Shave a dispatcher! Save a girl!

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a dispatcher for the Englewood Police Department in Colorado. In December, one of my officers found out that his beautiful 4 year old daughter, Tayler, had a malignant cancer. This really hit home for me because I have my own beautiful 5 year old daughter. I don't even want to try to imagine what it would be like to receive that kind of news. I get a little choked up just thinking about Tayler.

We're getting together Saturday for a fundraiser/show of support for Tayler. Officers and dispatchers are going to Tayler's house to shave their heads and raise money for the Ellisons' expenses. Now you may be thinking, "Police officers with shaved heads? Aren't half of them already shaved or balding anyways?". Here's the catch though: One of our dispatchers has offered to shave HER head if we can get $2000 of donations by Saturday. So far we have raised $850.

How can I get a dispatcher to lose her hair? Mumble incoherently on the radio. Har har. How can you get this particular dispatcher to lose her hair? If you're in Colorado, you can drop off a check made out to Tayler Ellison at any First Bank branch. Let me know how much you're pledging so we can put that towards the pledge. If you our out of state then you can send a check to:

Shane Ellison
Englewood Police Department
3615 S. Elati St.
Englewood, CO 80110

Here is Tayler's story from the caringbridge.org site that was set up for her. If you want access to her site, let me know and I'll get you that info:

One night in November Tayler started having sudden seizures. She was rushed to the emergency room where they weren’t sure what was going on. As they tried to control the seizures they decided she needed to be taken to Children’s Hospital. They did some tests and found that she had a small lesion, the size of her own pinkie nail, on her right temporal lobe. She was hopitalized for one week, and then released. She was given some anti seizure medications and told that she needed to follow up in six weeks for another MRI.

The six week MRI showed that the lesion had grown to 3 and a half times the size of the original lesion. Tayler was immediately admitted back to the hospital (Children's)and emergency surgery was scheduled to remove the lesion that was now the size of a golf ball. The surgery went as well as planned and the Ellison’s were informed that Tayler had a highly aggressive infection. They went for about 24 hours thinking this until they were finally told they were informed incorrectly and Tayler in fact has cancer.

Tayler had to have a second surgery to remove the rest of the tumor. The surgery was a success, the entire tumor was removed. The Ellison’s have been traveling a long hard road. They have found out that their beautiful little girl has cancer and have been waiting for a week to get a full diagnosis.

Today (12-30-08) the Ellison’s were given a 100% diagnosis for their daughter.

Tayler has a grade 4 Astrocytoma which is named a Glioblastoma. There are 4 grades of Astrocytoma, grades 1 and 2 are benign, grades 3 and 4 are malignant. The Ellison’s knew a few days ago that Tayler had a malignant tumor so they weren’t surprised to know it was high grade Asctrocytoma.

With this they have also found some of Tayler’s treatment plan. She will begin radiation and chemotherapy on January 13th. The first day they will be administering both chemotherapy and radiation at the hospital. They will be doing this to see what kind of reaction she may have to the chemo. After the first day, Shane and Alena will be giving the chemo to Tayler at home through her PICC line that is currently in her arm.

In order for Tayler to receive the radiation she will have to be sedated. The first round of treatment will be 30 sessions or about 6 1/2 calendar weeks with chemo and radiation being given each weekday, with just a couple of exceptions.

After the first round, Tayler will have a three week break then start a new round of chemo without radiation. The second round will alternate between two different chemo meds. The first medicaiton will be given for two weeks followed by a second medication for one week. This three week pattern continues for a total of 12-16 weeks with no breaks.

Tayler will then get another short break (about a week) before beginning the third phase in her treatment which is a one week on, one week off, chemo cycle to continue until about the end of the year.

We will be doing MRIs about every three months during treatment to look for any signs of the tumor returning. We will be looking for completely clean MRIs as the surgery took out the tumor mass that could be detected and we are fighting this on a cellular level now.

The treatment is very aggressive because the type of tumor is so aggressive. Tayler will be hit hard by all of the medication and radiation, but this is what will give her the best shot at a cure.
The prognosis for a Glioblastoma tumor are not pleasant. With a positive note from the doctor that a complete removal of the tumor probably doubled her chances, she is still looking at a 20% survival rate. The doctor advsied that the rate for adult's with the same tumor is less than 2%.