About Caesar

Finally, Caesar is CURED. Thanks to the Lord.  His bone marrow was successfully performed at the NIH in September 2021. We are so thanks for their job: they are remarkable, the heart of the United Stated.  

Caesar was born on August 1st, 2008 in Providence (RI) in the United States. His parents are Lucas and Aline. He has two sisters, Maria-Anita and Helen, aged 11 and 7 respectively. When he was 1.5 months old, his parents moved to the quiet and lovely Winston-Salem, NC because his father got a new job position moving from Brown to  Wake Forest University.

The first formal steps of Caesar’s education.  At the age of 2, we signed him for the following: to violin class (Suzuki method at that time) two times a week; to Kumon (a Japanese Math-Reading program) twice a week; 3) to Greek once a week and Karate twice a week. All under the homeschooling umbrella. As expected, he was doing marvelous as a dream coming true. He hit the four years old at rock speed: a) earning a karate black belt, b) speaking several beguiling idioms (specially Greek, Russian, Greek, and German, Chinese), c) doing 3rd Grade in Math at Kumon and to crown this whole early achievements: d) started playing concertos. In this link: https://bit.ly/3naRZd4  we can see him playing Vivaldi E-minor at the age of 4. Thereafter, everyone started calling him a violin prodigy. Incredibly enough, over a month before the recording  of this video, he had the first stroke where his bow (right) arm was paralyzed. In fact, Caesar was born with a chronic anemia —sickle cell— that brought three strokes to him in a span of 1.5 years, after he crossed  the age of 4.  The last stroke (2014) almost killed him. He had to virtually relearn everything.  Soon after the last stroke, National Geographic  approached us and did an international documentary about him https://bit.ly/3qlmfnl. It was a game change because it brought awareness of his case, which raised support for us to fight to bring him back toward his bone marrow transplanted.

At that point, his father had already ‘switched’ the job of working as a neuroscientist to work as a full support to his son: for being his personal physical therapist and his doctor dealing with from giving baths to teaching him how to move his legs, hold a pencil, a spoon, to walk again, to practice his violin, etc. As a result, he overcame — up to 90% — and in September 2016, he played Meditation from Thais/Jules Massenet to the most prestigious and great violinist of the world and his idol: Mr. Itzhak Perlman. All this is THANKS to the grace of the Lord for having been feeding our hopes and strengthening our daily journey, and to many support from folks of big hearts, many we never met. Without Caesar’s REMARKABLE SUPPORTERS, although it’s full of evidence that Caesar’s passion for music was his inner motor/motivation for him to fight back, it’s implausible to imagine him overcome so much on his journey.

Though his family got in dark deep waters:  his father started to get sick due to the marmot daily level stressing: a heart attack in June 2018 (his heart stopped working for about 30min), but in 2019 the family moved to Memphis/TN seeking to be close to a better  bone marrow transplant center. Living in Memphis, on Caesar’s birthday, his father had another stroke as a result of uncontrolled blood pressure.

Finally, after struggling for 7 years,  his transplant was successfully performed in September 2021 at the best place possible — at the NIH, Maryland.  Again, thanks to God (there are 1000s of folks worldwide praying for him) for holding us together and never letting hope leave us; therefore we never stop working hard toward the victory. We are so happy with those remarkable NIH family of nurses, physicians, multi-play team as well as Children’s Inn, the umbilical cord of NIH: we just can’t imagine Caesar’s transplant occurring so smoothly without the support of this Inn. They are the heart of the USA!!
A week before this Christmas, we got home (Memphis/TN) with a healed Caesar Sant. Above all, it is important to highlight that he never stops smiling. I guess it’s proof that it’s worth being happy.

Now, we have to reload our tools to help Caesar’s sister, Maria-Anita, who was born with the same blood disorder, though she has been doing ok. However, she needs a bone marrow transplant as well because next month she will be 12-yr-old, and sickle cell anemia has a trend to show up its aggressiveness while the person is getting old. Yes, we do not have the fundamentals  for this need, a donor.

Thank you very much and God may bless you further,

Sant Family — Caesar’s father, Lucas