Helping Gentian

On April 18th Gentian will be 15 years old. He has been fighting with leukemia for over six years now. He is currently being treated and receiving what looks

like an efficacious treatment at Dana Farber and Children’s Hospital in Boston. However, Genti’s journey has been all but easy. He was nine years old when he fell ill. Doctors in Kosova could not pronounce a diagnose for him, so his parents took Genti to Belgrade, Serbia, where he was diagnosed with leukemia and started a difficult and expensive chemotherapy.

Meanwhile, Festim, a co-national of the same age as Genti, living in Alaska and suffering from the same disease, finds out about Genti’s case by browsing the internet. After asking his father to help Genti, they managed to bring the boy to the States. Festim’s family became Gentian’s family throughout years of fighting the disease. Gentian enrolled at Festim’s school and learned English with Roseta Stone.

Although he was in therapy for over 3 years, leukemia returned in a more severe form. Other complications arose that required Kujtim, Genitan’s father, to travel urgently to the US to support his son. Father and son traveled to Portland, Oregon where Gentian had a surgery to treat the sudden complications. Doctors in Portland advised Kujtim to take Gentian to Dana Farber Hospital, Boston’s state-of-the-art center for treating cancer.

In April 2010, Gentian and his father moved to Boston, where they currently live, together with their family, who was able to join them in 2010. Gentian is getting closer to the end of his treatment. Test results look promising and he and his family are hopeful that the disease has been defeated for good. Gentian is longing to have back his life. That life in which he was a karate champion and excelled at school; a life where he joked and made everybody laugh; that life we would all call a normal one.