NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Taylor Dettore is good to go.
Not just because she wrapped up 16 grueling months of aggressive cancer treatment last week at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. Truth be told, the 16-year-old Neshannock High sophomore actually had mixed feelings about the arrival of the day for which she’d been waiting since early last year.
“I’m supposed to go back every three months for a while,” Taylor said less than an hour before hitting the road for her 24th and final chemotherapy treatment. “Actually, I’ll probably be back every week because I’m going to miss everyone there. That’s my family.
“This is my last chemo and I’m excited about it, but I’m so bummed about it too, in a way. I’m going to miss everybody. Everybody thinks you go down there and it’s all doom and gloom, but I have fun there.”
Don’t get her wrong — months of chemotherapy and 19 days of radiation following the removal of a cancerous tumor last May have been no picnic. In addition to the periods of nausea and illness following each treatment, Taylor lost all of her hair and suffered side effects that caused serious nerve damage to both her feet.
Through it all, though, Taylor never focused on such matters. Instead, she embraced Psalm 112:7, which says that the righteous person “will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”
That kind of faith, her mom Andi shared, is what has made her daughter “good to go,” even from Day One of the cancer ordeal, when Taylor first uttered the words that would become a battle cry of sorts for her.
“The doctor sat us down — Taylor, her dad and I — and told us she had cancer,” Andi said, recalling the day in January 2006 when a mysterious swelling in Taylor’s abdomen was diagnosed as rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer of the body’s soft tissues and muscles. “It hit her dad and me both like a ton of bricks. We were crying.
“Not Taylor. She looked at the doctor and asked, ‘Is it curable?’ He said yes, and her response was “OK, then, I’m good to go.”
Despite just receiving the news that she had cancer, Taylor refused to be the one seeking comfort. Instead, she reached out to her devastated parents.
“Don’t worry about it, don’t even think about it,” she recalls telling them. “The doctors know their stuff, and I think this is what God wants to happen. No tears shed. We’re all good to go. We’ll get through this. And we did.”
READY FOR A FIGHT
Taylor’s resolute response to the specter of cancer stirred the hearts of her family and friends. Not only did her father buy her a silver bracelet engraved with the words “Good to go,” but students at Neshannock High School also sold red and white rubber versions as a fund-raiser for their classmate.
Still, Taylor’s steely focus wasn’t forged in the foundry of a life-changing illness. On the contrary, Andi says, her older daughter all but came out of the womb with it.
“At 11 months, she was able to get out of her crib,” said Andi, whose other daughter, Cassie, is a Neshannock freshman. “Nobody would believe me, or they’d tell me I needed to put the crib on its lowest setting. It WAS on the lowest setting. She would use her toes and just crawl up the posts until she got to the top, and then she’d just pole vault out of her crib.”
That skill foreshadowed an early childhood in which toddler Taylor could move effortlessly from painting a wall with coffee grounds, to stuffing a toilet with toilet paper, then tossing the contents of a flour bin around the kitchen like confetti, all while her beleaguered mom, an infant Cassie on her hip, struggled to keep up.
Taylor also broke her nose twice, Andi shared, once while swinging on the rails leading to the counter at Wendy’s.
“She’s always been unbelievably athletic and active,” Andi said of her daughter, who was a junior high cheerleader at the time of her diagnosis. “I think it’s maybe that go-go-go attitude that has helped her get through this.”
Taylor knows that people marvel at the strength she has shown. But, she shared, her armor has not been without its foibles.
“I actually got a book called, ‘Why, God, Why?’ ” she said. “I was always asking, ‘Why? Why, God, did I get this?’ But the book said that God could ask me back, ‘Why not? Why not you, instead of giving it to somebody else?’ He knew that I was ready to fight this with him.
“He has our life all planned, he knows what’s going to happen. He’s an all-knowing God, and you have to trust an all-knowing God.”
Even so, Taylor admitted, she had her times of fear, “but you have to take your mind off that and focus on other stuff, focus on all the positive things happening in your life, instead of all the negative. That’s what got me through.”
ROLE REVERSAL
The Dettore family knows that, as strong as Taylor has been, she never had to fight her battle alone.
Her church, family and friends have prayed almost without ceasing.
When chemotherapy made stairs a challenge in Taylor’s weakened condition, a Hermitage contractor and other volunteers added a first-floor bathroom to the Dettores’ Euclid Avenue home, at no cost to the family.
Last fall, when Taylor was elected to Neshannock’s homecoming court, her escort, Bryce Kauffman, went to her house and helped her to practice walking on her nerve-damaged feet.
Both Taylor’s mom, an emotional support teacher with the Farrell School District, and her dad, Dan, a pharmacy technician at the Butler Veterans Administration Hospital, were allowed by their employers to accepted donated paid leave from their co-workers in order to be with their daughter.
And of course, the medical staff at Children’s Hospital — including Taylor’s physician, Dr. Peter Shaw — worked tirelessly to affect a cure.
Still, it’s Taylor who is in the spotlight. She’ll be one of two teen cancer survivors speaking tonight at a Relay for Life pep rally at the Underground Refuge, the community teen center at First Church of God, directly across from her home.
At 16 — she won’t turn 17 until next month — the burden of being a role model might seem a heavy one, especially coming so quickly on the heels of her draining cancer fight. But Taylor doesn’t mind at all.
“That actually makes me feel good,” she said. “I don’t want to boast about it, but it would make me feel so high that people would look to me for that faith. Even before cancer, I would look to people and think, ‘Wow, she has such incredible faith. I wish I was like that.’
“Now, seeing people turn that around to me, that makes me feel so good. I want to be that person of faith.”
Video and photo gallery highlights Taylor Dettore’s last chemo treatment on ncnewsonline.com
