Ride for Kids® Nico's Story

Medulloblastoma

Something unexpected happened to me when I was seven years old. It made my life different forever. I found out that I had brain cancer.

"How?" you ask.

I would like to share my experience with you.

I constantly was having headaches and vomiting. I went to lots of doctors. They thought I was lactose intolerant. I stopped eating dairy products all together. My mom wrote a letter to the doctors. It was very important. They ordered a CAT-SCAN.

During the CAT-SCAN they found a tumor. The tumor was the size of a plum and on my cerebellum. The doctors didn¹t know what it was at first. Then they found out it was cancer. They told my parents and my parents told me.

On December 5, 2000, I went to Sunrise Hospital. Two days later, I had my surgery. I said goodbye to my family. That was hard to do. My doctor was Dr. Anson. Well, there were lots of them, but he was my main doctor. I put the mask on and then I was out cold. My doctors told what happened to my parents. The tumor was so big they had to cut it up with a knife, but they had to be careful not to cut my brain.

“In Three days later, I opened my eyes and I saw my dad. I tried to move, but I could not. I couldn¹t even talk. Then, I heard him talking, but I couldn¹t respond. I had to be fed through an IV. Throughout the 20 days, I had lots of visitors. Then, my dad and I developed a language to talk without words. We were finally able to communicate. Mouth open if "yes" and closed if "no". I was able to eat vanilla ice cream.

On Christmas Eve, I was able to go home. It felt great to be going home. On Christmas, my brother and I got lots of presents. Then Frankie got a cash register. When he played with it, he pressed a button and it made a noise that sounded like a horse. I made my first noise, it was laughter. After that, he kept pressing it. I kept laughing and laughing.”

Over the years, I had to learn to talk again. I had to learn to move all of my body parts again. I went to therapy over the years. I was home schooled for a year. I get better every day.