A Texas mother whose 4-year-old son is battling leukemia shared an emotional account on Facebook of how childhood cancer can affect the whole family – and the post went viral.
Kaitlin Burge posted a photo on Sept. 3 of her daughter, 5-year-old Aubrey, at her brother Beckett’s side as he leaned over a toilet, ill from chemotherapy.
Beckett was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was two.
“One thing they don’t tell you about childhood cancer is that it affects the entire family,” Burge’s Facebook post reads. “You always hear about the financial and medical struggles, but how often do you hear about the struggles families with other children face?”
She goes on to say “My two kids, 15 months apart, went from playing in school and at home together to sitting in a cold hospital room together. My then 4 year-year-old [sic] watched her brother go from an ambulance to the ICU. She watched a dozen doctors throw a mask over his face, poke and prod him with needles, pump a dozen medications through his body, all while he laid there helplessly. She wasn’t sure what was happening. All she knew was that something was wrong with her brother, her best friend.”
Burge
The post had garnered more than 4,700 comments and 32,000 shares a week later. Many of the comments were from people who had gone through the same thing the Burge family is dealing with.