At 20 years old, Mary Catherine Buyck can summarize nearly her entire life in a list of treatments most people will never experience.
She was 14 months old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Since then, there have been countless treatments and rounds of chemotherapy, three brain surgeries, surgery to place a shunt after developing hydrocephalus and six weeks of proton radiation.
But standing before the Manning Rotary Club on Sept. 16, Buyck told that story with the same humor she has learned to carry alongside everything else.
She brought the radiation mask once used to hold her head still during treatment, decorated with drawings of some of her favorite foods. She joked about her claustrophobia, her tendency to trip and the “brain fog” that occasionally interrupted her presentation.
Behind the humor was a message Buyck and her family have spent years sharing: Children with cancer need treatments developed specifically for them.
“A majority of the treatments, the chemo treatments that I have had, were drugs that were not made for pediatric patients,” Buyck told Rotarians.
For much of her childhood, her parents were left making difficult treatment decisions because there were few other options.
Mary Catherine was born in 2006 and diagnosed at 14 months old with a low-grade glioma brain tumor, according to her mother, Caroline Buyck.
The years that followed brought treatments, surgeries and questions about why therapies that worked for other children did not seem to work the same way for Mary Catherine.
A major piece of that answer came through advances in tumor testing. After surgery in New York in 2012, Caroline said pathology testing examined about 50 different mutations. Seven years later, when Mary Catherine developed hydrocephalus and required radiation, another sample was sent to a specialty facility in California, where it was tested for more than 500 mutations.
The family learned that although Mary Catherine's tumor fell within the most common type of childhood brain tumor, her particular subtype was extremely rare, Caroline said. That helped explain why so many previous treatments had produced limited results.
Radiation had been something the family delayed as long as possible because of its potential effects. Caroline said much of the cognitive difficulty Mary Catherine experiences today stems from that treatment.
Mary Catherine's tumor has not simply disappeared as she has grown older. She continues to have a pediatric diagnosis and remains under pediatric care, Caroline said. The medication she takes now, however, is among the first treatments she has received that was developed specifically for pediatric patients.
That difference is part of why the mission of Curing Kids Cancer has become so personal to the family.
Mary Catherine told Rotarians she has met countless doctors, nurses, patients and families during what she described as her 19-year battle. Among those relationships is one with Grainne Owen, founder of Curing Kids Cancer, who traveled from Columbia to attend Mary Catherine's presentation.
Owen and her husband, Clay, founded the organization after losing their son, Killian, to leukemia in 2003. The organization supports pediatric cancer research, including efforts to develop treatments specifically for children.
Owen, who also spoke during the program, said Curing Kids Cancer has raised $36 million for pediatric cancer research. She said money Mary Catherine raises locally will support pediatric cancer treatment and research in South Carolina.
The Buycks' own fundraising began in 2016. Each September, during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Mary Catherine and Caroline encourage the community to “paint the town gold,” making homemade gold bows for mailboxes, homes and businesses in exchange for donations.
There is no required contribution. Caroline said supporters can give whatever amount they choose, with the money going to Curing Kids Cancer.
Since 2016, Mary Catherine told Rotarians, Clarendon County supporters have helped the family raise more than $55,000.
The advocacy has also connected her with other young people who understand what it means to grow up with cancer. Through Curing Kids Cancer, Mary Catherine has participated in events with the University of South Carolina equestrian program, where pediatric patients can groom horses, decorate horseshoes and spend time together. Caroline said the family initially became involved with the organization through events connected with Gamecock athletics.
For Mary Catherine, those experiences mattered for reasons beyond the activities themselves. Being around children going through similar experiences, she told Rotarians, made her feel more comfortable than she sometimes felt at school, where her medical history and its effects could make her feel different.
Now 20, Mary Catherine has aged out of childhood, but not out of the cause.
Owen told Rotarians that Mary Catherine's willingness to stand before the group and tell her story was remarkable, as was her dedication to raising money year after year.
For Mary Catherine, the evidence of those years was sitting nearby.
She held up the radiation mask that once strapped her head to a treatment table for roughly 30 sessions. Drawn across it were fries, ice cream, pizza and other foods she loved at the time. She joked about the mask, about being claustrophobic and about the fears that ran through her mind while she was immobilized beneath it.
It was another difficult piece of her childhood that, years later, she could hold in her hands and use to tell someone else why pediatric cancer research matters.
And although she is no longer a child herself, Mary Catherine told Rotarians she has no intention of leaving that work behind.
“Even though I am 20 years old now, I will continue to support the fight for children,” she said.
