The hope of parents of children with cancer is growing as treatments improve, and will continue to do so thanks to the historic donation of $40 million for research at the CHU Sainte-Justine Foundation.
• Read also: Cancer screening in children: promising advances from a Montreal team
• Read also: CHU Sainte-Justine: a historic gift for the fight against cancer
• Read also: Childhood dreams: After cancer, becoming a business owner at 14
Hayden, 4, is smiling but shy: he has just come out of chemotherapy.
This is not his first; Suffering from type B acute lymphoblastic leukemia, he has also already undergone several induction treatments.
Today, he is in consolidation, the last stage of treatment which seeks to destroy the last cancerous cells, and his parents are full of hope.
“At the announcement, it’s really the world that falls on our heads, confides his mother, Marion Cesari. Then when we are told that there are many chances of recovery, hope is reborn.
This hope lives thanks to the progress made over the last decades: in 35 years, the cure rate for cancers like that of little Hayden has increased from 50% to more than 85%.
And a lot of new research will take place at the CHU Sainte-Justine over the next 3 to 5 years, including for leukemia, thanks to a historic donation it received in December.
Michel Lanteigne and Diane Blais donated $40 million for pediatric research at the hospital center, having experienced cancer closely when their son died of leukemia at the age of eight.
Loïck Plantin, Hayden’s father, emphasizes the importance of these donations.
“It’s good that people give for research, because it gives us hope.”
Mr. Lanteigne, meanwhile, seems aware of the progress that has been made since the departure of his son in 1989.
“Benoît had such difficult treatments. He had cold lumbar punctures, when he died, he had bone cancer, it’s an impossible suffering, ”he says.
“These children, if you knew the courage they have.”
