A father has shared how he lost all of his three children to cancer in less than five years while battling the grueling disease himself.
Regis Feitosa, 52, and his children learned in 2016 that they suffer from a rare genetic disorder – Li-Fraumeni syndrome – that increases their risk of developing cancer.
He lost his youngest daughter first to acute lymphocytic leukemia.
It was in 2017 when Beatriz Feitosa, 9, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. She underwent a bone marrow transplant but the cancer returned a year later and she died at the age of 10.
Regis then lost his son Pedro after he was diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of 17. Even though he was cured four times, he developed brain cancer and died at the age of 22.
His eldest daughter, Anna Carolina Feitosa, was 12 years old when she was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia. She recovered and later became a doctor before she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and passed away at the age of 25.
“In four and half years, I lost all my children,” Regis said to BBC News Brazil.
Regis, who was also diagnosed with cancer in 2009, became concerned that the cancers were related. After his children went a genetic test, they discovered that Regis had Li-Fraumeni syndrome.
“The results showed that I had a genetic alteration that unfortunately was also passed to my children and that potentiates the appearance of cancer,” he said.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, Li-Fraumeni syndrome cannot be prevented.
Any individual who has the syndrome has about a 90 percent chance of being diagnosed with one or more types of cancer, the Clinic’s website read.
The grieving father, who is still receiving treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and chronic leukemia, said: “Today my view is that we have to live intensely, with the utmost joy. No one can measure the pain of the other.
“I don’t believe there is a bigger or smaller problem, the fact is that we cannot measure the pain of the other.”
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