Brotherly Love: Breathing Room For Families With Cancer
By Ukee Washington
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- When a child is diagnosed with cancer, it's very hard for a family to concentrate on anything else.
A local foundation has spent two decades giving those families the help they need. Twenty-month-old Jacob Burstein doesn't stay still very long. He loves trucks and playing with his big brother, Sammy.
Jacob's mother Stephanie Burstein said, "He knows he's invincible. I think he knows he went through a big battle."
While still in the womb, Jacob was diagnosed with a treatable kidney problem. It seemed to clear up soon after birth, but his mother insisted on follow-up ultrasounds.
"On June 23, we were getting an ultrasound done, and she saw the tumor in his liver," Stephanie said.
It was a cancer called hepatoblastoma. Jacob was only nine months old.
Mark Burstein, Jacob's father, said, "When you get the diagnosis, the first thing that happens to you is, your world shrinks."
The Bursteins split their time between home and the hospital as Jacob went through chemo and surgery.
Mary Ellen Fitzgerald knows what that's like. Her late sister Diane Fitzgerald fought breast cancer for six years, and had the support of family and friends.
"They often had a lot of those small gestures of kindness, home-cooked meals, their kids taken to soccer practice," Mary Ellen said.
Diane and her family started The Breathing Room Foundation in 1997 to help families like the Bursteins. They were amazed when foundation volunteers sent a huge Thanksgiving meal, Christmas and Hanukkah presents.
"We'll do your grocery shopping. We'll do house cleaning. We'll do anything," said Stephanie.
"They come and raked our yard and cleaned our yard and mowed our lawn, just to make sure we wouldn't have to think about that while we were spending so many hours in the hospital," Mark said.
Jacob is back home. The treatments damaged his hearing, so he wears hearing aids. He will need follow-up scans for years. But Mark counts himself lucky.
"If it wasn't for all of those people and then some, I don't know where we would be," Mark said.
The Breathing Room Foundation helped more than 700 new families last year alone. They're always looking for volunteers and donations.