Giovanni Lamanna is the very talented son of TMS member Michelle Lamana. At 16 years old, he composed, performed, and recorded an original song, We Look to You, as a tribute to those of us who have mast cell-related diseases.

"Systemic mastocytosis has become part of my daily life. Since I was very young, I have known that my mother is different than most in that she is affected by this disabling disease. Systemic mastocytosis is a neoplastic disease characterized by an excessive number of mast cells. For some patients, the infiltration is limited to the skin. In others, such as my mother, the disease is systemic and involves infiltration throughout her body including bone marrow, skin, and other organs…it can be severely disabling, limiting a person’s ability to work or even leave their home and may be life-threatening depending on the amount of infiltration and the response of the mast cells. For people with allergies without mastocytosis, mast cells are responsible for the symptoms that they feel from a trigger such as asthma, burning eyes, itching, stuffy nose, headaches, and sneezing. For a mastocytosis patient, their increased mast cell burden can cause many acute and potentially serious symptoms.

It is still unclear what causes all the different forms of mastocytosis. People with mastocytosis can be either very stable or extraordinarily ill on a day-to-day basis, and managing the unpredictability of the disease and its symptoms can be a challenge. Symptoms can relate to the response of the mast cells to a trigger or can be due to the excess of mast cell’s infiltration of specific organs. Some of the symptoms include difficulty breathing, abdominal pain, anaphylaxis, blood pressure changes and shock, bone pain, chest pain, cognitive difficulties, diarrhea, faintness, fatigue, hematological abnormalities, itching, headaches, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, osteoporosis/osteopenia, rapid heart rate, and organ involvement.

There is no known cure or fully-effective treatment for systemic mastocytosis. It is my hope that by educating others, more attention and money will be directed toward finding a cure in the very near future. “We Look to You” is my heartfelt attempt at helping my mother and others like her, young and old, that suffer everyday with mast cell disease.

With Our Hard Work... Dreams Can Come True! Thank you for your help!”

--Giovanni Lamanna

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