Community rallies in support of 13-year-old Swansea boy with leukemia
SWANSEA — Brayden Cabral is not backing down in this fight. In his room at Boston Children's Hospital, Brayden is being Brayden.
“He’s doing great!,” his mother, Kelly Rose DiGiammo, wrote in a Monday morning Facebook post. “His treatment is going just as planned by his team. He is feeling fine, eating, sleeping, kicking my a-- in chess, brotherly fighting with Chace, and testing [father] Kyle Cabral’s patience with Legos.”
Cabral, 13, a seventh grader at the Joseph Case Junior High School, has been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. A sports lover, Cabral in December and then through January had felt sluggish, downright lousy at times. The usually speedy youngster became last across the finish line. He was diagnosed with and treated for influenza A, but that ultimately did not prove to be the real villain.
He developed a stye on his eyelid. The stye grew. The surrounding area swelled. Cabral could not open the eye. A trip to the emergency room at Charlton Memorial Hospital was soon followed by a trip Children's Hospital in Boston where, on Feb. 25, came the leukemia diagnosis.
The Swansea community, and beyond, quickly rallied, with online well wishes and more.
The only thing getting Brayden a little down in the dumps at Children's Hospital, his mother reported, is his inability to respond promptly to all the online likes, loves, posts, and comments. She said that shows the essence of her boy.
“The kid is at Boston Children’s and he is worried he is hurting people by not showing his appreciation to you all frequently or quickly enough,” she posted. “I did my best to reassure him that you all KNOW he sees and appreciates all the love and support, so keep it coming.”
Brayden plays in the Swansea Little League, which last year held “A Day at Fenway Park,” with 200 tickets sold. There will be a repeat this season, on April 18, with an appropriate tweak. It will be, the league posted on Facebook, “A Day at Fenway for Bray.” Swansea Youth Basketball and Somerset Youth Flag Football League are joining in the special event. Brayden plays in both of those leagues, too.
Details on the event, Swansea Little League said, will soon be posted. The league said this will be the first of many league events to show the Cabral family the Swansea community supports and will continue to support them.
Brayden's Metro West travel basketball teammates are now sporting his No. 80 on their uniforms. This past Sunday, friends from flag football ran a candy bar sale/donation collection for the family.
Kyle, who owns Cabral’s Diesel Repair, and Kelly, an accountant for J. Derenzo Co. in Brockton, alternate staying at Children's, making sure Bray is never without family.
Kelly's father, Nicholas J. DiGiammo, recently had his own battle with cancer. “He was just considered lymphoma clear on Bray's birthday this year,” Kelly said. “He had his treatment right where Bray will have his out-patient treatment at Dana Farber. He just went through all this.”
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: 'A Day at Fenway for Bray' planned to help Swansea teen with leukemia
