Matt Prato: "You have to keep believing"
Matt Prato with his mother, Susan. Matt is a cord blood recipient.
Don’t ever suggest to Matt Prato or his mother, Sue that giving up is an option. It has been the will to fight, that sense of tomorrow that has accompanied Matt on a difficult journey these past several years.
Diagnosed with Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) in November 2005, Matt has endured hundreds of days in the hospital, hundreds of blood transfusions, a bone marrow transplant, and an umbilical cord blood transplant. He’s relapsed, been told his chances are slim, and now, after the umbilical cord blood transplant, has been in remission for nearly two years.
At 17, he is quick witted, full of spirit, and determined. “What I used to do, they (the doctors) would come in with a weird face on like it was serious. They would act like it’s the end of the world. And it’s not. You have to keep believing. You just look forward. You never think that you’re going to get stuck here forever,” said Matt.
Matt is the youngest of four children, one of whom, Maggie, died years ago, at 14 months after a four-month battle with cancer, a tumor that was discovered in her kidney.
Maggie, Sue said, was a happy child, crawling on the floor when Sue reached to grab her around the waste, only to feel the lump that would soon be diagnosed as a malignant tumor.
“They tried to shrink the tumor with chemotherapy,” Sue said. But four months later, Maggie succumbed to the disease.
“When Matt was diagnosed, we felt we did our time,” said Sue. “It’s not going to happen to us twice.”
Matt had recovered from lyme disease. He was having difficulty breathing, and had to stop running while in gym class at school. The teacher, Sue said, told Matt to sit down. The next day it happened again.
“I was afraid it was lyme disease again, so I pushed for blood work,” she said. “We went to the hospital. More blood work. A spinal tap and he received a really tough course within a week.”
With AML, Sue said, the only chance of survival was a marrow transplant. His sister Emily, then 22 and the mother of a six-month-old, was a perfect match.
“He relapsed a little over a year after the transplant,” Sue said. “They (the doctors) left it up to us. They weren’t sure. The second one (transplant), your odds were a lot worse. Matt wasn’t ready to give up.”
And neither was Sue. Time was a factor, so they chose to have an umbilical cord blood transplant.
“This was his only chance of survival,” Sue said. “We didn’t have time to look for a match. That was his best chance.”
Now, nearly two years later, Matt is back in school, as a freshman at Lincoln High School. He’s lost about three years because of his hospitalizations and is still not ready to join in the pick up games of basketball, baseball or football like he used to.
But he and his mom are certain about their gratitude for blood donors and for the mothers who have the foresight to donate their child’s umbilical cord to a cord blood bank.
And about blood donation, she said, “it only takes 45 minutes to donate blood. It’s not like you can’t spare it. It’s saving somebody’s life. He (Matt) had hundreds of transfusions. And he’s just one child.”