About three years ago, now 8-year-old Jake Elder was diagnosed with medulloblastoma — a type of brain cancer — and had his life turned upside down.
His mum, Jane, said they found out about the cancer when her son started to feel unwell, vomiting with a lot of nausea and headaches.
Mrs Elder and her husband were devastated with the diagnosis and she said it was the only time her son had seen her crying.
"I can’t describe the feeling when they told us — I just felt ‘give it to me, give me the cancer — not him’.
"He was only 5 ... I felt it was not fair."
From then, everything happened really fast. Jake was taken to Auckland for surgery on his head and a couple of weeks later went to Christchurch, where he underwent 30 rounds of radiotherapy.
In the past couple of years, he had been in and out of hospital, had chemotherapy and had to be treated for some infections.
During this difficult time, Jake found a passion: dinosaurs.
Mrs Elder said as he was quite weak during the treatment, one of the few things they could do was watch Youtube and Netflix and he fell in love with the dinosaurs’ world when watching an animated Jurassic Park series.
"He started watching it and got really into it and he wanted to watch the movie Jurassic Park.
"Oh, my gosh, he loved it so much — [it became] almost like a rabbit hole of just information on dinosaurs."
His passion became part of the treatment. While he was doing radiation, his medical team would hide five dinosaurs in the room for him to find and his anaesthetist regularly challenged him to find the name of a new dinosaur or a new dinosaur fact, she said.
During this period, he told his mum that one day he would be well enough to go and find some fossils.
Jake is in remission now and last week he had his dream come true.
The Make-A-Wish New Zealand team organised for Morne at Mamlambo Fossils — a fossil YouTuber — to bury fossils on the beach for Jake and his family to dig up.
He also received a video of Sam Neill as Dr Grant from Jurassic Park.
"I honestly don’t know who was more excited, me or him, but he kept saying ‘Oh, it is Dr Grant!’
"He was so excited that he took the video to school on Monday to show to his class."
Jake and his family will also be heading to Wellington at the end of the month, where they will see the dinosaur exhibit at Te Papa for the first time, and also head to the Jurassic World Lego Brick Show.
Jake would need to continue to treatment with hormones for the next 10 years, as the radiation affected his growth.
Mrs Elder said she was proud of the strength of her son.
"He never has been sort of down on it and he never said: ‘why me?’
"He is just 8 and at such a young age he came to the realisation that he needs to do the most with what life gives him and never complained. He is a happy wee boy and I am so proud of him."
