SAN DIEGO -- Marshall Cotta plays piano and lacrosse, but he shouldn't be able to do either. Frankly, the teenager shouldn't be here.
Cotta started walking at 10 months. Then three months later, he couldn't walk, or even stand because of a brain tumor in the back of his head.
An MRI revealed that Cotta was suffering from hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid and pressure on the brain. The condition was the result of a brain tumor. Cotta’s neurosurgeon was able to relieve the fluid build-up and remove much of the tumor, but returned with bad news nonetheless: Cotta had a primitive neuro-ectodermal tumor (PNET), an extremely rare condition for a child his age, for which there was no effective treatment, and little hope for survival.
"I remember saying, I'm not going to bury my son, I'm not going to do it,'" said Jeff Cotta, Marshall's father.
Doctors told Jeff that his son's time was short.
“They pretty much gave up on him down (in San Diego),” Jeff said.” The oncologist didn't feel they had anything they could do to help him, so a friend of our family said, 'You have to go to the City of Hope. That's the best chance for him to survive.'”
Soon enough, Cotta started treatment at the City of Hope in Pasadena, Calif.
After 17 surgeries before the third grade and many more sessions of intense chemotherapy, little Cotta beat cancer. Now, at age 13, he's just like every other boy on the Rattlers Middle School lacrosse team.
“Being a 13-year-old, he's invincible,” Jeff Cotta said with a laugh. “Nothing's going to get him now. He can talk about it himself, ‘Oh yeah, I licked cancer. I'm the one that did that.’”
Cotta, a seventh-grader at the Magnolia Science Academy, plays attack for the Rattlers. Just like all the other kids, he wears a helmet, pads, and wields a stick.
“I do like the fact that it is a contact sport,” he said.
Jeff Cotta, not only coaches his son, he also started the Rattlers' program in 2003.
What Cotta loves about the sport made for some nervous moments for dad.
“There's times when kids fall down,” Jeff said. “You just didn't ever want to see Marshall fall down. You didn't want him to bump his head because that triggered all kinds of thoughts. “
Cancer free since 2005, Marshall has no restrictions on activities or sports.
Though he said he was too young to really remember his battle with cancer, he speaks to groups and other cancer patients offering encouragement and more important, hope.
“A lot of it is that I made it through at that age,” Cotta said. “That gives older people the confidence that they'll be able to make it, too.”
And maybe one day play lacrosse or the piano.
