Holliston mom prepares to ride Pan-Mass Challenge for son with rare cancer
HOLLISTON — A Holliston mom is pointing her wheels toward the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) in the hopes of curing her son's rare cancer.
7-year-old Declan Vail has been battling brain cancer for several years. Unlike a traditional tumor, his tumor isn't a lump. It is best described as putting butter onto bread. The butter is his cancer.
"Once you put it on the toast, it's melted in, and you will never separate the two," explains Declan's mother Stephanie Vail, "They have gone in and taken about 30% of it out. That was more focused on stopping seizures. The part they haven't gotten to, if they took that, out he would lose pretty much all of his functions."
The tumor has given him more than a thousand seizures in his young lifetime. While doctors tell the Vail's the cancer cells will cease to grow once he hits his 20's, the seizures will be a lifelong battle. Some days at school, he has as many as six. The tumor also impacts his behavior, communication, processing, and balance.
"I remember that spot on the carpet, and him just holding his chest and I didn't know why?" tells Stephanie, remembering Declan's first seizure, "We found out he was having seizures, and he would just stop and stare at me afterwards. He would just be a lump in my arms."
Vail is now an oncology nurse with Dana Farber. They formed a PMC cycling group is known as Brainstorms. Their fundraising efforts go to the Bandopadhayay Lab at Dana Farber. Currently, there is no medication to target Declan's cancer, but Stephanie says they are close to finding an answer.
"There is an amazing oncologist there who is starting research projects on that mutation with pieces of Declan's brain that were removed," details Stephanie.
Brainstorms is looking to raise $100,000 thousand dollars in five years, and just nine months into fundraising, they have already raised half of that.
"Watching everything that he has gone through, I can get there in 4 hours," tells Stephanie, talking about the PMC ride, "4% of government funding goes to pediatric cancer research, but 60% of the PMC funding goes to pediatric cancer research."