One week, 11-year-old Sergio Acuahuitl was an active child in the after-school club at Roosevelt Community Center in Davenport. He ran, played, laughed and joked with the other kids.

Then he was gone. He’d been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and started months of chemotherapy at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital, Iowa City.

The sixth-grade student at J.B. Young Intermediate School in Davenport was a regular at the program operated by the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Mississippi Valley. “He came every day with a great big smile,” DeMetria Isabel said. “He is a great kid.”

Isabel, program director, has known Sergio for a year. He makes friends easily, she said, likes to play video games with the staff and participates in the Boy Scouts.

That’s what he misses these days. The youth is in the middle of his fourth round of chemotherapy. It is anticipated there will be two more, but his mother, Melissa Wagner, believes treatment should wrap up in February.

She and Sergio travel to Iowa City three to four weeks at a time, return home to Davenport for a week, and the cycle repeats. Sergio’s father, Shawn Wogomon, cares for 6-year-old McKenzey, who is in the first grade at Lincoln Academy of Integrated Arts, Davenport.

Wagner is employed by Deere & Co., Moline. She uses her cell phone to juggle work and home responsibilities. She is helped by Wogomon, family and friends. She misses McKenzey, a vital, active version of herself. “We manage as best we can,” she said during a brief break in Davenport.

Sergio’s story is reported on CarePages, the Web site that connects members with news on those who are seriously ill. His page is “JungleKid,” named that way because he received several stuffed wild animals after his first treatment in July.

“Sergio is in remission!” Wagner wrote Nov. 18 on the CarePages site.

The happiness and relief in her message is clear. “Praise God!! Thank you!!! Thank you!!!”

The type of cancer in Sergio is extremely rare in the United States, according to Dr. Mohamed Radhi, his doctor in Iowa City. Radhi is a cancer specialist and head of the hospital’s bone marrow treatment program.

Sergio is a good student but he cannot attend school. He has a tutor in Davenport and a teacher when he’s in Iowa City. He takes four classes and is keeping pace with his classmates at J.B. Young.

But he misses his friends. He misses Boy Scouts, soccer and bowling.

Almost no visitors are allowed in Iowa City because of the infection concerns. He has a port in his chest for the chemotherapy treatments and that area must be kept clean and protected.

“It’s pretty boring,” Sergio said. He gets nauseous or lethargic with the treatments. He will miss Thanksgiving in Davenport, Wagner said, but the family hopes to be home for Christmas.

“This family needs to have some normalcy for the holidays,” agreed Isabel, who nominated them for the Wish List program.

Sergio is a Legos enthusiast. He recently did one of the Sears Tower in Chicago, and completed a complicated yellow Lamborghini car kit.

“I hope, for Christmas, to get a Legos set with 1,000 pieces,” he said. “I’d love to see how long that would take me.”

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