“It makes you so thankful for the little things. We’ve been reminded just how precious life is.”
John had no idea how true those words would become when he first said them.
Back then, they were just a reflection.
Later, they would become a way of surviving.
Before illness entered their lives, Thomas was simply a little boy growing up exactly as he should have been.
As a baby, he was unsettled and clingy, happiest when he was close to his mum, Abby, never quite ready to be put down.
She held him often, soothed him often, and worried sometimes, the way all new parents do.
But as he grew, Thomas became a normal toddler.
Energetic.
Curious.
Bright.
He ran, explored, and filled rooms with noise and movement.
Nothing about him suggested that something was quietly growing inside his brain.
In December 2014, the family took a holiday to the beach.
It was meant to be a break.
A pause.
A memory-making trip.
Instead, it became the beginning of a nightmare.
Thomas started vomiting.
At first, it seemed like a bug.
Then it happened again.
And again.
Abby and John took him to hospital, where they were told he likely had gastritis.
They went home.
But the vomiting didn’t stop.
The lethargy worsened.
Thomas wasn’t himself.
Abby noticed something else that felt wrong.
Thomas’ eye looked strange.
Not dramatic.
Just different.
That instinct — the quiet alarm parents feel before logic catches up — pushed her to act.
Thomas was transferred to Monash Children’s Hospital.
Doctors ordered an emergency MRI.
That was the moment everything changed.
Abby and John were told a lesion had been found on Thomas’ brain.
When they asked what that meant, the doctor didn’t soften it.
It was a very large mass.
Abby remembers thinking how absurd it sounded.
Cancer was something that happened to old people.
Not toddlers.
“How does my two-year-old boy have cancer?” she thought.
“That’s ridiculous.”
But it wasn’t ridiculous.
It was real.
And the news got worse.
Thomas didn’t have one tumour.
He had multiple tumours spread throughout his brain.
Others were found along his spinal cord.
They were slow growing, doctors said.
But many were in areas that could not be operated on.
Abby and John were crushed.
They were taken into a small room.
There was a box of tissues on the table.
Abby remembers noticing it and thinking, What is this room?
Parents learn quickly what rooms with tissue boxes mean.
Thomas went into surgery.
The operation itself went well.
But doctors still couldn’t identify exactly what kind of cancer he had.
Samples were sent to Melbourne.
Another was sent to Perth.
They waited.
And waited.
A clear diagnosis never came.
In the meantime, complications began to pile up.
Fluid built up in Thomas’ brain.
He needed surgery to insert a shunt to drain it.
Then another surgery.
Then another.
His eyesight deteriorated rapidly.
Thomas began bumping into things.
Walls.
Furniture.
Other children.
He lost a significant amount of vision, damage that would never be reversed.
Weeks turned into months.
Months turned into years.
Hospital admissions became routine.
Shunt blockages became expected.
MRI scans came and went.
And still, no clear diagnosis.
No clear treatment plan.
Abby and John lived in a state of suspended fear.
Then, one scan showed something new.
A noticeable mass growing in Thomas’ brain.
Doctors admitted what Abby and John had been quietly sensing.
They weren’t sure how to treat this.
For a parent, that moment is impossible to describe.
“As a parent, it was too hard to even process,” Abby says.
Thinking that there might be no way forward felt unbearable.
They were devastated.
Thomas was getting sicker.
The pain became agonising.
They were running out of options.
That was when Abby and John learned about the Zero Childhood Cancer Program.
The program offered something they hadn’t had in years.
Hope grounded in science.
Thomas was accepted.
For Abby and John, the relief was overwhelming.
Analysis of Thomas’ tumour finally revealed something concrete.
A genetic mutation believed to be driving the cancer.
Even better, there was a matched therapy.
Thomas began treatment with a gene therapy drug called Afatinib.
For the first time in a long time, they waited with cautious optimism instead of dread.
Two months later, in January 2020, Thomas had another brain scan.
This time, the results were different.
The tumour had shrunk.
Not just slightly.
Noticeably.
Over the following days, Abby and John watched something they had almost forgotten how to recognise.
Their son was coming back.
His energy returned.
The headaches eased.
His appetite came back.
The constant pain that had defined his life began to loosen its grip.
“I don’t know what we would have done without ZERO,” Abby says.
“There was no other option for us.”
Today, Thomas is eight years old.
He is still receiving gene therapy.
The tumour remains under control.
The debilitating pain is gone.
While the damage to his eyesight is permanent, Thomas has returned to activities he loves.
He plays.
He laughs.
He lives.
Life is not exactly what it was supposed to be.
But it is life.
And that matters more than anything.
Abby and John know the journey isn’t over.
Scans still bring anxiety.
Appointments still loom.
But they are no longer standing at the edge of hopelessness.
“We’re in a position where we can potentially put a lot of this behind us,” John says.
“And that’s fantastic.”
Thomas’ story is not just about cancer.
It is about time.
About patience.
About how years of uncertainty can reshape a family.
It is about science catching up just in time.
And about a little boy who carried more pain than any child ever should — and kept going anyway.
Most of all, it is about perspective.
Because when you live this close to losing everything, the little things stop being little.
They become everything.