Alisha Savage, all of 31⁄2 years old, manages to balance herself on the piano bench and run her tiny fingers over the keys with an intuitive grace.
Her focus and impish smile are almost enough to make you forget about the scars that ring her head and speak to the life-and-death battle she’s been fighting for almost two years.
Alisha’s parents — John Savage, 36, and Michelle Long, 37 — sit in a nearby room, talking about how their daughter’s strength has kept them sane.
Back in October 2012, doctors in Dublin told the young couple that the reason Alisha’s head suddenly tilted to one side, the reason she began to stagger and vomit, was that an extremely rare form of cancer had invaded her brain.
“It’s as if someone ripped my heart out,” John Savage recalled. “They give you the worst-case scenario. They tell us the tumor is at Stage 4 and maybe Alisha might have five years, but there’s really nothing they can do.”
This past June, Irish doctors told the parents during a relapse to try to make their daughter comfortable. They spoke in terms of weeks.
But Alisha has confounded them.
“Michelle and I, we went numb,” John said, “but then, things happen very fast. You have to keep up with the treatments and do the research online.”
So the auto mechanic from Glanmire Co. in Cork, and his wife, a former doctor’s secretary who happened to be seven months pregnant at the time with their second daughter, Emma Louise, went online and learned all about a rare cancer.
Alisha was diagnosed with AT/RT (atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor), a cancer so uncommon only one other child in Ireland had been diagnosed with it.
“I went weak when they told us,” Michelle said. “My whole soul was plunged into this darkness. I looked at Alisha and thought, ‘What are they going to do to her? How will she survive?’ But she has been amazing.
“And pity time for us was soon over. We had to be there for our daughter.”
John and Michelle used social media to plug into the network of other “AT/RT” parents in Ireland and the states. They made an online plea on behalf of their daughter, called “A Life For Alisha,” that went viral in Ireland. And all the research they did pointed them to the same place, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
“That was the place we needed to be,” John said. “It’s where all the research work is being done on AT/RT.”
In a quiet moment, Michelle talks about the power of angels. Even after losing a son, Christopher, who was stillborn years ago, her faith is undaunted.
And those angels, coupled with the good fortune of a family connection, brought them to the South Shore home of Ken Smith, a native son of Ireland who now runs his own commercial contracting business.
His wife, Laura MacConaill, happens to be a research doctor at Dana-Farber.
“It’s like our prayer was answered,” John Savage said.
Ken Smith has opened his heart and home to John and Michelle, Alisha and her baby sister, Emma Louise. Smith has begun to put out the word through the local Irish pipeline about the struggle of a young Cork family living for nothing more than to defy the odds and save their daughter’s life.
“They are a part of our family now,” Smith said. “Whatever they need, we’ll get it for them.”
Amid a winter filled with too many stories of parents unwilling, or unable, to care for their children, it’s reassuring to come across the story of a young Irish couple surrendering their lives for their child.
Go to alifeforalisha.com to learn more about the girl and how to help or leave a comment below for the girl and her family.
