As a toddler, Luca was already showing signs of exceptional intelligence. He started talking early and quickly acquired a massive vocabulary. Luca’s doctor was sure he was gifted, a prospect that totally floored his mother, “He’s only eight months old, how can you possibly know that?”
While other kids were goofing around outdoors, two-year-old Luca spent hours at the computer, exploring sites on volcanoes. When, as a four-year-old, he started talking about going to university, Luca’s mother Amber knew something was up. “He doesn’t care about sports. He doesn’t care about anything, but science. That’s all he wants to do,” she says. So Amber and her husband Ernie enrolled Luca in a school for gifted children.
Just as they were getting used to the idea of sending Luca to a gifted school, everything changed. After months of unexplained headaches and nausea, Luca was diagnosed with a brain tumour that required an intense treatment regimen.
“It’s horrifying what brain cancer patients go through,” says Amber. After an eight-hour surgery that didn’t go well, “Luca spent the next week in intensive care in a kind of pain I didn’t even know existed,” says Amber. He later underwent three stem cell transplants that required several rounds of high-dose chemotherapy. “He threw up all day, every day, for seven months.”
What’s more, Luca would soon relapse and have to go through it all over again.
“His three-month scan was perfect,” says Amber. “His six-month scan, not a spot. His nine-month scan, two tumours. So we started again, from the very beginning.”
Amber assumed they would abandon their plans for a gifted school after Luca’s first round with cancer. But he wanted it so badly, “I really want this mommy,” he told her. So Amber and Ernie decided to stick with the original plan.
But learning is now difficult for Luca and he is struggling at school. After the surgery, the high dose chemo and radiation, Luca is no longer the same child. “He’s changed so much because of what the treatment has done to his brain,” says Amber. “He’s so little and he’s completely heartbroken.” Mom and Dad are now doing everything in their power to access funding to hire a teaching aid for him. It has not been easy.
Our educational support program first originated with children like Luca in mind. Thanks to your generous support, we are building an education support program to help kids during their primary and secondary school years, ensuring they have access to the resources they need to succeed today and tomorrow. As surprising as it may seem, Luca’s cancer journey has only just begun. Aside from a myriad of physical health problems, the neurocognitive fallout of childhood cancer treatments can be devastating, including problems with learning, memory, judgment, reasoning and processing. Not surprisingly, then, certain groups of childhood cancer survivors are at high risk for psychological distress, lower levels of education, poorer employment outcomes and poor health-related quality of life.
Thank you for helping us build a strong foundation for children affected by cancer.