MEMENTOS OF COURAGE
Former patient Dereck Lau, 13, has fun with his Beads of Courage necklaces with his mother Rory and sister Morgyn, 11, at Windsor Regional Hospital’s Met Campus on Tuesday. September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
Families whose kids have fought childhood cancer want to emphasize that it’s not that rare and bad side effects can plague children long after they’re cancer free.
“If you treat a child with these chemicals (chemotherapy drugs, not to mention radiation) at a young age, they still have to live 50, 60 years,” brain cancer survivor Dereck Lau’s mom Rory Lau said Tuesday following a public event at Windsor Regional Hospital to mark Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
“It’s the after-effects that people don’t realize.”
In Ontario, more than 400 children are diagnosed with cancer annually and more than 4,000 are getting treatment or followup care.
Locally, Windsor Regional’s Pediatric Oncology clinic has cared for 60 kids with cancer so far this year. They go to Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre for their initial diagnosis and treatment plan, but much of their care is provided in Windsor.
Though cure rates for childhood cancer have improved dramatically, to the point that more than 80 per cent of kids survive — in the 1970s, the cure rate was in the 10 to 15 per cent range — 60 per cent of those survivors suffer serious side effects years later. These include neurocognitive impairments, fertility problems and secondary cancers.
“All of these children and families remind us how fragile life can be. However, also, how resilient, tough and determined children can be,” WRH’s chief of pediatrics Dr. Lenna Morgan said in a news release. “Our hearts and thoughts are with them all, especially during this month.”
Dereck Lau was one of several childhood cancer survivors attending Tuesday’s event, which focused on the Beads of Courage program. It provides children with a bead for each accomplishment or treatment they go through.
Dereck was diagnosed when he was 10 with medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer.
He endured 18 months of treatment and has been cancer free for two years, his mom said. But the road back to a regular life wasn’t easy, after spending so much time in a hospital bed. He’s learning to walk all over again and makes multiple visits to specialists to check for damage to his thyroid and heart.
“Once you irradiate someone’s brain and spine, you have lots of follow-ups afterwards,” said his mom.