My first en­counter with Cur­tiun was such a mem­o­rable one. He was shy, soft spo­ken and very ar­tic­u­late. He was mak­ing bead­ed chains and rub­ber-band bracelets. I lat­er found out he sat the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion and was not sur­prised with the re­sults.

JBF Talks to 13yr old Cur­tiun about his life as a can­cer pa­tient.

Cur­tiun: Last year, I passed for my first choice, Hillview Col­lege but I was un­able to go to school be­cause I found out there was a tu­mor on the left side of my stom­ach. I was lat­er di­ag­nosed with PNET (prim­i­tive neu­ro-ec­to­der­mal tu­mor).

At the time, I was very fright­ened un­sure of what to think. Now, I am much braver and get­ting to un­der­stand what PNET re­al­ly is. I know it is a sick­ness that re­quires 14 cy­cles of chemother­a­py. I am cur­rent­ly on my 9th cy­cle. Chemother­a­py makes me up­set, nau­seous and low but I al­ways try my best to keep my­self up. I am grate­ful that dur­ing the last few chemo treat­ments, I was able to eat and felt less nau­seous.

Be­ing on the JBF Ward does not feel like a hos­pi­tal. I feel very safe and com­fort­able and it’s very dif­fer­ent from oth­er wards. It is fun mak­ing new friends and re­ceiv­ing things from peo­ple who vis­it. When I’m not ward­ed, I am at home re­lax­ing with my fam­i­ly, watch­ing tv, and play­ing with my ba­by sis­ter, 3 year old Curtina.

Re­cent­ly, I got a sur­prise vis­it from Keshorn Wal­cott. I was shocked and ex­cit­ed to see him in per­son. It felt good to shake his hand and to re­ceive a T-shirt and poster with his au­to­graph. Keshorn knew about my love for crick­et and fast bowl­ing and when he hand­ed me the poster, he showed me the javelin on the poster and said that even though it wasn’t for fast bowl­ing, it can still work. I thought that was very cool of him.

JBF: What are your dreams and hopes for the fu­ture?

Cur­tiun: When this is over I hope to go back to school and meet new friends and con­tin­ue on with life. In time to come, I would like to be a bar­ber. Af­ter los­ing all of my hair, I think it will be fun to learn the art of cut­ting and styling hair for oth­er peo­ple.

JBF: What ad­vice would you give a new­ly di­ag­nosed pa­tient?

Cur­tiun: Don’t be scared, have faith and trust God that He will take you through this. Through prayer and strength and fam­i­ly, every­thing will be okay.

Mom: When Cur­tiun was first di­ag­nosed, I was speech­less. I was very con­fused as I did not know much about can­cer. It made me feel as though I was knocked down by a bus. This was some­thing that I nev­er ever ex­pect­ed to hap­pen. It took me a while to get to this point. The sup­port from the JBF and oth­er pa­tients and fam­i­lies and most im­por­tant­ly Cur­tiun’s faith is what is help­ing me through this. He knows he is go­ing to get bet­ter, so who am I to ques­tion any­thing? I be­lieve this is just some­thing Cur­tiun has to go through and in his own words, “I will be a liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny who will be able to help oth­er peo­ple.” This is so life-chang­ing.

Dad: Find­ing out that Cur­tiun got sick was un­be­liev­able. My strong, young, healthy, and hand­some child was di­ag­nosed with can­cer. I nev­er be­lieved that some­thing like this could hap­pen to us. We al­ways try to live life to per­fec­tion; be­ing close, stay­ing to­geth­er, go­ing to church and be­ing on the right track. My nights turned in­to nu­mer­ous bat­tles with God try­ing to find the an­swer to this dread­ful news. One night in par­tic­u­lar, I fell asleep with the ques­tion on my mind as to why God would al­low this to hap­pen. The next morn­ing I got the rev­e­la­tion from God. I be­lieve that this is all the work of the dev­il to tear my fam­i­ly apart but I will nev­er let that hap­pen. I be­lieve that Cur­tiun keeps us to­geth­er. When we are ward­ed for a long pe­ri­od of time, my wife and I won­der and wor­ry, but Cur­tiun al­ways comes to the res­cue with his pos­i­tiv­i­ty. He re­minds us that all we can do is make the best of it. I know that we have al­ready over­come this bat­tle and God is on our side. Cur­tiun is go­ing to be a liv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny.

Cur­tiun has al­ways been in­to sports. He loves win­ning and I see him as a cham­pi­on in all ar­eas of his life. I grasped the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have some­one on the cham­pi­on lev­el, who earned an olympic gold medal, to vis­it Cur­tiun and the oth­er pa­tients on the JBF Ward. Keshorn was such an to in­spi­ra­tion to my son.

There­fore I tell you, what­ev­er you ask for in prayer, be­lieve that you have re­ceived it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24  NIV