He was 11 years old.
Cerquone, who was a fourth-grader at Lewis and Clark Elementary when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor last spring, died at 4:40 a.m. at the family home.
2-year fight when the leukemia returned at the age of 5, this time in his testicles, and another recurrence of it, this time in his central nervous system and bone marrow, at age 7.
Although the latest form of cancer got him, by all accounts, he went down swinging.
Many people kept tabs on Cerquone over the last nine months at www.perrystrength.com, a Web site originally set up to help the Cerquone family, which includes his father Chris, his mother Robin, and his sister Rosie, raise money to deal with medical expenses.
Thousands of people pitched in, buying “Perry Strength” wristbands to help out.
Robin posted periodic updates as Perry began chemotherapy and radiation treatments last spring in Seattle in the hopes of beating cancer for the fourth time.
“I've got a good Perry update for everyone today,” Robin wrote on Oct. 4. “Perry is recovering well from his surgery 10 days ago, and is completely free of headaches. He is feeling much better and even battled through a little cold that he got last week. It is great to see his resilience come back.”
Nearly two months passed before her next update, and it was bad:
“Perry developed severe headaches over the Thanksgiving weekend,” she wrote on Nov. 30. “We saw the neurosurgeon (Nov. 28). The tumor is back, and it is huge. It is almost certainly inoperable, and he can't do a course of radiation again. We are going to talk to the oncologists in Seattle, and possibly even St. Jude's, but it seems likely that there is nothing we can do. If we are lucky, we will have a month left. Rosie, Chris, Perry and I are completely devastated.
“As ever, we so appreciate your love and support. If anyone feels the urge to make a miracle happen, have at it, with our blessings.”
From there, the updates came every day or three. Many were heart-wrenching, like the Dec. 13 posting:
“Perry had a great weekend, and was great on Monday. Then Monday night he started to have lots of head and neck pain. Yesterday was tough, and last night the pain was impossible to control with the oral pain meds we had. Hospice is at work now getting him set up on an IV of morphine or some other narcotic. Perry is aware of what is happening around him, but the medicines make him extremely sleepy and pretty much unresponsive. We are hoping to control his pain and find a dose that lets him be a little bit responsive, so we can have some more talks with our beautiful boy. But it may not happen. We are heartbroken.”
But on Christmas Eve, Robin wrote about how thankful they were that Perry was not only still with them, but feeling well enough that his “fun, quirky, loving personality is on display almost every day.”
“Perry is still hanging strong,” she reported three days after Christmas. “He has better energy, a better appetite, and better humor than he had a week ago, and he has even been able to come off the narcotic drip for a few hours each of the last couple days. We are eternally grateful for this extra good time. And it amazes us what he is capable of - a couple weeks ago, this didn't seem possible to anyone. He is a wonder.”
By Jan. 4, Robin said it looked like it was down to days, and on Jan. 7, said it could be a matter of hours.
But Perry fought back again.
“Despite two weeks of no food and very little liquid, he is still responsive and somewhat mentally there,” Robin reported on Jan. 11. “And he certainly didn't have any reserves of fat or nutrition to fall back on. He is just so, so tough. We are in awe of him, yet again. As usual, he is doing this his own way.”
Last Wednesday, Chris woke his wife up in the middle of the night.
Perry was awake, sitting up, and wanting to talk.
“We had a wonderful hour and a half,” Robin wrote. “It was so fun.”
Perry Cerquone was born two months prematurely on Feb. 9, 1994, and was immediately flown to Seattle where he spent the first two months of his life in a hospital, the first six weeks on a ventilator.
At the age of 4 months, a tube was inserted into his stomach. The boy's digestive system wasn't working, and it was the only way to feed him.
Then came the many years battling various forms of leukemia. The chemotherapy for the second round was so intense it nearly killed him.
Through it all, Perry's courage inspired his family. Aside from his medical problems he was a typical boy, a baseball fan first but who liked any sport that involved a ball.
He'd even once drilled holes in his front yard and built his own golf course.
Perry had just enjoyed the first year of relatively good health in his life when the headaches started last year.
“We've learned that if he complains, it's probably bad,” Robin said in an interview with the Missoulian in April. “We're used to the chemo and used to him toughing things out.”
Robin's final posting on the Web site was on Sunday, just hours before her son died.
“Perry is very close to the end,” she wrote. “He is not responsive, but he seems to be at peace and feeling no pain.
“There is not enough water in the oceans for all the tears we need to cry.”
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 523-5260 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
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