Max Janovic, who will begin the seventh grade at Great Neck North Middle School next month, has no recollection of being diagnosed with leukemia before he was one years old.
The same cannot be said for his mother, Sharon.
“I wish that I could have taken his place,” Sharon Janovic recalled of her now 13-year-old son’s struggle with leukemia. “Watching him suffer through all of that was terrible.”
But for Sharon Janovic and her daughter Valerie, watching Max’s recovery from the disease that nearly took his life as an infant has been equally as inspiring.
“He’s really strong and completely well now,” said Valerie, who is a 15-year-old soon-to-be sophomore at Great Neck North High School. “He’s like a hero.”
“He is our hero,” Sharon interjected during an exclusive interview with Blank Slate Media. “He’s triumphed and really come through it like a trooper and he’s an inspiration to us all.”
The Janovic family is now looking for Max’s story to inspire an entirely new, and much larger, group of people.
As part of the 11th Annual 5-K Family Run-Walk at Eisenhower Park in East Meadow to benefit the Winthrop-University Hospital’s Cancer Center for Kids on Sunday, Sept. 9, Max Janovic will be leading a team of runners and walkers to raise money for the pediatric cancer facility’s psychosocial programs.
The effort to create what the Janovic family is calling “Team Max” will also serve as Max’s bar mitzvah chesed project.
“In Judaism, a bar or bat mitzvah is a coming of age,” Valerie said. “In Judaism, you are now an adult. People do a chesed project to start off with the responsibility to take care of people who are poor, disabled or sick.”
That theme struck a chord with the creation of his team, which Max said gives him an opportunity to raise money for the Winthrop-University Hospital’s Cancer Center for Kids where he was treated for leukemia.
“It feels good to help people make a difference,” Max said. “I want to help make a difference so other people won’t suffer from it.”
After their father Joseph Janovic died from esophageal cancer at the age of 49 in November of 2011, Max and Valerie said participating in the event has also given them a meaningful way to honor their family’s patriarch. “Cancer has been a very big part of our family,” Valerie said.“(Last year) our father passed away from cancer as well. Raising money to help cure it is very important.”
This year, the Winthrop-University Hospital Cancer Center for Kids annual 5K run-walk is expected to attract more than 500 participants and raise more than $30,000, said Linda Sweeney, the Pediatric Development Manager for Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and The Cancer Center for Kids at Winthrop.
The event, which for the second year is being held at Eisenhower Park, had previously been run at Jonathan L. Ielpi Firefighters’ Park in Great Neck, Sweeney said.
Any funds raised by the event go toward what Sweeney called “priceless” work by Winthrop University Hospital to treat pediatric cancer patients.
“The emotional support that a child and their family needs after being diagnosed with cancer is priceless,” she said.
With the funds raised from the 5K event, Sweeney said Winthrop-University Hospital will be able to hire social workers, music therapists and child psychologists who work with the pediatric cancer center’s psychosocial programs.
“It’s remarkable what families do to help us,” Sweeney said.
For Max, the idea to sponsor a team in the hospital’s 5K race came from Sharon.
“My mom told me that there was going to be a run … for the Winthrop Hospital,” Max said. “I thought what a way to help the place that cured me.”
His mother couldn’t agree more.
“Max has overcome many, many obstacles and not only has he overcome them, but he’s triumphed,” Sharon said.
Along with her late husband, Sharon said she is indebted to Max’s pediatric oncologist Dr. Mark Weinblatt for helping their family to get through its most trying period.
“I couldn’t have done it on my own,” Sharon said. “My late husband was just so understanding and was a great partner. The doctor, Dr. Weinblatt, he’s actually from Great Neck and he was wonderful.”
Sweeney said it is not uncommon for families like the Janovic’s to take part in the hospital’s 5K run and its other various fundraising activities.
“All the time kids are treated and because the families and the kids see how important (the hospital’s work is) they support it,” Sweeney said. “When they find out it’s all done through fundraising they do whatever they can.”
Anyone interested in joining “Team Max” to run or walk in the 5K race can do so by registering online at www.winthrop.org/cck/events.cfm or at www.islandrunning.net.
“There are many inspirational stories, but there are many that don’t survive,” Valerie said. “Everyone can do their part in helping. By running they can help try and cure and save a child’s life.”
In addition, money can also be donated online at the Web sites to help support “Team Max” and the efforts of the Winthrop-University Hospital’s Cancer Center for Kids.
“It’s a very worthy cause,” Sharon said. “If everybody could just either sponsor Max or have people sponsoring them and they run, or if they could just give a donation that would be so wonderful for ‘Team Max.’”
Along with making donations to help fight pediatric cancer, Max said he hopes the race’s participants take something else from the day’s events.
“I want them to be aware that they’re lucky to be alive,” he said, “and to enjoy every day.”
