{"id":86,"date":"2018-05-11T19:53:07","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T19:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/?p=86"},"modified":"2018-05-23T20:24:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T20:24:20","slug":"lucas-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/2018\/05\/11\/lucas-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Luca’s light"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As a toddler, Luca was already showing signs of exceptional intelligence. He started talking early and quickly acquired a massive vocabulary. Luca\u2019s doctor was sure he was gifted, a prospect that totally floored his mother, \u201cHe\u2019s only eight months old, how can you possibly know that?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"\"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\u2019s mother Amber knew something was up. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t care about sports. He doesn\u2019t care about anything, but science. That\u2019s all he wants to do,\u201d she says. So Amber and her husband Ernie enrolled Luca in a school for gifted children.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s horrifying what brain cancer patients go through,\u201d says Amber. After an eight-hour surgery that didn\u2019t go well, \u201cLuca spent the next week in intensive care in a kind of pain I didn\u2019t even know existed,\u201d says Amber. He later underwent three stem cell transplants that required several rounds of high-dose chemotherapy. \u201cHe threw up all day, every day, for seven months.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Luca would soon relapse and have to go through it all over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis three-month scan was perfect,\u201d says Amber. \u201cHis six-month scan, not a spot. His nine-month scan, two tumours. So we started again, from the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amber assumed they would abandon their plans for a gifted school after Luca\u2019s first round with cancer. But he wanted it so badly, \u201cI really want this mommy,\u201d he told her. So Amber and Ernie decided to stick with the original plan.<\/p>\n

\"\"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. \u201cHe\u2019s changed so much because of what the treatment has done to his brain,\u201d says Amber. \u201cHe\u2019s so little and he\u2019s completely heartbroken.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>As surprising as it may seem, Luca\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Thank you for helping us build a strong foundation for children affected by cancer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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As a toddler, Luca was already showing signs of exceptional intelligence. He started talking early and quickly acquired a massive vocabulary. Luca\u2019s doctor was sure he was gifted, a prospect that totally floored his mother, \u201cHe\u2019s only eight months old, how can you possibly know that?\u201d While other kids were goofing around outdoors, two-year-old Luca […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kidscancercare.ab.ca\/annual-report-2015\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}