Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research

Meet Tristan

Tristan’s mom shares, “When I was 33 weeks pregnant, a routine sonogram revealed that Tristan had a huge mass in his abdomen. It was so large that the doctors couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and it was in contact with all of his organs and had pushed his heart to the wrong side of his chest. He was taken by emergency c-section a few days later, and was born weighing 3 pounds 12 ounces with 10% of the weight being his tumor. When he was three days old he had his first surgery to remove his primary tumor, which they discovered was originating from his right adrenal gland. While the doctors were making a diagnosis, more and more tumors were popping up in his right lung. When he was just over a month old we found out he had adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), which is a very rare cancer.

ACC is an extremely aggressive and often fatal cancer and Tristan was Stage IV. He had his second surgery soon after to remove the pulmonary tumors and ended up losing 40% of his right lung. For the next year, he was treated with an extremely toxic neurological chemotherapy agent. Since he took it during the first year of his life when his brain was doing so much growing and developing, he had major delays and side effects.

Tristan lost his one adrenal gland during his first surgery and the chemo killed his remaining adrenal gland, giving him Addison’s disease which is also a potentially fatal disease. We deal with the Addison’s one day at a time with daily medications. We found out this summer that he is Autistic so we are once again in unfamiliar territory.

Tristan loves NASCAR, especially Tony Stewart. He spends just about every Sunday rooting for Tony! He loves all sports - baseball, basketball, football, you name it and he likes it! He has been in karate for two years now and is currently an advanced yellow belt. There isn’t much he doesn’t like besides fruits and vegetables!”