By Mikayla van Loon
A promising young gridiron player has had the rug pulled out from under him with a recent and rare cancer diagnosis which has seen his family and friends rally behind him to get him to New York for treatment.
Anthony de Benedictis, a 19-year-old Endeavour Hills resident and Croydon Rangers Gridiron Club player, was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma in early August after experiencing extensive pain in his arm and shoulder.
Having taken a gap year to train one-on-one with a gridiron coach and prepare his body in the gym to hopefully be scouted to an American college, Anthony’s dreams were within his grasp.
In July he went to his mum, Kat Cecho, complaining of what they both thought was a torn muscle but when a lump formed on the left side of his neck and into his shoulder, Kat knew a doctor was needed.
After CT and CAT scans, the results came back with Anthony having a very large tumour going from the top of his shoulder to the base of his armpit – a size of nine centimetres by seven centimetres.
“Until then we had absolutely no idea that there was anything going on because he was healthy,” Kat said.
Doctors initially thought the diagnosis would be Hodgkin’s but after a biopsy it returned as the rare Ewing’s Sarcoma.
“It is a bone cancer but in Anthony’s case, it’s even more rare. He’s got the soft tissue cancer.”
While majority of the time Ewing’s Sarcoma is found in the bones, on a rare occasion the same cell compound forms Ewing’s in the soft tissues around the bones.
Around 2,460 people are estimated to have been diagnosed with a soft tissue sarcoma in Australia in 2022, the only difference being many are known cancers of the soft tissue.
“He was in so much pain and he couldn’t manage the pain at all because nothing was working…He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t do anything,” Kat said.
“So we ended up going to Peter Mac and stayed there for five days for him to manage the pain and this thing was just growing by the day.”
Eventually undergoing both chemotherapy and radiation because the tumour was growing rapidly, Kat said “it has helped a lot but it didn’t get rid of completely.”
That’s why now the family are looking at options overseas where more research has been done on this type of soft tissue cancer and where experimental treatments are more available.
“There’s not many options now here in Australia. They’ve given us what we can do. We need to do something else, we need to start looking overseas because they have very strict protocols here that they have to follow,” Kat said.
A friend of the family for over 20 years, Trudy Hymas organised the GoFundMe page aiming to raise $50,000 to help cover some of the costs of getting to New York.
Within 48 hours, half of the funds had been raised after beginning the fundraiser on Tuesday 6 December.
“It’s just mind blowing. He’s an awesome human being so I think everybody just wants to be behind him and support him,” Kat said.
“It’s just so hard because he’s been so focused and he knew what he wanted to do, he was working towards it, and it’s just all been ripped away.
“I’m not saying his dream is gone and he can’t do it once he gets better but right now we really have to focus on finding something that can help.”
Looking at getting Anthony into an immunotherapy treatment in New York, Kat said one cycle is $100,000, meaning the money raised through the GoFundMe will support travel expenses and part of the overall cost.
“Whatever we have to do, we will do. We just have to make sure we have all our options, everything and anything we can do, we’re gonna try to do for him to get better.”
Still undergoing two more rounds of chemotherapy in Melbourne to see whether it has any further impact on reducing the tumour, Kat said she still needs to be prepared to go overseas.
“I don’t want to just wait for the end of it and see if it’s working or not, I actually have to have something else in place and if we need to leave, then we’ll leave overseas, that’s the plan.
“As soon as we get enough money and get the chance to go, we’ll be going.”
Eternally grateful for all the support from family and friends, as well as the Croydon Rangers for their ongoing support, friendship and monetary donations, Kat said “thank you to absolutely everyone who was involved and has tried to help us get Anthony better.”
“Everybody’s been amazing and it’s very overwhelming because we were not expecting this kind of response from everybody. We’re extremely grateful.”
The fundraiser can be found here: www.gofundme.com/f/help-anthony-to-kick-this-aggressive-beast
