A life lesson: one family, two cancers, one great fight for the future

Vananh Martinez and her 2-year-old son Alec have had to battle cancer

By Kristen Forbes

The Times, Feb 5, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

For the Martinez family, life changed after both Vananh and Alec were diagnosed with cancer.

Submitted photo / Times Newspapers

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They say life can change in an instant. Perhaps no one knows this better than Tigard’s Stephen Martinez.

A few years ago, his life was taking a certain path: With a beautiful wife by his side and a healthy baby on the way, Stephen was enjoying a thriving career and a comfortable lifestyle. His worries were few, but his gratitude was great: Alexander, or Alec, was a “miracle baby” who reunited Stephen and his wife Vananh after a five-year separation. The family, now united and strong, was looking forward to what the future would bring.

Little did Stephen or anyone know, that future would bring advanced stage ovarian cancer for 38-year-old Vananh and ependymoma for 2½-year-old Alec. Out of such complex diseases comes one very simple math equation: One case of ovarian cancer for mom, one case of brain cancer for child, and one broken heart for husband and dad.

Stephen’s life has been shaken and his nerves are quivering, but his newfound passion for the cause is firm.

“We’ve got to find a cure,” he says. “Especially with children — they’re innocent. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, poor, rich, whatever. One thing that I’ve learned is that children are the greatest love. It’s just sad.”

After Vananh was diagnosed last April, she had a full hysterectomy. She had been losing weight, getting really tired and having a hard time lifting Alec.

One day — I remember the day; it was a Sunday — she goes, ‘I feel a little bump right here,’” says Stephen. “By this time, she’d been getting skinnier. We’d both been working and we built this house and we’d been under a lot of stress, doing the ‘me’ thing, taking care of our son. She went to the doctor that Monday to get an ultrasound, and they said there’s a mass.”

The following Wednesday, doctors informed her that the mass was a 13-by-5-centimeter tumor. She had surgery two days later, followed by 18 weeks of chemotherapy — six cycles every three weeks. She lost her hair and weight, but finally emerged on the other side of treatment.

“Then, life seemed to be getting better,” says Stephen. “This was around September and, as a celebration, we decided to take Alexander to Disney World. So, we go have this wonderful trip.”

They came back and about two weeks later, Stephen noticed Alec getting very irritable. On Nov. 9, while visiting Stephen’s sister, Alec bumped his head on a table corner. A few days later, he kept crying and repeating, “Head, head.” When he’d point to his head, however, he would point not to the side where it had been bumped, but the back. When Stephen watched him sleep, he’d notice Alec arching his back, tossing and turning. Fearing he had a concussion, they took Alec into the doctor.

The doctor said Alec looked fine, but the next day he seemed worse. He didn’t want to play or eat and kept repeating, “Hurt, hurt.”

This time, they went to the ER, where the doctors suspected spinal meningitis. The CT scan yielded even scarier results: Alec had a tumor in his brain.

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