Regis Feitosa Mota: Economist loses 3 children to cancer within five years while battling disease himself
SAO PAULO, BRAZIL: In less than five years, Brazilian economist Régis Feitosa Mota lost three of his children to cancer while fighting the illness himself. After being first diagnosed in 2009, Mota grew concerned and was determined that all of his children should get a DNA test. The results of the blood tests showed that Mota had Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a rare hereditary condition that raises the risk of cancer in a person and their family.
In 2016, all four members of the family discovered they had the rare genetic condition but little could be done to stop cancer. "Li-Fraumeni syndrome can’t be prevented," according to the Cleveland Clinic. Only five of every 20,000 families worldwide are affected by this disorder.
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Mota, 52, lost his youngest daughter first. At age nine, Beatriz received a bone marrow transplant after receiving a diagnosis of acute lymphocytic leukemia. However, the illness came back, and she died barely a year later on June 24, 2018, when she was just 10.
The heartbroken father then lost his son Pedro, who was only 17 when he was diagnosed with bone cancer, osteosarcoma. After being treated four times, he got brain cancer in 2019 and died on November 30, 2020, at the age of 22.
Anna Carolina, the family's eldest child, was just 12 years old when she was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2009. Following a course of treatment that included radiotherapy and chemotherapy, she beat the cancer in about three years and went on to become a doctor. However, she was diagnosed again with a brain tumor in 2021, and died on November 19 at the age of 25.
"In four and half years, I lost all my children," Mota said, as per Daily Mail. Mota, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2021, claimed that neither of his parents had the hereditary disease. The Cleveland Clinic estimates that everyone with the condition has a 90% risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis at some time in their lives and a 50% chance of getting the disease before the age of 30.
Mota, who is still undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and chronic leukemia, claimed he never felt bad about giving the Li-Fraumeni syndrome to his three children. "My children said I was just as much a victim as they were," he said, adding, "Today my view is that we have to live intensely, with the utmost joy. My son said a very coherent sentence, 'No one can measure the pain of the other.' I don't believe there is a bigger or smaller problem, the fact is that we cannot measure the pain of the other."