of surprise.I tried so hard not to run my hand nervously through my pixie length hair. It looked really good, given there weren't a lot of different options for styling. I was just stoked to have my own hair to show off. It had taken much longer than anticipated to grow back, but there was finally enough of it to make an actual style. It was almost time to head to the stage, and I guess Ed could see I was nervous because he came over and gave me a hug. "You're gonna kill it, Tay. Also, Karlie told me to give you this." He placed a kiss on the back of my right shoulder, where three butterflies bearing the teal, pink and blue of the thyroid cancer ribbon served as a permanent reminder of what I'd been through and the fact that I'd had my Karlie and her adorable little tattoos by my side the whole way. As it was, I knew she was quietly making her way into the seats, trying her best not to be noticed. There was no earthly reason for her to be there without me, and she didn't want to give it away, but she also didn't want to miss this. My family was watching on TV from only a few miles away, they wanted to be there, but they knew it was going to be hard enough for Karlie not to alert the entire crowd to my presence, never mind my parents and brother as well.He put on his guitar and they handed me mine and then it was time. For the first bit of the song I would be behind a screen with the rest of the band, playing the electric guitar. They would split the screen down the middle, revealing us behind it at the moment my vocal part began, and I just hoped I could get through the song. We'd written it last April, the first full song I wrote for the new album that no one even knew was coming. It had been more than six months since I heard Dr. Miller speak the words 'you're in remission,' I was continuing to get stronger, and I was confident that in a little under a year, I would be ready to tour. Tonight was just the initial step to letting the fans know it was coming, and that was totally thrilling."Mrs. Swift-Kloss?" A tech led me to my spot on the stage, and although I'd done this a ton of times before, I'd never had one break out of 'mission mode' to talk to me, but he told me how happy he was to see me back. I set my mic into the stand and made sure it was positioned, double checked the settings on my guitar, then flipped the switch to get the monitor channel in my in-ears and took a deep breath as I heard them announce "Ladies and gentlemen, Ed Sheeran." The staging was simple, designed to let us layer in the instruments the way we had that first time, when we wrote it. Ed would stand center stage with the acoustic, the rest of us were behind him, and hidden by a screen. But as each instrument layered in, a light behind us would project our silhouettes onto the screen so they could see each of us, but not who was playing. First Ed on acoustic, then the bit I'd started and looped on piano, then a looping percussion line, then me on electric guitar.My fingers seemed to fly on the strings and I knew, without having ever opened my mouth, that this was going to be epic. I'd worked so hard on learning to really play the electric guitar, to make it sing. It started when I was recovering from surgery and wasn't sure I would ever get my voice back. And it still isn't exactly like it was. But there are a few people who seem to think it's better, and though it will probably always bug me, just a little, it's not bad. But either way, I was really proud of how my playing had evolved. The crowd was mesmerized, or so it seemed, watching yet another demonstration of how Ed builds a song. His vocals were emotionally charged and on point, the slight break from emotion welcomed, because for the assembled crowd of our peers, it made it clear how personal this was. It seemed his verse about wishing he could do more to take the pain, but knowing he'd always be there, no matter what, was over in a blink, and then came the chorus, where we echoed each other, but with a slight twist to my words to make it clear he was supporting and I was being supported. I don't know that anyone heard more than my first word. The screams were deafening as the crowd realized who was singing the echoes, who held the electric guitar. It was very emotional, knowing the screams were for me. For the fact that at the moment, I was healthy.I walked forward to stand beside Ed after the chorus, a tech having helpfully moved my mic while I made my way forward so that I could sing the verse next to him, and as I got closer I realized the entire audience was standing, screaming and whistling. I saw people I'd never spoken to with tears in their eyes, before the tears in my own made it all a blur. Still, I got through the song, vocally and instrumentally, and I knew when it ended that we'd nailed it. Karlie had somehow made her way to the front row, and I could see the tears streaming down her face, an uncontrollable grin betraying her joy to see me back where I belonged, in the world of music. I couldn't stop mine either, or the tears. It was completely overwhelming to feel so much emotion coming at me, to feel so honored just for singing a song.The rest of the night was surreal. I wasn't nominated for anything, couldn't have been, given the song we sang that night was the first new music anyone had heard from me in years. But Ed was, for Divide, and for a couple of songs, and it was fun, for me, to just sit in the crowd with my wife and cheer as some of my best friends got to take home awards that proved the rest of the music industry respected them like I did. It was crazy to think how much my life had changed in two years. I'd stood on the stage two years before, thrilled to be honored with the award I'd set out to win, wishing that my girlfriend could be there in the crowd with my best friends, instead of a thousand miles away. I'd ridden the rollercoaster of cancer, and infection, and hearing loss, and though I couldn't say I'd enjoyed the ride, I'd come out the other side. I was married now, to a woman who was not only my best friend and biggest supporter, but also one of the strongest, most selfless people I had ever met. It was fun to realize that if I was ever fortunate enough to win an award here again, my wife would get to be front row as I thanked her for carrying me when I couldn't make it on my own, and for making it possible for me to be there. That was something I could definitely look forward to.   September 2020I find myself once again wearing one of those incredibly short hospital gowns, worn with the opening in the front for easy access. My thighs are sticking to the paper covering the exam table, and I'm bouncing my knee because I can't even pretend I'm not nervous. It's been more than three years since I heard my favorite words: "you're in remission." A little over a year since they took out my port. In early 2018 I debuted my first single, a duet I wrote with Ed, and later that year finally got to release my sixth album, only two years later than originally intended. I got to spend 2019 doing a killer tour, though I made sure to space out the shows to give myself time to recover between each one. Earlier this year, I was nominated for and won a couple of Grammys, which was unexpected but truly lovely. After making my return on that stage two years ago, it was amazing to be celebrated, surrounded by people who had supported me while I was sick. But now here I am, sitting in another doctor's office, the cotton ball taped to the inside of my left elbow a reminder of the blood test we're waiting on. The last time I was this nervous, the results of the test said I had cancer.Once again, Karlie climbs up onto the table behind me, placing a gentle kiss on the back of my shoulder, in a spot I will always think of as hers. "It's going to be okay, babe. I know you're worried about the results. But even if it's not what we want, not what we hoped for, we still have options. We can handle whatever the test says. As long as we're together, we can deal with anything. But it's going to be good. I know it is." I love Karlie's sunshiny optimism. I love the way she makes me feel safe, and calm, even while my brain is running a million miles an hour, worrying about what comes next for us.It feels like the results of this test will decide the rest of our lives. I know it's not that dramatic. One test can't make or break a life. If so, the results from four years ago, almost to the day, would have already broken it. Broken me. But they didn't. We're stronger, now, because we lived through what comes after a test for cancer comes back positive. I've been doing so well for so long; it feels weird to be so scared of the results. But I am. I'm scared. And I know Karlie is nervous too. She reassures me because it helps calm her nerves as well. And I know she's right. Our lives don't hinge on the results of one test. Good or bad. We'll be okay. We survived that. We can survive whatever this test says.The knock on the door makes me jump, and a blonde woman in a white coat slowly makes her way into the room, a white piece of paper in her hand. This is it. It feels like all of the oxygen in the room vanishes as she tells us she has the results. Time slows to a crawl and I am aware of my wife's sharp inhale behind me. Of the crinkling of the paper and the scratchiness of the worn gown draped around me. I can't breathe. Every fiber of my being is concentrated on the woman who holds my life in her hands, in the form of a simple sheet of paper. I try to read her face, cursing that she can conceal her emotions. I somehow have time to wish she had a glass face like my wife's so I could guess what she has to say. And then, finally, she speaks."The results were positive."We both burst into tears. I turn to my wife, and we cling together, sobbing, heads buried in necks, making them sticky with tears. The woman stands, frozen, in the corner of the room. She doesn't want to interrupt this emotional outburst. They probably happen a lot, here. This room is somehow made for the extremes of emotion. People come into this room with their hopes and fears and those are either realized or put to rest. But however the turn out, this is a space thick with the ghosts of emotions past. Karlie pulls herself together first. The doctor can sense that we're there, at the point where we might be able to turn our attention back to her and helpfully holds out a box of Kleenex so we can mop up, blow our noses, and hear the rest of her message."Congratulations Mrs. Swift-Kloss, Mrs. Swift-Kloss. Would you like to hear the heartbeat?"We both nod eagerly; still not sure we can form words to express our joy. After months of Karlie playing nurse again and poking me with needles. After hormone-fueled mood swings and me putting a phone through the window of our living room and tears because there was a puppy on TV and hysterical laughter because Olivia ran into a wall again. We've actually done it. I'd had hope, of course. It took less time after the end of chemo for my periods to return than for my hair to start growing in. But having a cycle didn't guarantee healthy eggs, or that I was fertile. And it still isn't set in stone that I can carry this pregnancy to term. But all of the tests over all these months say I can. I'm healthy. Still cancer-free. A little heavier than before all this started because of the delicate dance of keeping my thyroid hormones high enough to mimic natural levels but not so high they encourage recurrence of the cancer. I put fresh batteries in my hearing aids this morning, hoping for this moment. Getting to hear the tiny fluttering of our baby's heart.It's too early to hear anything with an abdominal ultrasound, so I have to lay back and scoot to the end of the table, feet in the stirrups. It's a bit uncomfortable, but worth it, SO worth it, when I hear the soft background noise of the ultrasound transform into a steady thrum. We both stare transfixed at the screen, in awe that the tiny blob, barely distinguishable from the static on the screen, is ours. Our baby. Karlie squeezes my hand tight, the look on her face (when I can tear myself away from the view on the screen) one of such love and adoration it makes me want to pop with love myself. The doctor assures us that everything looks great, the results of the blood test are where they should be. Because of my medical history, I'll be closely monitored throughout the pregnancy, but they honestly don't expect to find much of anything out of the ordinary.We each get a copy of the pictures of the baby, which we affectionately call our jelly bean since that's about what it looks like at the moment, and the second we're out of the office, we both snap them with our phones, wanting the picture with us everywhere. It's too soon to tell everyone. We're only seven weeks. It will be at least another month before we tell anyone of our tiny triumph, other than maybe our moms, and our teams. They've got a lot to prepare for. We haven't decided yet when we'll tell the world. This is OUR news. But we are super excited to get to share it. We're going to be moms!