Payton had been in the hospital for 4 days, not walking, only standing to pee, while his dad and I hoisted him up and held a urinal for him. He could speak, but it was hard to understand him as the tumor was taking over his entire brain. We would ask him to repeat himself a lot, which I know frustrated him and we could see it had taken a lot of energy to get it out the first time. He would then tell us we needed new ears. Several times he told me “You need to go to the dentist to get new ears!”. He was very understandably irritable. This day, he wanted to go to the snack room on floor 9, where he was hospitalized. He hadn’t been in the snack room since diagnosis nearly 6 months earlier, and it had a combination code to get in. As we unplugged the machines from the wall to bring his IV pole with us, we asked him if he wanted to ride in his wheelchair instead of walk. His determination to walk gave me hope, “Maybe he’s going to be just fine”, my hopeful mind thought. As Jason and I held onto him and the IV pole, we walked out of the room. He was slow, and a bit unsteady. By the looks on their faces, and cheers in their voices, I don’t think the nurses could believe their eyes. Approaching the snack room he interrupted his dad’s reach to reach on his own, for the combination. We started to tell him the combination when he immediately stopped us, “I KNOW!”, he grumbled. He did. He remembered the 6 digit code to get in the snack room from nearly 6 months ago! As soon as we got in, he had to go pee, so back to the room we went. We took him back in the chair, as the walk wore him out. He looked through food, food that he couldn’t eat because of the sores he had in his mouth and throat, for a bit before choosing a popsicle which we would soon find out was a bad idea. The tumor took so many things from him, but it never took his amazing memory, his determination, or his love for everyone away from him.
Payton Strong 