Jennifer Sathianathan Benevolence Fund
I would like to introduce you to my family. I am Jennifer Sathianathan. My husband, Joachim, and I have eight children…Caleb is 18, Mercy is 16, Joshua is 15, Lily is 13, Phoebe is 11, Micah is 9 (almost 10), Asher is 8, and Chloe is 6. Unexpectedly, on the evening of June 23rd, I received a phone call from my husband asking me to meet him at the emergency room, where he had been all day with our son, Micah, waiting to get imaging done. When I asked him why, he could hardly speak the words that have changed our lives. He tearfully said, “A mass was found in Micah’s brain.”
Micah spent the next week in the hospital constantly monitored. During the days leading up to the surgery to remove the tumor that was approximately two inches in diameter, Micah was being treated for seizures. Finally, on day five, the tumor was removed. We were told that day by Micah’s surgeon that it was an aggressive grade four tumor, and that we would know more specifics in a few weeks once pathology could test it. He was right. Micah has a rare brain cancer called BCOR Internal Tandem Duplication. We have been told that there are only a few cases of children who have been diagnosed and treated for this particular cancer.
Because Micah’s cancer is aggressive, treatment also had to be aggressive. The first step was to do radiation. Since it was recommended that he have proton instead of photon radiation, we had to travel out of our home state of Colorado for Micah’s treatment. On top of getting more imaging, a lumbar puncture, and a port put in his chest, he had to undergo thirty radiation treatments. Thirteen treatments were for his entire brain and spine. These treatments caused severe nausea and the loss of his hair. The last seventeen were focused on the site of his tumor.
After all that, Micah will spend the following months receiving 5 rounds of in-patient chemo and all that comes with it.