When Mason lost his hair to chemotherapy in 2013 and returned to school later that year, he returned with a full moustache. Sporting a brand new mock moustachio every day became this little guy’s strategy for deflecting attention from his baldness. This way, he didn’t have to talk about his cancer.
In December 2013, Jenn Rodriguez noticed a large lump on the right side of her six-year-old son’s neck. Alarmed, she took a photo of Mason’s neck and immediately sent it by text to her husband Diego. But Jenn and Diego would soon discover that the lump, which had caused so much terror in them, would barely cause a ripple at the hospital for quite some time.
Mason’s tests kept coming back normal, so the doctors concluded that he simply had an enlarged lymph node. After three trips to the emergency, a course of antibiotics and two trips to an ear, nose and throat specialist, Mason finally underwent surgery in the New Year to remove the lump.
After surgery, they were able to perform a freeze screen test and later confirmed it was a lymphoma cancer. A series of tests, including a bone marrow, CT scan, ultrasounds, X-rays, blood work and a lymph node biopsy, revealed that Mason had stage four Burkitt’s lymphoma.
“Telling a six-year-old he has cancer was an out of body experience for me,” says Jenn. “He is six. How is this possible? Our world spiralled out of control.”
“We jumped on the computer and Googled Burkitt’s,” says Jenn. “Pictures for Burkitt’s are shocking. Researching what our son had and what the treatment might entail kept us up all night. We cried harder and longer that night than any other time. Not our son, not our six year old baby.”
But the next morning brought a new determination in the Rodriguez family. They had to win this fight. And with that determination, Team Mason was born.
Mason went through five rounds of extremely intense chemotherapy, each round bringing new challenges. Mason never gave up. “He didn’t want to do it for one more second, but he never quit,” says Jenn. “He was amazing. He is the bravest person I know.”
Mason spent 60 nights at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Jenn stayed at the hospital, while Diego stayed home with Mason’s older brother Bennett. Each morning, when Diego dropped Bennett off for school, they would take a picture and send it to Jenn and Mason. Jenn and Mason would then send a photo back. This was their new normal, their new way of being a family together.
On May 14th, they heard the magical words every oncology family dreams of hearing: “Your child is in remission.”
After his broviac line was removed, Mason was able to lay down in a bath for the first time in months. “He lay in that tub until the water went cold,” says Jenn. “I will never forget the look on his face that day. There was so much peace.”
And so many mustaches.
Unlike his brother Bennett, Mason has never enjoyed being the centre of attention, so when he started school with a bald head in September, he started wearing mock mustaches.
“It is his way of having people focus on something other than how he looks or how great his hair was growing back,” says Jenn.
Although Mason has a full head of hair now, he still wears a mustache every now and then.
“He’ll go to the bathroom and pull a mustache from his pocket and return to class with it on,” says his father Diego. “It’s really funny because sometimes he forgets he’s wearing it, so when I pick him up from school, he’ll come out with a mustache on and all the other parents start laughing. It’s become Mason’s thing.”
Although the support at school has been incredible, there is a place where Mason feels totally accepted with or without a mustache. That place is Camp Kindle.
“The biggest highlight of the year for the kids was camp,” says Diego. “They can’t stop talking about it.”
“Camp was truly a turning point for Mason,” says Jenn. “He came back home as the kid we used to know. He learned to have fun again at camp. When we picked them up, they didn’t want to come home with us. They wanted to have more time at camp. They absolutely loved every second of Camp Kindle and they cannot wait to go back next year.”
“Kids Cancer Care is the most incredible organization I have ever encountered,” says Jenn. “The support that they give families going through this unbelievable experience is above and beyond anything I ever expected. We never would have met the people we have and created a little community here if we were not part of an organization like Kids Cancer Care.”
Every year, you give more than 700 kids like Mason a place where they belong—bald heads, battle scars, mucho moustaches and all—without having to explain a thing.