Boy Fighting Cancer Tours Fire House

By CARLY BALDWIN (Patch Staff)

This past Sunday, a New Brunswick firehouse received a special visitor: A 2-year-old boy from Hawaii, who is in New Jersey for cancer treatment.

Exactly one year ago this week, at Thanksgiving, Trucker Dukes was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a type of childhood cancer.

“He was teething, and it seemed hard for him, harder than with the other kids,” Shauna Dukes, his mother, told Patch Tuesday. The family has three other children, ages 10, 8 and 6. “And he kept getting these fevers. Then my mom noticed how big his abdomen was.”

It was a tumor growing in his stomach, tests showed. Trucker’s cancer was stage IV when it was diagnosed.

Trucker lives in Maui, but he is here to receive an extremely specialized form of proton therapy at ProCure center in Somerset. He and his mom fly back and forth every two weeks between Hawaii and New Jersey for the therapy. He is also being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“We are obviously not losing Trucker,” says Dukes, 37. “We are going to know we did everything we possibly could, that we took him to the best place in the world.”

What makes it even harder, however, is being away from their other family members, especially Trucker’s dad, Josh, who is a firefighter with the Maui Fire Department.

“I know he misses his dad; they have a really special bond,” she said.

Lt. Robert “Pip” Piparo with the New Brunswick Fire Department follows Trucker’s story on Facebook, and when he saw a post that they were in New Jersey, says “I had to contact them. I said, ‘Hey, you’re so close. You have to come to the firehouse.’”

Trucker had a great time, says his mother, riding on the fire trucks, exploring the station house and eating with the firefighters.

“He loved it! I know it may seem weird, but back in Hawaii we spend every Sunday afternoon at the firehouse visiting his dad. For us, that’s a normal way to spend a Sunday,” she said.

It was on this most recent trip to the East Coast when Trucker started complaining of a headache. Tests were done, and it was revealed he had a brain tumor. A little over two weeks ago, Trucker had brain surgery.

Trucker is recuperating now, but his fight is hardly over. Doctors warned that his next round of chemotherapy will be very aggressive, Dukes said.

“At this point I just want to get him home for Christmas,“ she said.

She is still grateful for the kindness of strangers like the New Brunswick firefighters.

“Even though it feels like we haven’t woken up from a bad dream, I also feel like we’ve been super blessed and taken care of along the way,” she said. ”I told Pip it’s people like him that keep us going.”

Photo caption: From left, firefighter Mike Pilch, Shauna, Trucker and Lt. Lt. Robert Piparo.