We often value most the thing or the person who helped us sail through our tough times. For Steven Gonzalez, that thing is video games.
His story
Steven Gonzalez, now 24, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia when he was 12. For a chance to recover, Steven had to undergo intense chemotherapy and needed a bone marrow transplant. When the doctors looked at the international registry for bone marrow donors, there wasn’t a single match. Not one. For bone marrow to be a match, the donor and the recipient should generally have the same racial and ethnic background. Steven is of American, Italian, Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage.
Having tried and not found a donor, the doctors gave Steven a 2% chance of survival. However, they offered the family an option that might be Steven’s best shot at defeating leukaemia – cord blood transplant. Cord blood is the blood left over in the umbilical cord after birth. It has all the properties of regular blood, but it’s also rich in stem cells used to cure illnesses such as leukaemia, lymphoma and sickle cell anaemia.
A bone marrow needs to be an exact match, but cord blood gives a leeway.
A match was found and Steven’s surgery was a success. He recovered from cancer. However, his immune system had taken a beating and he needed to be in a sterile environment for 100 days. This meant isolation from the outside world.
Video game – the companion
In the 100 days that Steven remained isolated, he found solace in video games. While he was losing hair and body mass in the real world, he could be anyone in the world of video games. It gave him positivity and helped him connect with his friends. Meanwhile, he also mastered a few software.
As his isolation period was ending, he realised how much video games helped him and how it could help other children with illness. So he used his skills to create an eight-level video game called ‘Play Against Cancer’. In this game, players would fight cancer cells and overcome cancer.
He distributed the game to children in the hospital where he was admitted and realised that it helped them stay positive in their fight against cancer.
Sharing the positivity and virtually
Having witnessed the positive effects of video games on children, Steven, along with his uncle, in 2013, went on to start a non-profit called The Survivor Games to help kids out through their cancer experience. The main purpose of The Survivor Games is to “bring the healing power of video games to the cancer community by creating a social network with video games as its foundation”. It allows teens with cancer to connect with others like them and share their views on video games. It also lets teens catch up on gaming news.
Today, Steven is a cancer survivor for over a decade and is spreading cheer with video games.
What makes him special?
Steven is a survivor. He survived cancer at a young age and decided to help children fighting cancer by sharing with them the thing that helped him cope with his illness – video games.
Picture Credit : Google