Carla recently joined KTG, after being contacted in June 2023 by one of KTG’s ambassadors after hearing her story at an international congress evidencing childhood cancer survivorship. Carla is an only child and lives with her parents in a town in Chile located between the hills bordering Argentina, called Cajón del Maipo. She was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma when she was four years old, thanks to her mother realizing one day playing with her that she had strabismus in her right eye and at the same time she noticed a glow at the bottom of Carla’s eye that did not disappear with the change of light in the environment. As a result of the loss of her eyeball and not having the possibility of using a prosthesis due to the physical damage caused to her socket, she grew up surrounded by social stigma due to its physical difference and causing emotional distress due to the impact of discrimination.
Despite this, thanks to the love and support of her parents, she has always been able to move directly forward and accomplish every goal she sets for herself. Among her childhood goals was Carla’s wish to be able to raise awareness in society about childhood cancer and mainly about her disease, retinoblastoma, so that children and their families would have the necessary tools to move forward after diagnosis. The road to achieving this goal has been quite difficult. There have been many ups and downs, but at the age of twenty-nine, her life changed again when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor as a consequence of the treatments she received as a child. After recovering from this experience, she decided that it was time to raise her voice and began to seek help from organizations of people who had childhood cancer outside her country to learn from others, acquire new strategies and then begin to create something in her country. This she has achieved very successfully, thanks to finding people living in Chile who also want the same thing.
Since April 2022, Carla has been one of the founders of the National Network of People Cured of Childhood Cancer in Chile, Luz de Esperanza. Carla is in charge of coordinating and directing awareness, education and support activities related to the issue. Thanks to her efforts, today she has the opportunity to be the voice of all children who are going through retinoblastoma treatment, and in turn to warn society about this and other eye diseases that they may acquire in childhood.
Carla is delighted to be joining the KTG list of Ambassadors and looks forward to working alongside the KTG team and building awareness in her country. KTG could not be more proud to have her working with us to build awareness, as well as to highlight and guide more doctors, families, and NGOs within Chile and in the surrounding region.
