Santtu

The youngest of our children, a four-year old Santtu, has an extremely rare and aggressive cancer called pleuropulmonary blastoma. 

The cancer is so-called children’s lung cancer. Santtu is the only one in Finland who has this disease. Our journey with the cancer has continued for almost two years. Santtu went through the maximally aggressive treatments, which ended in an enormous cytostatic treatment in which Santtu’s own stem cells were transplanted. So, they did the so-called autologic stem cell transplantation. This is done with very aggressive cancers for which the survival rate is low, and it aims to destroy the very last bits of the cancer cells. Unfortunately, with our Santtu, the result lasted for only two months. 

Our family’s life collapsed again after two months when Santtu’s cancer came back. 

Now, we have again almost finished going through the rough treatments and bravely fought against the baddie cells. In December 2014 Santtu went through the last IV cytostatic regimen. The maintenance treatment started in January. That includes cytostatic that are taken through mouth at least for a year. 

During both treatments, our son has amazed us with his positiveness and optimism. Santtu has endured the surprisingly massive treatments so well that oncologists around Finland are talking about him. 

We have broken many new records at the cancer unit, and we will continue to do that also in the future!