If you're a Belize City parent, there's a good chance your little one has seen Dr Cecilio Eck. He's Belize's favorite paediatrician, and back in 2021, the entire country was holding their breaths, hoping he would survive COVID.
When he returned to work, parents were relieved. But now, Dr Eck is faced with another long and difficult health battle: stage four cancer.
And while, outwardly, he doesn't seem ill, the adenocarcinoma type cancer has spread to various parts of his body.
We spoke with him today, and Courtney Menzies has this story.
In October 2021, beloved Paediatrician, Dr Cecilio Eck entered into the fight of his life with the COVID virus. He had to be intubated twice, but came out of that battle alive. It wasn't long before he regained his strength, and got back to work.
But now, Dr Eck is faced with another battle, this time with stage 4 cancer - and his diagnosis came by chance.
Dr Cecilio Eck, Paediatrician
"I found out by chance, maybe a month ago, a month, five weeks ago, the KHMH got a new CT machine and they were testing it."
"And one of the tests that it does is to look literally at the image of your heart. And when they did that, my heart was fine, but they found some nodules in my lung where it picked up something. And so they asked me to wait until afterwards for me to do a proper scan."
"And during that scan is when they show that I had tumors throughout the body. I have some in my lung, in the liver. I have some in the pelvis, the bones, the ribs. And I have, of course, the one in my shoulder."
Dr Eck told us he was shocked because he had no symptoms apart from a shoulder he had strained - which he thought was just a muscle spasm.
Now, he has to undergo treatment, but before that, he has to figure out where the cancer started, since it has now spread all over his body.
Dr Cecilio Eck, Paediatrician
"To deal with that, what happened was Wednesday last week. My good friend, the interventional radiologist in Belize, Dr. Carrillo, he did biopsies of my arm and the liver. And two days ago, we got the results confirming that it was cancer."
"The next step is to send the sample. The pathologist in Belize, Dr. Trey, sent the sample to Mexico City and there they will do further studies to find out where the origin is."
And Dr Eck isn't the first well known doctor to be faced with this fight this year - his colleague, Dr Fernando Cuellar - who was instrumental in Eck's COVID treatment - followed a similar trend, where he survived a terrible bout of COVID and later caught cancer. Unfortunately, Dr Cuellar passed away - and now Dr Eck says the conspiracy theorists have come out of the woodwork.
Dr Cecilio Eck, Paediatrician
"Again, the conspiracy theorists are waving their flags. The truth of the matter is we do know that COVID, especially in my case, does affect the immune system."
"And I think down the road, we may see more and more severe cancers. They're noticing some more now, and they think it's usually in the people who have had severe COVID. But in Belize, I think a couple of us survived, and well, I'm the second one that has been sick."
"There are many other survivors who do not have cancer. So we can't, you know, generalize or suppose that that's an issue. Time will tell. That's the correct answer."
But until then, Dr Eck is asking for the public's support. He explained that COVID took a lot out of his insurance, and if he didn't have financial assistance from Belizeans, he would've been in trouble.
But it's not just money he's asking for this time around:
Dr Cecilio Eck, Paediatrician
"I know that the type of care for this type of illness will be far more costly than the COVID that I spent the month in hospital, in ICU with. And I'm almost 100% certain that the insurance will not cover it."
"I'm not a proud person, but I was very humbled the last time because it's not in my nature to ask. But without that help the last time, more likely I would have lost everything. Because you could imagine I didn't work for nine months."
"The country had large help, and I was very touched because I still have videos of kids breaking their piggy banks and saying, Doc, I'm going to send you my money at a time saving. Since that episode I've become closer to God."
"And I tell people, never underestimate the power of a unified prayer. I really do think that and the prayers from the kids helped me through that. Because when I had COVID I was at death's door, a significant number of times, and I was brought back. Not with any significant deficits, but still being able to work and to think and to remember. And I think that's not my doing. That's his doing."
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up for any donations towards Dr Eck's treatment.
Dr Eck's GoFundMe link will be posted on our Facebook page.
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