Budding painter aged 4 needs to undergo costly operation for brain tumor

A BUDDING painter at age four, Aedan Pio Titco Pascual urgently needs an operation to get rid of chordoma, a rare type of cancer, growing inside his brain.

Pio has an art exhibit titled “Clear Skies” at the lobby of the Lung Center of the Philippines featuring his drawings of the galaxy and the solar system.

“He said he wanted to become an astronaut, not a mere astronomer, because an astronaut goes to outer space,” his grandmother Teresa Titco said.

The exhibit which runs until Oct. 6 is aimed at helping his family raise funds for his “Proton Beam Therapy” operation.

Priced at a staggering P11 million ($250,000), it will be done in the United States upon the advice of doctors at the Philippine General Hospital “because the procedure is not available in the Philippines.”

PASCUAL

“Pio never cried when we found out. I was the one crying endlessly when we found out in February that he has a mass on his brain stem,” said Pio’s mother Jesrora Marie Malvar. She has been raising him single-handedly after she and her husband separated in 2013. She and Pio live with her mother in Cainta, Rizal province.

Jesrora, a call center agent, said that Pio knows that the disease is the reason he has been having headaches. Lately, the growth has affected his speech, making it slurred. He has also become cross-eyed.

“One time, when he was diagnosed with upper respiratory tract infection and meningocele, he woke me up. He was shaking and having chills even if it was not cold. He asked me: ‘Mommy, why am I shaking?!’ He wasn’t even crying…. I was panicking but Pio was so calm that I had to calm myself down, too,” she said.

Those who want to donate toward Pio’s costly operation may call Teresa Titco at 0917-5405109.

Deposits may be made in the BDO savings account of Pio’s mother, Jesrora Marie P. Malvar (account #004680143412).