Young teen Aleksander Kandiliotis battling rare adult colon cancer
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
At 14, young Sydneysider Aleksander Kandiliotis biggest concern should be how much homework he has, but instead he faces a battle with a rare and aggressive adult cancer.
Diagnosed with a form of adult colon cancer at just 11, Aleksander is now confronting the disease for the third time after undergoing multiple major surgeries and treatment.
All he really wants is to go to high school but he hasn’t really been well enough for school for a long time.
His parents Nick and Sham, have given their all and Aleksander’s medical team in Australia has exhausted all available treatment options.
So his family have set up a GoFundMe campaign called Aleksander’s Battle, to help ease the financial burden, ensuring Aleksander gets the treatment he needs while allowing his parents to focus entirely on him.
The initial blood test that Aleksander needed to undertake comes at a cost of almost $8,000.
From this test, a treatment plan is created using a combination of medications, treatments and other therapies which will be customised to counter the unique characteristics of his cancer, giving him his best fighting chance.
Aleksander’s uncle Peter, his dad’s brother, told Neos Kosmos it’s been very hard on the family.
“They’re struggling a lot and might have to go over to Germany for special treatment to help the boy out,” he said.
“The boy’s lost a lot of weight at the moment. He’s gone weak. He’s not eating the way he should be eating. You know that’s been hard, third time it’s come back and he already had a big operation last year.”
Peter lives in Melbourne, away from his brother’s family in Sydney, but said the St Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church in South Yarra is helping raise funds as well.
The family also said in the event that funds raised exceed the final treatment costs, any surplus will be donated to fund research into paediatric cancer.
The goal of the fundraiser is $250K, with more than half already made.
Another relative, his aunty Sabrina said it’s devastating.
“As a parent, I don’t think this is something any parent should have to face, and I think the hardest thing has been that feeling of being powerless to actually fix it,” she said.
“Watching their child suffer with gruelling surgeries and gruelling treatments and not being able to just make him feel better, I think for any parent, that is devastating.”
His cancer is something that adults don’t really need tog et tested for until their around 50, so there has been difficulty with treatment.
Sabrina said the financial burden of travelling overseas would include much more than some may think, sharing that Aleksander has had side effects to his treatment – getting dehydrated from nausea and needing to go to hospital every week or two to get IV drips.
“Any donation, no matter how small, will help make an impact and it’s been quite heart-warming to see not only family and friends but wider community strangers coming together to help,” she said.
“He’s very young and he has a lot of life left in him, but unfortunately we are out of options in Australia so we just need to do whatever we can to give him a fighting chance and if that means looking overseas… you can imagine as a parent you are going to try everything out there to save your child.”
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
