In the final months of her life, as the cancerous tumor in her leg made it difficult to walk, and the one in her brain made it difficult to do much more than sleep, after she had undergone endless rounds of MIBG and chemotherapy, exhausting, invasive treatment that has lessened many a body older and stronger than hers, Anastasia Kostaris still blew kisses.
To her parents, Angelo and Christina, as day after day they took her from their Middle Village home to North Shore LIJ for tests and treatment and consultations, and oftentimes for specialized therapy in Philadelphia. She blew kisses to each of the North Shore LIJ nurses, who quickly transformed from practitioners to friends and playmates of the beautiful one-year-old girl with the huge eyes. And kisses to her pediatric oncologist, Dr. Jonathan Fish, who in an interview last week remained awestruck by his tiny patient’s unrelenting spirit.
“She was indomitable,” he said, some two weeks after Anastasia passed away to neuroblastoma, a cancer generally found in young children. “Even early in therapy, she came in and was quite sick and uncomfortable, but one of the first things she would do when she walked into a room was blow you a kiss. “Later on she developed a limp, but she still just hobbled around, doing the same things she always did,” he continued. “None of her demeanor changed even as her physical status deteriorated. She was the ultimate in taking what was coming and making the best of it.” During an interview at their home, Angelo’s arm freshly emblazoned with a tattoo of his daughter’s name, the parents discussed the span of the daughter and the illness, which claimed her life on July 20. She loved anything having to do with Mickey Mouse, they said, especially the show Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She was glued to her iPad and had an affinity for even the harder games. She doled out kisses and waves and hugs everywhere she went. She bestowed incredible joy to those she met, even in the face of terrible circumstance. “It wasn’t all bad,” Angelo said of her eight months in treatment. “There were good times there.”
Anastasia was first diagnosed in November 2013, after Angelo and Christina brought her to the hospital when she appeared lethargic and started vomiting. Initially believed to be a stomach virus, after a second trip to the hospital doctors found abnormalities in Anastasia’s blood work, eventually diagnosing her with high-risk neuroblastoma just two weeks short of her first birthday. Generally occurring in children under five years old, neuroblastoma develops from excess embryonic cells, and presents as tumors throughout the body.
About 800 children are diagnosed in the United States annually, half of who are high-risk cases, the most aggressive form with which Anastasia was diagnosed. “By the time we found it, it had metastasized,” said Christina. Anastasia soon began chemotherapy at LIJ, undergoing a round of four-day treatments every three weeks, with two weeks between each round to recover, from December until February. Chemotherapy was trying on her body, and for the first month her left eye remained closed as treatment attacked the cancer behind it. However she remained unrelentingly positive throughout, they said.
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