8-year-old Isaac Roznowski received words of encouragement from saint’s mother, Antonia Salzano, whose son battled cancer
ERIE — It’s not every day a person receives a voicemail from a saint’s mom.
But in late August, 8-year-old Isaac Roznowski of St. Joseph Parish in Erie received words of encouragement from Antonia Salzano, whom the world better knows as the mother of St. Carlo Acutis, who was canonized Sept. 6.
Young Isaac was diagnosed with leukemia on July 18, his mother, Beth Roznowski, explained to Detroit Catholic. After the devastating diagnosis, the family asked friends to include Isaac on their prayer lists; as it turns out, a friend of a friend knew Salzano, and asked the newly minted saint's mother for her prayers.
“When we sent out prayer requests, I got a message from a friend texting me saying, ‘Hey, a friend of mine is a friend of Blessed Carlo’s mother, and if you listen carefully, this was a message she sent to your son.”
In the voicemail, Salzano encouraged Isaac to stay strong in his fight with leukemia, the same illness that took her son’s life in 2006 at age 15.
The voicemail said: Isaac, I pray for you. Leukemia today is an illness that most of the time is cured completely. The kind that Carlo had in 2006, called M3, was a sentence of death at that time. But now they discovered the cure. So, most of the people are healed completely. So I’m sure that you will be able to defeat and do your battle, offered to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the conversion of sinners, for your sanctification. And you pray the rosary, go to Mass, not only on Sunday, if you can. And Jesus will help you, and I’m sure that I’m so optimistic, so God bless you, and I pray for you.
The message came as quite a surprise to Roznowski, knowing her son, Isaac, was in the thoughts and prayers of the mother of the Church’s newest saint.
“I cried,” Roznowski said. “We are at a particularly hard point in his journey. Our first month has been rough with rare side effects he’s been battling through. And in that moment (listening to the voicemail), I think we just recognized how widespread our Church is, how widespread my family is, not just our immediate family, but the family of people all over the world in every continent, praying for us.”
It was December of last year when the entire Roznowski family came down with a respiratory illness, but for some reason, Isaac had a hard time recovering.
Over the next few months, Isaac had been diagnosed with an ear infection and strep throat, but never seemed to fully recover. He constantly had a fever.
“My mom brain told me to keep digging, and we ended up seeing multiple doctors and specialists around the country,” Roznowski said.” It took until specialist No. 6 to get an actual diagnosis, and this was obviously not one anyone wanted to hear: ‘Your son has cancer.’”
Beth and her husband, Steven, then discerned what to do next in terms of Isaac’s care.
Wanting to stay as close to home as possible, Isaac began receiving care at ProMedica Russell J. Ebeid Children’s Hospital in Toledo, after receiving his initial bone marrow biopsy in Cleveland.
The couple had to break the news to Isaac’s siblings that things were going to be different, but that they were in this fight together with their faith.
“We talked about how as a family we’re on a mission, and our mission is to defeat cancer, and we do it one mile at a time, and each month is about one mile in terms of treatment,” Roznowski said. “It’s something we are working on every day — how to carry the cross and how to help him heal and help him fight. We are growing in our trust and faith as a family as we’re doing this together, because it’s not something that anyone can do without God.”
Isaac has finished his first month of chemotherapy and is in a stage called “remission” — meaning doctors don’t detect any cancer cells, but with leukemia, cancer cells tend to avoid detection and then return. Isaac goes to the hospital twice a week for chemotherapy, in addition to daily chemo treatment at home.
“He is a very active kid, so it’s definitely frustrating when one of the first things they told us was he’s not supposed to be around dirt and animals, which is not really conducive to our lifestyle,” Roznowski said. “We’re taking what they say under advisement, but we also have to make sure we keep him as happy as we can. He got cleared to ride his bike with a helmet, so he rides his bike three miles a day.”
Isaac has suffered from seizures and a stroke, “but as God would have it, he has zero neurological ill effects from it,” Roznowski said.
“He does have a clot in his brain that we have nicknamed ‘Clemmy,’ and hopefully, Clemmy is disappearing over the next couple of months,” Roznowski added.
Roznowski said her family has an ever-evolving schedule based on Isaac’s health and the routine of medication, rest and doctor’s visits, but the family is taking it all in stride, knowing they are receiving a little extra intercessory help from people in heaven and on earth.
Roznowski said initial reports from Isaac’s bloodwork have been positive, something she attests to the hundreds who have been praying for Isaac, including St. Carlo Acutis and the saint’s mother.
“I can’t explain how it feels as a mom to hear the mother of Carlo Acutis, a saint, and know that she is praying for your son,” Roznowski said. “He had something very similar happen, and she saw him in anguish and suffering, so she knows part of my heart and what I’m going through.”
On Sept. 7, the family watched St. Carlo's canonization together — it was also the 11th birthday of Isaac's older sister, Gianna, Roznowski added.
“Right after we got the message, Isaac asked me, ‘Mom, does this mean I’m famous?’ and I’m like, ‘Yes, I’m going to say you’re famous,’” Roznowski said. “It felt really important to him that she took the time to do that for him, and that her message was really for him as much as it was for me. Because he knows how much I love him, and he knows how much she loved her son. And she took the time to show my son how much he is like her son, who we so admire.”
