5-year-old Canton boy speaks 5 languages despite battle with brain tumors
(CBS DETROIT) - For Canton 5-year-old Ishaan Kiran, not even his battle with tuberous sclerosis complex can stop him from learning new languages.
"He speaks Gujarati. He speaks Tamil. He speaks Telugu. He goes to Telugu school. He speaks Hindu and English," says Ishann's mother, Khushbu Patel.
However, Ishaan's smarts never came as easy as he makes it look.
"He doesn't even care what happened to him some time ago. He lives to the moment. Happy-go-lucky," says Kiran Mohan, Ishaan's dad.
But at seven months pregnant, it was at that moment Ishaan's mom found out at her standard checkup that something was not right with her soon to be first born.
"We were wondering why were so many doctors coming up and what was going on," Mohan said. "When they first told us, I was in denial. I was crying. I was thinking maybe they made a mistake," his mom said.
But it there was no mistake. From the moment he was born, Ishaan was diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis complex, a rare neurogenetic condition that causes non-cancerous tumors to grow in the brain and other major organs.
"He started to have seizures and my family would say he cries a lot," his mom said.
It was those very symptoms that sparked his family to take him to Corewell Health's Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak where they would meet pediatric epileptologist, Dr. Danielle Nolan.
"I first met him when he was an infant. Came in with seizures. We tried very different medications. It was really hard to control. He started having lots of side effects. His development was being slowed by the seizures. He wasn't really talking very much," Nolan says.
But after three major brain surgeries and years of treatment, Ishaan's constant and problematic seizures are now gone.
"He's seizure free," his dad says.
And while he may have dozens of brain tumors he is still fighting, one thing is clear, it is not going to stop him from dancing, singing or learning because for him...that is his love language.
