Article on Michael Cuccione

2gether, Forever | home

From Coquitlam with courage

Michael with Baywatch paraphernalia:

His CD has raised $125,000.

Some say that fighting cancer is like wrestling with a powerful yet invisible foe. Others liken it to waging war with one's own body. To young Michael Cuccione of Coquitlam, however, the disease was an Everest, a huge mountain to be climbed step by step, day by day. Little wonder, then, that upon successfully ascending to the summit for a second time in his short life two years ago, Michael celebrated the end of his gruelling recovery in fitting manner: at his request, he and his family rode the Skyride to the top of North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain for a celebratory dinner.
But with his goal achieved and his cancer vanquished, Michael did not then settle into the routine of school, sports and video games with which so many other suburban 10-year-olds fill their days. Instead, Michael took upon himself an extraordinary task. In fact, he calls it his mission.
Now 12, Michael is using his experience to inspire others who are still fighting against the disease. Moreover, he is bringing his message of hope and fortitude to crowds numbering in the thousands and has shared his experience on national television.
But Michael is more than talk. Sales from his compact disc, entitled Make a Difference and containing five songs that Michael wrote and recorded, have already raised more than $125,000 for cancer research. In his fundraising crusade for cancer research, Michael has met with many powerful people, including Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Premier Glen Clark, and in August he is scheduled to speak at an international conference in Florida alongside Barbara Bush, wife of former president George Bush, and Jack Canfield, author of the book Chicken Soup for the Soul.
But nothing compares, he says, to last month when he flew to California to guest star in an upcoming episode of Baywatch in which he got to act and sing one of his own songs. Michael plays the role of Charlie Dodson Hays, an American boy his own age who died from thyroid cancer last January. Entitled "Charlie," the episode is set to air the first week in November.
None of today's triumphs were on Michael's mind on July 25, 1994, when doctors at British Columbia Children's Hospital told him and his parents, Domenic and Gloria, that a biopsy had confirmed that the lumps on his neck meant he had contracted Hodgkin's Disease, a form of cancer that afflicts the lymph nodes. Still, says Ron Anderson, Michael's physician and since June a pediatric oncologist at the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary, doctors were very hopeful at the time that a five-month course of chemotherapy would eliminate the disease.
Unfortunately, exactly one year to the day after his first diagnosis, tests confirmed a relapse of Michael's cancer. This time, however, it had spread and spots were showing in his lungs. "The fact that it came back quickly meant that we had a major cause for concern," Dr. Anderson explains. "He needed such high dosages of chemotherapy that we knew it would wipe out his bone marrow." To counteract the chemotherapy's effect, stem cells, from which bone marrow grows, were removed from Michael's blood and re-injected later.
"Hearing my cancer had returned was the worst day of my life," a poised and articulate Michael recalls. "But though I didn't understand why it had happened, I knew it was a hand I had to play." The second time around, Michael's chemotherapy included massive injections of cyclophosphamide, a medicine so brutal that in most cases a single gram is considered a month's dosage for an adult. Michael received seven grams in the first four hours. His hair fell out for the second time and he experienced nausea and weakness. Eventually, his weight fell to 59 pounds from his normal 85. "It felt like the flu, only 100 times worse," Michael recalls.
Dr. Anderson adds to the description of Michael's trauma. "He experienced severe ulceration through the mouth and intestinal tract," he reports. "And because his immune system was shut down, we had to put him in isolation for several weeks. Even a cold could have been deadly." Dr. Anderson says that having already faced one round of chemotherapy many children are unable to handle the stress of further massive doses. "But Michael said, 'Okay, we'll do this,'" he reports. "Even though he had been through it before, Michael chose the heaviest course of treatment." And it worked.
But long after his suffering has faded to a distant memory, Michael remembers the impact illness had on his relationships with family and friends, and the friendships he formed with fellow cancer sufferers. Their support, along with the enforced idleness of illness, called from within him a kind of creativity he did not know he had. During a short period of isolation in his first bout with cancer, Michael asked for his keyboard and composed his first song, a 40th birthday gift to his dad that expressed how much his support meant: When I hear you through the night/I know everything is going to be alright/When I wake up and see your sight/It's almost like seeing the light.
Throughout his ordeal, Michael's parents were by his side. His father, a property manager and home builder, took time off to be with Michael and his mother closed a clothing business she owned in order to give Michael and the rest of her family more time. Today, she works as the managing director for the Michael Cuccione Foundation, the organization that handles the funds he is raising.
"Mom's kind of my public relations manager," Michael quips. He credits his parents with preventing his nine-year-old brother Steven and 14-year-old sister Sophia from becoming jealous of the attention he has received as a patient and a celebrity. "Illness like mine happens to the whole family," Michael says, "but my parents have supported us all and tried to make sure that if one person gets something, we all get it." When, for example, Michael went to the Baywatch filming, his whole family came along.
Watching new friends struggle with and sometimes succumb to cancer has also served as inspiration for Michael's music and life. Since his illness, eight of the friends he made in hospital have died. "One day you play Nintendo with them," he says, "and the next they're gone." He has spoken at two memorial services, including one for Melinda Rose Hathaway who died last September at age 15 from an unusual form of bone cancer. His CD is dedicated to Melinda and one of his song's lyrics recall his feelings towards her: I don't wanna say good-bye/I don't wanna make you cry/Why do people come and go/When there's so much love to show, yeah.
Melinda's heroism and Michael's sense that time is a precious commodity have inspired him to want to make an impact on those around him. Another of his songs captures the essence of this: I wanna make a difference in this world/Reach out to the sky/See a difference in my eye/To make the difference in this world/May God make the tears drift away.
"Don't wait for life and death to hit close to home," he says. "The time to make a difference is now." For Michael that means doing all he can to raise money for cancer research. "When I think about the people I've lost," he says, "it's the least I can do."
Not even Michael's second go-round with cancer shook his belief that he was being prepared to make a difference on behalf of others. "I didn't understand why I was getting sick again," he says, "But I have a calling and I knew I wasn't going to go." As one of his songs proclaims: Forever is not a choice/One day we will hear God's voice/And I hope today is not the day/Because right now I wanna stay.
"We never got mad at God at any point for what Michael went through," says Michael's mother Gloria. "We prayed every night and asked specifically for his healing." She is convinced that God answers prayers. "I tried to hold on to three ideas," Michael says. "Faith in God, a positive attitude, and the sense that my family and friends were supporting me." Bad moments were numerous, he admits, but he consciously put them behind him to prevent them from poisoning the rest of his life. Again, a lyric reflects his deepest thoughts: Said life can be cruel but also kind/What I have seen people go through blows my mind/If you think about the good your day will shine/And that's why I am gonna take one day at a time/When the going is rough/Lock the door.
Nine months ago, Michael and his family were flown to Los Angeles by the Make-A-Wish Foundation in order to fulfil Michael's dream of meeting David Hasselhoff, star of the international hit television series Baywatch. "I know a lot of people think the show is only about pretty girls in swimming suits," he says, "but there's a lot of inspirational stuff on there, too."
In fact, his meeting with Mr. Hasselhoff and an ensuing screen test resulted in Michael's becoming a part of that inspirational side. Just before Michael's first visit, the Baywatch cast and crew had become acquainted with Charlie Hays, another 12-year-old who was dying with thyroid cancer. Charlie was in the area because on an earlier visit to Malibu beach, he had told his mother that he wanted to die there. "In April 1996, Charlie's doctors said he would only live six more months," reports Susan Addington, Charlie's mother. "So I advertised in the local paper that I would be willing to work as a housekeeper if someone would let us live near the beach for a few weeks." Instead, a wealthy benefactor gave Ms. Addington and her son the use of her beach house where Charlie lived for what turned out to be the last nine months of his life.
A visit to Baywatch led to Charlie's adoption by the crew and regular Sunday dinners with executive producer Greg Bonann, the lifeguard who inspired the show, and Tai Collins, Mr. Bonann's girlfriend and a writer for the series. Before he died, Charlie volunteered for tests at the University of California, Los Angeles, that helped doctors discover the genetic marker that will enable them to detect cancerous thyroid glands even before the cancer develops. And instead of receiving presents on what he knew would be his last birthday, Charlie requested help from friends and businesses and gave gifts to sick children in L.A. hospitals.
In Charlie's memory after he died, the Baywatch crew held a traditional memorial service for lifeguards at sea, because they said his contribution to medical science had truly made him a lifeguard. What's more, Charlie's courage and generosity inspired Ms. Collins to write an episode about his life.
Ms. Addington is thrilled that Baywatch decided to build a show around her son's life and death, and she is equally thrilled that another cancer victim, in this case a survivor, was able to take on the role. "Charlie's greatest fear was that he would be forgotten," Ms. Addington says. "Now that won't happen."
As for Michael, he jumped at the chance to play Charlie, both because he loves to act and because it gives him another opportunity to communicate a message of hope and faith. "I've been officially cancer-free for two years," he says. "And they have been so full that if nothing else ever happens in my life, I won't have any room to complain." As his song exclaims: Never give up on hope/Never give up on faith/Never give up on love.
--Shafer Parker, Jr.

A life-giving but costly science

When the Second Annual Michael Cuccione Foundation Dinner Dance is held this November 21, the foundation will make its first donation to research in the form of a cheque to the B.C. Research Institute for Children's and Women's Health.* "We're grateful for what the British Columbia Children's Hospital did for us," says Michael's mother Gloria, "but we also want to put the money Michael has raised where it will do the most good."
One of the reasons they chose the institute for their first gift, Mrs. Cuccione explains, is the leadership it provides in genetic research, an area that is now seen as one of the most promising for breakthroughs in both the cure and prevention of cancer. Ron Anderson, Michael's personal physician and a former oncologist at B.C. Children's hospital, reports that there have been major advances in the treatment of children's cancer over the last 40 years. "Between 1955 and 1960, every child diagnosed with leukemia died," Dr. Anderson says. "Today, nearly 80% of all leukaemia patients are cured." In fact, he adds, physicians are now able to cure about 80% of all childhood cancers. Children such as Michael, who have contracted Hodgkin's disease, can expect a 95% cure rate.
The cure rate for childhood cancer is so good that the current challenge is to discover why children get cancer in the first place. "They're not like an adult who's spent 40 years smoking cigarettes," Dr. Anderson remarks. "When a four-year-old gets a kidney tumour, or a 10-year-old has Hodgkin's disease, it almost has to have a genetic origin." Doctors are also continually looking for ways to refine the treatments they prescribe. Too little therapy may not eliminate the cancer, but too much can leave a child with permanent damage to heart, lungs or liver. Other treatments can cause permanent infertility.
Cherry Graf, director of communications for the B.C. Research Institute, reports that her institution is looking into all these concerns. Pathologist Poul Sorensen, a specialist in childhood tumours, is studying them at the molecular-genetic level to learn how to identify the tumours as early as possible. "His research will help us tailor our chemotherapy and radiation treatments more precisely," Ms. Graf reports, "creating a greater quality of life for the patient."
Another researcher, Kirk Schultz, is looking for ways to prevent the body from rejecting bone-marrow transplants. Current leukemia therapy completely destroys the patient's bone marrow, necessitating an infusion of bone marrow cells from a donor. "Such infusions lead to rejection of the cells just as in organ transplants," Ms. Graf explains. "But rejection episodes can produce a range of effects, even causing fatalities." Complicating matters for Dr. Schultz is the fact that a minor rejection episode is seen as ultimately beneficial because it can kill any remaining cancer cells that may have been missed by normal therapies.
Ms. Graf reports that other doctors are looking to nutrition and exercise as the means for regaining what the body has lost during treatment. "So much more is going on in a child's body than in the body of an adult," she explains. "Growth phases can be interfered with, and once those milestones are lost, they are frequently never regained." Michael's mother credits nutrition with helping him to recover from his second round of chemotherapy. Mrs. Cuccione says that at first he could not eat solid food, but a tea high in special enzymes restored his energy and ability to eat within days.
"Research into cancer treatment is expensive," Dr. Anderson says, "but over the last 30 years it has been so effective that you can only call it money well spent."
--Shafer Parker, Jr.
Anyone wishing to contribute to cancer research through the Michael Cuccione Foundation can write to:
P.O. Box 31081, Port Moody, B.C., V3H 4T4
Phone: (604) 552-2808; fax: (604) 552-2850

Back to Top