When Alessandro was born, everything felt just like it should. But within hours, a doctor noticed something wasn’t right. What followed was a whirlwind no parent is ever prepared for: difficult conversations, unfamiliar medical terms and, the very next day, a transfer to The Montreal Children’s Hospital.

Alessandro was diagnosed with Denys-Drash syndrome, a rare genetic condition that affects how the kidneys develop and puts children at high risk for kidney failure and a type of kidney cancer called Wilms tumor.

His parents barely had time to process the news before care began. A full day of blood tests. Meetings with specialists and plans for surgery. Before his first birthday, Alessandro began weekly chemotherapy and every two weeks, he returned for MRIs.

“Right before the age of two years old, the doctors thought that they saw something,” Mina explains. “On the left kidney, they removed two parts, one on the top part and one on the bottom part.”

Soon after, his parents were trained to perform dialysis at home. 11 hours a day, seven days a week.

“My husband would come home from work around 7 o'clock, he would go straight into his room and start the seven steps,” Mina explains. “And we did that for about a year and a half.”

Through it all, the team at The Children’s walked alongside them, providing not only highly specialized care, but the guidance and reassurance that helped them keep going.

This kind of complex coordinated pediatric care, from oncology to nephrology to transplant, is only possible because of a community of donors who believe children deserve the very best chance at life.

A lifechanging call

At age three, that chance came.

The call they had been waiting for finally arrived: a kidney was available. The transplant surgery lasted hours.

Alessandro spent days in the ICU, surrounded by machines and a team of experts watching his every breath. And then, for the first time in years, they went home without dialysis equipment.

“There’s nothing like home,” Mina says, wistfully.

It wasn’t the end of the journey, but it was a turning point.

Over the past decade, Alessandro has undergone between 20 and 25 procedures. He still returns to the Hospital every three weeks for bloodwork. There have been setbacks and readmissions. But there has also been extraordinary compassion.

Nurses who know him by name. Doctors who have followed him since infancy. Child Life specialists who turned long hospital days into moments of play. Programs that support not just his medical needs, but his emotional wellbeing, funded in large part by donors who understand that healing is about more than medicine.

And in between the appointments and procedures, there have been beautiful milestones.

His first lollipop after surgery. His first steps down the chemotherapy hallway. His first bath at home. Sleeping in his own bed again.

“Even though you’re scared and terrified and don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, you always want to be positive,” Mina says. “My husband would always say, ‘There’s a light at the end of that tunnel. It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow, but there will be a light.’”

This year, Alessandro celebrated his 10-year “kidney birthday” with a cake shaped like a kidney and real police gear, a nod to his dream of one day becoming a police officer.

His parents say they are grateful for the bright, happy life he’s living today and look forward to a future that once felt uncertain.

Because of you, children like Alessandro don’t just survive. They grow, they celebrate, they dream.

And ten years later, they blow out candles on a cake that once felt impossible.