This is the story of a Brazilian economist who lost three kids to cancer, all while battling the disease himself.
Régis Feitosa is a 52-year-old father who was first diagnosed with cancer in 2009.
According to Daily Mail, “All four family members learned in 2016 they suffer from a rare genetic disorder that increases the risk a person and their family have at developing cancer. The disorder, Li-Fraumeni syndrome, affects only 5 in 20,000 families across the globe.”
Feitosa’s youngest daughter, Beatriz, was the first to lose her life to the fatal disease after being diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2017 at the tender age of 9.
Even after having her bone marrow transplant, Beatriz couldn’t survive and died in June 2018, a year after her surgery.
Then Régis’s son Pedro who had bone cancer since the age of 17, died in 2020 after fighting the disease for five years. He was 22 at the time of his passing.
“Pedro was just 17 when he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a bone cancer. He was cured on four different occasions, then developed brain cancer in 2019 and died at 22 on November 30, 2020,” per Daily Mail.
Then her eldest child, daughter Anna Carolina Feitosa, succumbed to cancer after battling the life-sucking disease i.e. acute lymphocytic leukemia, for 13 years. She got her diagnosis at the age of 12 in 2009 and died at the age of 25 in November 2022.
“She recovered from cancer in about three years following a treatment that included radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and would grow up to become a doctor, but was later diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2021 and died November 19, 2022, when she was 25 years old.”
We cannot even imagine the pain Mr. Feitosa went through all these years, losing all her kids, one after the other. It’s devastating.
“In four and half years, I lost all my children,” the Brazilian native told BBC News Brazil in an interview.
According to Régis, before his diagnosis in 2009, his family had no history of cancer, and everyone was perfectly healthy.
“The second diagnosis (in the family) was in 2016, when I discovered chronic lymphocytic leukemia after presenting symptoms such as fever, neck swelling, and weakness”, he told BBC.
The lamenting father of three deceased children added that doctors told him he could live up to years with his cancer.
“The medical team informed me that my disease used to have a slow progression, and I could live with it for years. Still, in 2016, I began treatment with oral chemotherapy,” said Régis.
He said that after his son Pedro’s diagnosis, he got apprehensive and concluded that the cases were not coincidental.
“My and my son’s diagnoses, in addition to the one Anna Carolina received years ago, caught my attention, and at that moment, we started to believe that these three cases could not be a coincidence.” During this period, he added that it would be better to investigate.
Régis told BBC that he married twice and his children, Anna and Pedro, were from his first wife, while he shared Beatriz with his second wife.
“The results showed that I had a genetic alteration that, unfortunately, was also passed on to my children, and that potentiates the appearance of cancer,” the poor dad said.
“We don’t know the origin of my genetic alteration because my parents don’t have it. My father is currently 85 years old, and my mother is 78. They are healthy”, he revealed.
Currently, Régis is undergoing treatment for chronic leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and hopefully, he will survive.
However, the grieving father said he feels guilty for passing the disease to his kids, who couldn’t defeat cancer.
“My children said I was just as much a victim as they were. Today my view is that we have to live intensely, with the utmost joy.” He said.
“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,” He concluded.
Losing a child is one of the worst life experiences, let alone losing three. Our thoughts are with Régis Feitosa and his family.
What do you have to say about Régis Feitosa and his heartbreaking story? Let us know in the comments.
Sources: BBC News Brazil – Daily Mail
