THE REAL SUPERHEROES
How a family who suffered unimaginable horror are now helping others face the same battle.
On Christmas Eve in 2011, Carmel and Brian Tracey received one of the best presents ever when they realised that they were expecting their first child. ‘We’d been together 26 years and had been trying for a child for 10 or 11 years after we got married,’ explains Brian. ‘We’d pretty much given up hope.’
When little Mike arrived the following August, he was a dream baby who never cried and loved his sleep. ‘He was always on good form with the greatest smile on his face,’ says Brian. ‘There had been a few small accidents and a few stitches and bruises, as there is with every child, but nothing significant.’
When Mike turned 3, however, he developed a cold that refused to abate. All the while, he was rarely out of sorts and eating well, leaving his parents to believe that nothing was really out of the ordinary.
‘I remember laying him on the couch and as I rubbed his cheek I noticed a small lump in his chewing muscle,’ says Brian. ‘Because of the cold, I thought of it as maybe a swollen or blocked gland. It was like a little frozen pea on the inside of his mouth.
‘After a while, we weren’t happy that he’d had the cold for so long so we took him to our doctor and he had a locum guy sitting in. He felt the lump, and said, “it’s definitely a blocked gland”.’
As a fireman, Brian had already undergone extensive paramedic training, so when the locum handed him an antibiotic prescription to combat an infection, his senses were tingling. ‘A few days later, the lump had doubled in size, so we returned to the doctor that has known Mike since he was born,’ recalls Brian.
Immediately, the boy was referred to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin, where the medical team instigated a battery of tests and ultrasounds. ‘When the ultrasound technician started to look at Mike’s abdomen, I knew we were heading into a little bit of trouble,’ admits Brian. ‘And then, she went to get the top guy on the team.’
Finding a solid mass in Mike’s cheek, the team then referred Mike on to the Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital. ‘When we met them, they were saying that they just wanted to rule out anything ➤
nasty,’ says Brian. ‘What was weird is that Mike didn’t look sick. I’m a very positive person so I was trying my best to remain hopeful.’
Within days, they received a call from Crumlin, and the team instructed the Traceys to come into the hospital in person, but without their son. ‘At that point, I knew even from my own line of work that they didn’t bring you in, without the child, to talk about good stuff,’ says Brian. ‘Then I saw a man, Michael Capra, with the word “oncologist” on his badge and I realised things were about to get very, very difficult.’
Mike was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer of soft tissue that usually begins in muscles that are attached to bones. Only a dozen children are diagnosed with the cancer in the whole of Europe every year. ‘It’s never a good idea to go Googling, but there’s so much information out there,’ says Brian. ‘I started reading the statistics on survival rates.’
The month after Mike’s diagnosis, admits Brian, was ‘information overload’. ‘We spent two months having different scans done, from CT scans to PET scans to MRI scans,’ recalls Brian. ‘To throw a three-year-old into that, and to see him smile the whole way through, was just amazing. Nothing was a bother to him, even when he was sick with the chemo he still enjoyed his time. I suppose he knew no different at that age – it was just life to him.’
Yet for all of Mike’s ebullience, it was a time that took an emotional toll on Brian and Carmel. ‘It was really tough in some ways,’ admits Brian. ‘I’m really lucky that I work for Dublin Fire Brigade and they organised leave for me so I could focus on Mike. At the hospital they train you up on things like flushing IV lines and changing dressings and taking blood.
‘Carmel was a full-time, stay-at-home mum, but she stepped up and became the strong one. I became the wreck in the corner.
‘It was a bit like playing tennis – when Mike was initially diagnosed, I was the big strong man able to cope with anything. I’ve faced horrible stuff in my job but when it was my own little boy I fell apart. My wife became the strong one and took over, and it was only later she fell apart and it was my turn to be strong.
‘It will obviously affect your relationship,’ adds Brian, ‘You see a lot of other couples on the hospital ward that don’t make it.’
All the while, their oncologist was ‘hopeful’ that Mike would beat the illness, as it had been diagnosed as a Stage 1-2 cancer. ‘He said, “I deal in facts and figures”,’ says Brian. ‘He doesn’t do false promises. He got us signed up to a trial involving three drugs, and mentioned that, in terms of treatment, the best course of action was to go to Holland.’
Most of the treatment that Mike would receive would be paid for by the HSE, but travel and living expenses for both Mike and his parents would only be partly covered.
‘I didn’t care about the costs – if we had to go to Australia we’d do it,’ says Brian. ‘But we were told about the Gavin Glynn Foundation, and how they were starting up a scheme.’
The Gavin Glynn Foundation was set up by John and Jane Glynn in memory of their son Gavin. The little boy, a superhero fan, captured
the hearts of the nation when he was diagnosed with the exact same rare cancer as Mike. He passed away, aged 4, in October 2014.
‘The funny thing was that we had donated to Gavin’s cause before Mike ever got diagnosed,’ says Brian. ‘We knew about his love of superheroes, and my brother had painted a superhero mural inside Ronald McDonald House at Our Lady’s Hospital in Crumlin. I knew nothing about the foundation. But I knew that there was a story behind it. People don’t start a foundation out of nothing.’
A week later, Brian and Carmel were introduced to John Glynn in the playroom of Our Lady’s Hospital.
‘He and Mike clicked immediately,’ recalls Brian. ‘He explained the foundation’s purpose and told me how he had found the hospital in Amsterdam for Gavin’s treatment. I realised that without John and Jane’s help, we may not have had access to that treatment.’
The foundation provided the financial and emotional support that the Traceys needed while Mike continued to receive treatment. ‘We were picked up at the house, dropped at the airport, picked up in Amsterdam and brought to our accommodation on site in the hospital,’ says Brian. ‘John kept saying, “you need to just concentrate on getting Mike well. That is your only job”.
‘One day, my bank card didn’t work and I rang John to tell him I was really stuck financially,’ says Brian. ‘He wired across some money, no problem. And he said if one of us needed a break from the routine, the foundation could fly one of our parents out to help.’
The fact that Gavin had lost his battle to the exact same cancer as Mike hadn’t gone unnoticed by Brian and Carmel. Brian admits that, when Mike responded positively to treatment, there was an element of survivor’s guilt in the mix.
‘It was tough to face any parent who has lost a child while we were still in treatment,’ he says. ‘We would have known a few kids on the ward that had relapsed and struggled. John and Jane are so happy when things are going well for you, but you have an idea of what they might be going through. I just wish other parents had the same experience we had. We made so many friends on St John’s Ward but with the greatest of respect, I wish I’d never met them.’
After months of treatment, the Traceys were told that Mike was in remission, and that there was no evidence of the disease in his system. He still gets scans every three months, as part of a five-year programme.
‘That was a weird day, being officially given the result,’ says Brian. ‘It’s hard to feel joy out of something so awful, but we know we got lucky after being initially dealt a bad hand.’
Mike has just finished his first year of school, and is flourishing there, the ordeal of a cancer battle very much behind him. ‘His teacher only found out the other day that he’d had cancer, and she hadn’t a clue of any of it,’ says Brian. ‘He lost 35 per cent of his body weight during treatment, and it’s been great watching him grow again.’
Of the day when Mike will finally leave the fiveyear aftercare programme, Brian says: ‘I don’t plan on celebrating, but we will mark it in some way. The big lesson I learned through all of this is, “don’t wait”. I used to put everything on the long finger, but if Mike wants to do something, we do it.
‘To look at the support we got from every angle, from our families and the local community, has been really humbling,’ adds Brian. ‘I do see John and Jane a little differently, though. Without them, the light at the end of the tunnel wouldn’t have been so bright.’