Max is 8-years-old and is in remission from a brainstem glioma.

We asked Max’s mother to write about her child’s experience with cancer.

“It was the afternoon of Easter Sunday in 2015 when our son Max started complaining about pain in the lower back part of his head. We immediately took him to the emergency room.

A great day playing with his twin brother Alex and neighborhood friends outside turned into a horrible night indoors. A CAT scan showed a mass on his brain. That night, they transported us to Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York where he was scheduled to have an MRI in the morning. The MRI confirmed that it was a tumor. He had surgery the next day where they removed a lot of it. But, because of the location of the tumor, they could not remove all of it safely without disrupting the nerves that control his motor skills. The surgical pathology report showed that it was a low-grade astrocytoma. He received chemotherapy for about two years and his last treatment was in March 2017. He responded fairly-well to the medicine which decreased the size of the tumor. His last MRI showed that the tumor is stable. We will remain hopeful that this will continue to be the result of his future MRIs.

Three words that describe Max? Our Max is adorable, entertaining and heroic.

He is so brave and melts the hearts of all of the doctors and nurses that care for him. He maintains an amazing sense of humor despite all of the pokings, prodding and piercing that he went through. He is celebrating his 8^th birthday in December 2019 with his twin brother Alex. They both love everything about baseball. Max aspires to be a baseball player when he grows up alongside his brother, a.k.a. fellow ballplayer Foxy.”

Somethings Max wants people to know about him:

“I have an identical twin brother, Alex and we are trilingual (English, Latvian and Spanish). I do great baseball umpire impersonations. I am a big fan of both the Yankees and the Mets. I know most of the lyrics of Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. I have a Maine Coon cat named Pookah and an English Shephard dog named Babaganoush. I love sushi, Greek salad and French Bistro cuisine. Believe it or not, I also enjoy eating cottage cheese because Mom recommended it for its nutritional value to grow big and strong.”

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