It started with a headache that wouldn’t go away, but it wasn’t until the third doctor’s visit that Matthew Grossman learned that a germ cell tumor was growing in his brain.

“It was hard to be able to even react to it,” said Matthew , who was an eighth-grader at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville when he was diagnosed with the rare form of cancer. “Like when you lose a parent or a loved one, you realize it by degrees, over a long period of time.”

Matthew underwent almost six months of chemotherapy, radiation treatments, surgeries, two stem cell transplants and six weeks of radiation during his eighth- and what would have been his ninth-grade year. He’s now back on track in 10th grade.

Matthew and other children with cancer are the reason that Rep. Chris Van Hollen Jr., D-Kensington, and other House members introduced the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act of 2007, a bill to fight childhood cancer by authorizing $30 million a year for five years for research expansion, creating a childhood cancer database, establishing research fellowships and providing support for families battling cancer.

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About 12,400 Americans under 20 are diagnosed with cancer each year, according to the Children’s Oncology Group, a pediatric cancer research organization.

– Capital News Service