It’s the Love and We Can Feel It
As told by parents Valarie and Jimmy
Mom: When our son Jimmy-Rey was two, he had so much energy. Then one day I started noticing something wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t eating as much, wasn’t really playing and running around the house and his energy started to really decline.
In the middle of the night he woke up crying and grabbing his head and I just had a really bad feeling in my heart that something wasn’t right. I took him to the doctor, who said he’s fine and to keep him hydrated. Then, I took him to the dentist and asked if he had a tooth infection or something and they said everything was fine. I took him back to the doctor and I told her, “He’s not eating, doesn’t have energy, he’s having headaches and I know something is not right.” She said, “You know, let’s get an MRI right away.”
Mom and Dad: We got the MRI that same day and shortly after, one of the nurses came and asked us to go into a side room. That’s where three doctors met us and explained they found a large brain tumor and they needed to send us to a children’s hospital. His doctor said if we wouldn’t have gotten that MRI, he probably wouldn’t have lasted another few weeks, which was terrifying.
Jimmy-Rey was diagnosed on a Tuesday and it was just really scary from there. The doctors said, “Let’s get him into the operating room quickly,” so he had the surgery on Thursday morning to remove the cancerous brain tumor. After surgery, because this type of tumor is aggressive, they decided it was important to also do radiation. When he finished, we thought we were done with treatment, we thought everything was good.