Taylor Carter’s coach at Piedmont College told him his first year of lacrosse would be hard.
As it turned out, the second year would be the hardest.
"Me and my brother were just kind of chilling around the house, playing some video games," Taylor recalled looking back on the fateful day of September 2, 2005. "Midway through the day, I had a really bad headache coming on, and I called my Mom to say it was getting a little worse than usual."
Taylor's mother, Audrey Carter, told her son to take some aspirin and try to lie down to see if the headache would subside. But Taylor couldn't shake the pain and would be taken to the hospital a few hours later.
"I woke up on the way to the hospital, I was kind of in and out. After that, the next thing I remembered was waking up in the hospital bed. They said they didn't really know what happened, but they wanted to run some tests. They ran a couple of MRIs, and they noticed there was blood in the ventricles of my brain which hinted it could be a brain bleed."
Taylor would spend the next ten days in the hospital including his 12th birthday which came just two days after the original headache landed him in Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
Following a few weeks of bed rest, Taylor's strength returned and it looked as though the young lacrosse player would be able to return to life as a normal 6th grader in his hometown of Penacook, New Hampshire.
Taylor's doctors recommended MRI monitoring every three months to ensure no additional complications would arise. And so Taylor's family returned to Dartmouth every three months for testing which went as planned until the two year anniversary of his original visit.
With nothing having shown up on his testing so far, the two year anniversary visit was supposed to be the time to shift to six-month testing. However, Taylor remembers just how different that visit was from what he expected.
"I remember going into the room, and the doctors were a little more stern than normal, and I just thought it was a little bit odd. And that was when they told me they found something on the scan. They said it looks to be a tumor in the dead center of your brain."
"I just remember my heart sunk," said Taylor holding back the emotions of that moment. "14 years old, you just don't expect to have that news dropped on you. It was very blunt. You have cancer."
After the diagnosis, Taylor sat with his family and the doctors coming up with a plan of action. The doctors told him that a biopsy would help, but with the tumor in the dead center of his brain, options were limited on how to approach his treatment.
However, the results showed that the tumor could be treated with radiation. So Taylor started a six-week process of treatments five days a week making the hour-long commute up to Dartmouth with his father, Chris Carter, to attack his disease head-on.
Obstacles were common in the close to two-month treatment including some expected ordeals coming along despite Taylor's positive outlook.
"A little over two weeks in, I thought maybe I was different because I hadn't lost my hair yet like they said I would," Taylor recalled. "I remember it was Thanksgiving, we were in Vermont, and I woke up and I found hair on my pillow. My hair was one of the only things I could hold on to, but as the weeks went on, more and more fell out."
"Looking back on it, your hair doesn't seem like a big deal you know, just shave your head. But for me, I was just trying to hold on to anything, hold on to my hair as long as possible."
The treatment was long, and since Taylor's tumor was slow-growing, it was likely that it would be slow-dying as well. Six months after treatment, Taylor received the best news yet.
"They threw me in the MRI, and they came back cheerful as ever pretty much saying it was working, the tumor was reduced to almost half the size. I was relieved, couldn't be happier, and it was actually the day of my tryout for eighth grade lacrosse."
Given the go-ahead by his doctors with check-ups every three months, Taylor raced to his lacrosse tryouts back in Penacook. Walking back into the gym where everyone knew the situation, Taylor remembers the return well.
"I remember the coach and the kids looking at me saying 'What's the news?' and I could finally tell them it's shrinking, I'm going to be cancer-free. They all stood up and started clapping, and it was a really cool feeling, and I ended up being able to play that year."
In that same year as an eighth grader, Taylor found a personal source of inspiration through a fellow lacrosse player who also battled cancer.
"I saw this sticker on the back of a kid's helmet, and it was a Headstrong logo. I got home that night and just researched it to find out it was a kid named Nick Colleluori who played lacrosse for Hofstra and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He actually was a lot worse off than I was, but he played as long as he could until he became too weak, then he supported his team on the sidelines."'
"The Headstrong mentality was something I found great strength in, that the idea that someone who's in that position can succeed. Though he lost his life, his legacy is still remembered today."
After being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 14, two years ago during his sophomore year of college, Taylor was officially declared cancer-free.
"The doctors told me that we were six years out, and they felt comfortable saying I was cancer-free. It was the most relieved I've ever felt, knowing that the whole chapter of my life could finally be put behind me."
Now as a collegiate lacrosse player himself, Taylor has used his story as an opportunity to continue the Headstrong legacy while beginning to form his own as well. The cancer survivor took to his coaches the idea of hosting a Headstrong game, something that everyone supported with the game being set for this past Friday.
"Taylor came to me first when I was a senior captain for the team last year, and you could tell he was really passionate about it," said Sumner Gantz, a first-year Graduate Assistant Coach with the Lions who played three seasons with Taylor at Piedmont. "He looked up to Nick (Colleluori) and the whole foundation. And we were on board immediately with the idea."
"I was more big-picture with it, wanting to raise awareness for cancer in general, but I had no idea that I was going to get to tell my story as well," said Taylor.
However, first year Head Coach Tim Dunton knew what Taylor's journey carried, saying: "It was a story that I think was amazing when I came here and learned about what he's gone through in his life. And bringing this Headstrong program to our campus, and having it be because of Taylor is something that was an easy decision to be made."
Taylor hopes that his message will resonate with those fighting cancer like Colleluori's story did with him all those years ago.
"I just want to leave that mentality, that you're stronger than anyone and even you think you are. Don't lose hope. Things are going to get worse before they get better, but I'm living proof that you can fight it and move on from it."
Though Taylor knows he will be forever associated with the disease, he also refuses to let cancer define him personifying the relentless ideals of the Headstrong organization.
"I don't really want to be remembered because I didn't do something because I had cancer. I try my hardest to leave my hard work on and off the field to speak for itself."
"I don't want to be remembered as the sick kid, I want to be remembered as the strong kid."
A Headstrong kid.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2016/3/378810/carter-hoping-legacy-will-be-more-than-cancer-survivor