Cards for Local Boy Battling Cancer
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Joey Caretti is on his third battle with brain cancer. His family is asking for your help - not with money, but with something that puts a smile on Joey's face: cards. Video by fox47news.com
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One little boy in Michigan is on his third battle with cancer. Joey Caretti's family is asking for your help, but not with money. Instead, they're asking that you do one little thing that helps put a big smile on Joey's face.
Joey reads from what looks like just a pile of cards.
"I have to admit, it really does make me happy," says Joey. But the letters were support he needed while he battled a rare form of brain cancer, not once but twice over the last three years.
"They said we would never see this again, that it would be gone and we were just counting our blessings. Then in April of 2010, he had another seizure here at the house and they found another brain tumor," says Joey's mom, Lisa Caretti.
In August, Joey and his mom thought the fight was over, so they celebrated - only to learn the unthinkable a few months later. A chemo therapy drug treatment he took for his brain cancer caused Joey to get leukemia.
"And it was only a 2 percent chance, so we took the 2 percent chance. You know you wonder if you made the wrong choice, but really there was no other way," Lisa says.
Now Joey faces more chemotherapy and needs a bone marrow transplant, which could be risky.
"It's almost guaranteed at one point he'll have to be in one or more times in the hospital for fevers or for infection, because they bring your resistance down to nothing, so that it can build it back up again," she says.
While he's at the hospital some of the things he misses: "just miss being home." And quality time with his twin sister.
"We play the Wii or Xbox. I like to pray for him," says Maggie Caretti.
But one woman wants to make sure Joey gets lots of prayers and moral support.
"What's the point of living basically if you can't help someone," says Lori Maceri. She's helping with a card drive to send as many cards as possible to Joey while he fights in the hospital. "I think it will help, it's prayers that are really gonna help."
If you'd like to send Joey a card, we put his address up on our Facebook page.
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