Thanks to Mervyn Lobo for forwarding this... FN ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Brendon De Souza - Miracle Child Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 22:26:03 -0400 From: "Mervyn Lobo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Frederick Noronha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
`You can accomplish anything,' boy declares He fights acute leukemia with day-at-a-time resolve Janice Bradbeer, STAFF REPORTER The Toronto Star Miracle Child --------------------------------------------------- Brendon deSouza's most perfect day would be "to go golfing with Curtis Joseph." But if he's not able to spend some time with his favourite Maple Leaf, then he's just as happy hanging out with his best friends Ñ he has about seven of them Ñ playing his XBOX video games, constructing Lego, or enjoying a game of street hockey or soccer. Brendon, 11, sits in a chair in the family room off the kitchen in his north Mississauga home. He yawns and closes his eyes for a moment. He can tire easily, he says. Because of his fatigue, Brendon has recently started back at school on a three-times-a-week basis after being away from his Grade 6 class at St. Edith Stein School since last January. Last July 27, he received a bone marrow transplant at Sick Kids in an attempt to cure his acute lymphoblastic leukemia (A.L.L.). It is the most common childhood leukemia, affecting the lymphocytes or white blood cells that fight infection. He was in remission for six months until he relapsed in January. Brendon was first diagnosed with A.L.L. in October, 1999, when he was 9 and has endured four rounds of chemotherapy in total, in addition to six radiation treatments. The anti-rejection drugs he took following his bone marrow transplant gave him painful mouth sores and the steroids made his face puff up. "But now he looks almost like he used to," says his mother Judy deSouza, 38, holding up a school picture of her son when he was 9, before the cancer was discovered. Staring into the camera is a handsome boy with bright brown eyes and thick black hair. The Brendon now sitting in the chair wearing a Maple Leafs T-shirt is 10 lbs. thinner than his school picture, and his hair has grown back sparser; but his face is still handsome and his eyes show the same resolve. "You can accomplish anything. No matter how sick you are, you will get through this if you just think positively," he says softly. After Brendon relapsed, doctors immediately put him on the experimental drug Gleevec. He takes three 100-mg capsules each evening to suppress his cancer and an anti-nausea pill to counteract the drug's side effects. If the Gleevec fails, his oncologist and transplant physician at Sick Kids, Dr. John Doyle, has a colleague in the U.S. who has had some success using experimental therapy with cancer patients. His mother says that these are the only treatment options open to Brendon, who also shares his home with his father Leonard, 42, a shipper and receiver with a marketing company, and his 9-year-old twin sisters, Samantha and Jessica. But Brendon remains composed about his future. "I just take it one day at a time," he says quietly, with the wisdom of someone beyond his young years. "Adults see cancer as a death sentence, but children don't worry about dying," explains deSouza, who quit her job as a purchasing agent when Brendon first became ill. "They just live in the moment and take one day at a time. They never complain about the pain or wonder `why me?'" Brendon shakes his head when asked if he's ever wondered `why me.' (A.L.L. generally has a 75 to 80 per cent cure rate in children, but Brendon carries the Philadelphia chromosome, an abnormality that makes his cancer resistant to chemotherapy). He appears more concerned about burning the banana bread in the oven that he helped make or about missing part of a Stanley Cup playoffs game on TV for a school function. Every Wednesday, deSouza takes Brendon to Sick Kids where he has his blood tested. Because of the large amount of blood needed for analysis, a central line was inserted into Brendon's chest to avoid the constant pokes of needles. "They're my friends," he says of the doctors, nurses and staff at the hospital. "I tell them jokes," he says, and proceeds to rhyme off a couple of his favourites. He enjoys filling up empty syringes with water and squirting them at his nurse, Dave. He recalls when he took another nurse, Chris, to see her first hockey game (yes, he admits, smiling, he finds her pretty). And he always saved a bag of popcorn for the night nurse, Tina, when he was watching a movie during one of his extended hospital stays. The doctors "explain everything clearly," he says. "They never leave anything out ... Dr. Doyle would even draw on paper what my cells looked like." His mother agrees. The staff would first bring the parents into the office to update them on Brendon's condition and then they would bring Brendon in. "They always told him the same thing that they told us ... they never left anything out," she says. Brendon's sisters have also benefited from Sick Kids' services. The twins have just finished attending a siblings support group there. "It has helped them to realize that they're not the only ones who have a sick sibling," explains their mother. "It also helps that they're going to the hospital for their own needs, instead of just for their brother." "We consider ourselves lucky," she says, explaining that they're thankful for the help they've received Ñ including babysitting, lawn cutting and gifts of casseroles Ñ from family, friends, the children's school, neighbours and the community at large. Throughout this rough time, the hospital has remained a constant in their lives. In fact, their visits have become a big part of Judy deSouza's social life. "We have made so many friends with the staff, we just enjoy going there," says deSouza, who calls them "our second family." =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-W-E-B---S-I-T-E-=-=-= To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from GoaNet | http://www.goacom.com/goanet =================================================================== For (un)subscribing or for help, Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dont want so many e=mails? Join GoaNet-Digest instead ! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Help support non-commercial projects in Goa by advertizing!! * * * * Your ad here !!
