Helping a boy fight cancer

At the end of last school year, nine-year-old Aiden Binkley started complaining about having pains when sitting for too long.
In July it turned out that he had a rare lemon-sized cancer in his prostate. Because the cancer is inoperable, it requires treatment with chemotherapy and radiation.
“It’s every parent’s absolute worst nightmare,” said Lisa Binkley, Aiden’s mother.
To help end that nightmare, relatives and friends of the Binkleys decided that the family would need more than moral support to go through the experience. So they recently organized a dinner fundraiser that was widely successful and they are continuing to collect funds.
“It was so wonderful to have so many people come and support our son. More than half of the people we didn’t know,” said Binkley about the fundraiser, which was held in Great Neck on November 23 and attended by about 700 people.
Over $150,000 was raised during the dinner, said Dana Vezza, a cousin of Binkley and event co-organizer. “I thought, ‘If we get 300 people, we’d be lucky,’” added Vezza, of Bayside.
Hopefully this money will cover many of the costs for treating Aiden’s cancer, which is called Rhabdomayosarcoma, Vezza explained.
Binkley said the family, which now lives on Long Island, is also grateful to Vezza and the other relatives and friends that helped organize the fundraising.
“That’s what families are for,” said Vezza, adding that Aiden is a very special boy. “He’s like an adult in a child’s body. His vocabulary is better than [that of] most adults. He understands what he’s going through.”
Aiden now looks frail and has lost some of his hair due to the treatment, said Vezza. He doesn’t go to school right now because he spends most of his days at Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital in Manhattan.
“He has good days and bad days,” said Binkley. “This morning, for example, he said, ‘I’m one day closer to not having cancer.’ ”
Meanwhile, Vezza said the fundraising efforts are continuing. She and the rest of the people involved with the effort have set up a website - www.aidenbinkley.com - for that purpose.