CASTLE ROCK, Wash. (KOIN) — Like many 5-year-olds, Gabriel Shefcheck is obsessed with superheroes. He’s drawn to Iron Man, Batman, The Avengers.
His mom, Kassie Shefcheck, thinks he’s more like Andre the Giant, “except Andre the Giant, his heart grew at a different rate than his body. Gabriel grows all together.”
He’s more than 4 feet tall, weighs more than 70 pounds and wears the same size shoe as Kassie. He also “has the same size hands as me,” and is the same size as his sisters, who are 9 and 10.
Gabriel was born with Weaver Syndrome. He was diagnosed when he was just a year old and his dad, Justin Shefcheck, thinks he could grow to be 7-feet-5.
But Gabriel is battling a tougher opponent than Andre the Giant. Just before his 5th birthday, he was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a solid tumor cancer that is rare, his mom said.
“He had them throughout his chest,” she told KOIN 6 News. “It started on his adrenal gland on his kidney and they spread rapidly by the time they found it.”
She and Justin noticed something was wrong with Gabriel for about 6 weeks. They said they took him to different emergency rooms and saw numerous urgent care doctors.
His knee started to hurt, but the cerebral giantism can swell joints. The doctors told them nothing was wrong, but Kassie knew better.
“He was no longer able to walk and finally I was just, like, ‘OK, if you guys want me to get out of here, you have to do a blood test,'” she said she told the doctors.
They did. Three weeks later, doctors found the neuroblastoma.
“We got kind of a solemn, monotone doctor who told us, ‘Your son has a 32% chance of survival.’ Basically, your world just stops,” Kassie said. “I was devastated. My entire world kind of crumbled around me.”
“It’s crazy the emotions you feel. You feel them all at once,” Justin said. “Emotions you didn’t know you could show just pour out.”
But they decided to fight as hard as they can and exhaust every option they have.
Gabriel has done 6 months of chemotherapy, just finished a stem cell transplant and just began radiation, Kassie said.
He has a superhero’s persona, his parents said.
“Everytime they give him an objective he surpasses it and he blows the doctors away,” she told KOIN 6 News. “We’re praying he’s going to be one of the 32% that makes it through all of it and lives a long, full, healthy life.”
Gabriel, she said, “gives you this gut feeling that everything is going to be OK. And he tells me, ‘Mommy, I promise I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere.'”
The deductibles, the co-pays, the medications and the stem cell transplant cost a lot. They look at Gabriel as their “miracle child.” But they also want other parents to “be aware of signs and symptoms and things to get checked out with their doctor,” she said. Signs and symptoms of neuroblastoma
They appreciate each day they have and learned to look at life differently through their travels with Gabriel.
“He has been fighting since day one through Weaver Syndrome, through autism, now cancer,” Kassie said. “He’s dependent on me but I’m just as dependent on him to get through each day and be whole at the end of it.”
“At the end of the day,” she said, “all I really care about is that he’s still smiling.”