Michael Bublé‘s wife is speaking out about their son Noah’s cancer battle.
In a sit-down interview with Argentinian TV host Susana Giménez, Luisana Lopilato — who shares 3½-year-old Noah and Elias, 17 months, with Bublé — opened up about finding out their older son had been diagnosed with cancer last fall — and how the family stuck together to overcome the challenge.
Lopilato was in her native Buenos Aires, Argentina, filming Those Who Love, Hate when she first took Noah to the doctor, thinking he’d caught the flu. Doctors initially told her Noah had mumps and wouldn’t require treatment.
When Noah’s pediatrician returned to Buenos Aires two days later, he told her it didn’t appear to be mumps, but rather an infection. Noah was prescribed antibiotics, but the pediatrician then suggested they run a full series of medical tests, just to be safe.
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“After they did the ultrasound, they told me they found something in his belly,” recalls Lopilato, 30. “They didn’t know what it was yet, or if it was a tumor, but that day I decided to take a flight .”
She couldn’t get ahold of Bublé, 41, who was in the middle of an interview in England to promote his new album. But according to Lopilato, the couple had always agreed that in the case of an emergency, they’d seek medical help in Los Angeles as a midway point between her family in Argentina and his in Canada. So Lopilato left with Noah that evening, without even being able to communicate the news to her husband.
“It was all from God — I don’t know how to explain it,” says Lopilato. “If we hadn’t done that ultrasound to find out if he had mononucleosis … it would have been so much worse.”
Bublé and Lopilato immediately pulled out of a string of work commitments to deal with Noah’s illness in L.A. for the next seven months. Their families also flew to Los Angeles to be by their side.
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“We did all the tests, and finally, we found out that it was what it was,” she says. “These things, when they happen to you in life, they make you realize that the most important thing isn’t what you thought it was — it’s to have faith, to be strong.”
“There were nights I couldn’t sleep, that I prayed to God,” Lopilato shares. “Because it is a long process — but thank God the worst is over.”
“For any parent, it’s devastating to receive news like this. It was very heavy. We received all the prayers, all the calls. The only thing that got me through it was faith, from the very beginning.”
Adds Lopilato, “We had to stay positive and leave it in God’s hands. There wasn’t a single week where I didn’t go to church. Every night I prayed for strength to go on.”
The mom of two shares that every day, superheroes dressed as Batman and Spider-Man would visit Noah and his family in the hospital. “Love, being together, family — that was indispensable,” she says. “It made us stronger.”