DES MOINES, Iowa — Months ago, JeanCarlos Tenemaza left his home country of Ecuador for the United States. The 13-year-old left behind his parents to come to the United States to live with his aunt, Blanca Lopez.
His family hopes it's a trip that will save his life.
"Well, it's basically a hard knock life has given me," Tenemaza told Local 5 through a translator.
Tenemaza has Osteosarcoma, a cancerous tumor in his leg.
"I do see he misses his parents a lot and his family because he did not grow up with me and our family," Lopez said. "But I'm trying for him to feel good and comfortable."
Tenemaza got his diagnosis back in Ecuador, where there would likely be a wait before treatment could begin. One day after getting to the US, he was already at Blank Children's Hospital.
"The doctor explained to us about the chemotherapy and explained there will be three types of chemotherapy that he was going to receive," Lopez said.
But there was a problem.
"The chemotherapy shortage has impacted patients nationwide," Tenemaza's doctor, Dr. Nick Fustino, said. "For JeanCarlos, this has been especially difficult."
One of his chemotherapy drugs was not available at Blank Children's Hospital due to a nationwide shortage, meaning he'd have to go elsewhere.
"So, we have to go wherever the medicine is," said Blanca. "And in that case, it's in Iowa City."
This meant hundreds of miles of travel for treatment, all on top of Lopez's work schedule.
"Then there were days that I had to leave him there alone," Lopez said. "With the medical personnel in the hospital."
"I certainly worry about what could happen in the future," Fustino said. "You never know in any given week or given month, what the chemotherapy supply is going to look like. It's been very stressful for the doctors in our group, but I can only imagine how stressful it is for the families who and the patients who need this medicine."
"We are experiencing unprecedented shortages in chemotherapy drugs that have never been an issue before," said Blank Children's Hospital Medical Director Dr. Wendy Woods.
Woods says previously it wasn’t uncommon to see one chemo drug have a short-term shortage.
"Now we're seeing multiple drugs," said Dr. Woods. "And it continues. We continue to see news notices from the FDA, from the manufacturers about impending shortages. And they're not corrected in the timeframe that we're used to seeing them corrected."
She said there’s not one reason why this is happening.
"One of the drugs, the one company stopped making the drug altogether, which impacted supply for everyone. For some of the other companies, it's been production issues, supply chain issues, is what we're being told."
According to Woods, the drugs experiencing a shortage aren't unique to a single type of cancer. They're used across the board in all types of Leukemias, Lymphomas and bone tumors. With no let up in sight, Woods says the FDA is providing sanctions to allows to alternative drugs to be utilized.
"Because the American drug production is low. That all is very hard to stomach some days. We live in the greatest country in the world and we can't keep our supply up to treat our most fragile patients."
Doctors are also reducing doses within a reasonable window, to stretch supply.
"There is no comfort in telling a patient and their family that their child has cancer or that they have cancer, and then the follow up sentence is, 'We don't know if we have enough supply to treat you at this time,'" Woods said.
Which means providers are forced to give more bad news.
"The honest truth is, we know that it will impact survival overall," Woods said. "But no one knows how it's going to impact the survival for one single patient. It's impossible to tell a family exactly, 'We had a nine out 10 chance, now it's five.' We have the ability to predict that, which makes it even harder to stomach a cancer diagnosis right now."