Four years ago, Domenic Runghen had a cold.
Or, at least, that's what his parents thought. It wasn't until the two-year-old's daycare operator voiced concern about the boy's health that his father took him to the hospital.
Nuvin Runghen, a Port Moody resident and dog handler with the Canadian Border Services Agency, remembers that day well."I walked in to get him checked out and left with a child with cancer," he said. "He had leukemia, and I had no idea."
Thankfully, after numerous treatments "that filled him with poison in his system," doctors last month declared his six-year-old son free of the disease.
Still, "life will never be the same again," he said, "because once you cross the line of cancer you can't go back. You rejoice that he doesn't have it anymore but the damage that this treatment caused to his upbringing is far from over.
"We can't celebrate because there are so many kids out there with it," he said.
Tomorrow (Saturday), Runghen will drive that message home at the fourth annual Kick For A Cure, a soccerfest he started just after Domenic was diagnosed.
The event will see up to 5,000 participants converge on Coquitlam Town Centre Park, a new site for the cause, and will attempt to raise $100,000 for the Coquitlam-based Michael Cuccione Foundation, which has a lab at the BC Children's Hospital and aims to fight childhood cancer.
Kick is also held in memory of Dominic Mobilio, a former Whitecaps player who died in 2004. At the time of his death, Mobilio - a cousin of Cuccione's - had been named the head coach of B.C.'s under-16 girls' soccer team. Part of Kick also supports the Whitecaps Foundation, which helps to get B.C. youth fit.
Gloria Cuccione said the lab in her son's name currently has seven researchers "and they have had some breakthroughs, which is exciting," she said, adding 87% of kids diagnosed with leukemia are now beating it.
To date, Cuccione said the foundation has collected $8 million over the past 16 years, including $71,000 from past Kick tournaments, for the pediatric oncology lab.
Since Kick For A Cure started, five of Runghen's border patrol colleagues have had children diagnosed with cancer. "Children's cancer is all over the place and, as a parent, your normal life ceases to exist. Today, we are blessed to have our kid alive but we have to continue the fight," he said.
Saturday's Kick For A Cure, which is sponsored in part by Black Press, the parent company of The Tri-City News, runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will feature, among other things, a Canadian Tire family fun zone, youth soccer coaching clinics with players from the Coquitlam Metro-Ford soccer club and the Vancouver Whitecaps, adult soccer tournaments, exhibition games by the BC Special Olympics soccer team, live music and kids' entertainment. Soccer players must be registered through the foundation (www.kickforacure.ca) and gather pledges to take part.
