MTSU Sidelines

Issue date: 12/6/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Mark Bell A young Mark Bell sits with his grandfather. Years later, Mark would have to suffer his beloved grandfather's illness and death, something that changed his life forever.

I remember the phone ringing on an unseasonably warm Dec. 13, 2005. My grandfather, Don Taylor, and the rest of the family had been eagerly awaiting news from a lab in Knoxville, Tenn., about a strange lump that had appeared on his neck.

He had been seen numerous times by a family physician in Jefferson City, Tenn. who had dismissed the lump as a calcium deposit. He had been known to develop these lumps on other spots of his body, including a large one on his upper right arm.

After falling extremely ill, however, with bouts of throwing up and extreme dizziness, he had decided, under the strict orders of my grandmother Sandy, to seek a second opinion. Little did we all know how much this would affect the rest of our lives.

December 13, which ironically was Don's birthday, was the day he would receive his death sentence. Over the next three months, which seemed like a lifetime in itself to me, our family would be pushed to new limits.

I had just returned home for winter break after finishing the fall semester at MTSU the week before. By the time Don, who I called Pappaw, was diagnosed, he had already become so ill that he could no longer drive.

Pappaw was a big rig mechanic with hard hands to prove it. He loved what he did though. Even in his spare time I could always find him under the hood of his latest project (he loved to remodel old cars). I still remember everyone giving him a hard time about the dirt and grease that was constantly under his fingernails.

He had an even harder work ethic that was finally beginning to pay off. He had just bought a new home, a double-wide trailer, for my grandmother. He had also just bought a new Ford Edge truck in substitute for the blue '70s model F-150 he had driven for 34 years.

The man had never missed a day's work until he was diagnosed with cancer. I remember him going to work with the worst of colds with no complaint.

By that time his son Scott had been notified. Scott had taken a job in Seattle as a professor at the University of Puget Sound. When he learned that his father had been diagnosed with cancer he was on a plane to Tennessee two days later.

Continued...

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