Help Support Baby Luke!!

Many of you may know Vanessa Forte who grew up and graduated from Ridgefield Pk. NJ in 2001 or Daniel Abbadessa who grew up in Bergenfield and graduated from Paramus Catholic in 1998. These two wonderful people met and fell in love and later life blessed them with a happy, healthy marriage. Later in life they were also blessed with two beautiful boys, Matthew age 3 1/2 and Luke age 1 1/2. Vanessa and Dan both work as educators in the WNY public school system.

As they were both anxiously awaiting to greet their new students this year, unfortunatley life had other plans for them. When most parents were sending their young ones off to their first day of school ...Vanessa and Dan were spending their time in Hackenack Hospital where it was discovered that their baby boy was diagnosed with a childhood cancer called neuroblastoma.

On September 2nd, during a routine examination at their doctors they were completely caught off guard when a mass was detected on 20 month old playful happy son, Luke. Considering he was fine and had no symptoms whatsoever you can imagine how heart wrenching and unexpected this new was to them. After much medical testing and research, biopsies have confirmed that Luke has Stage 3 (possibly 4) neuroblastoma. Due to the placement of his tumor they are unable to operate right now so Luke has to go through Chemotherapy to help shrink the tumor first. Needless to say Vanessa and Dan were not able to return to their teaching positions as planned. Knowing how much this community pulls together we are hoping to rally again to support the Abbadessa family in one of the biggest fights they have ever known.