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View Winners → 7-Year-Old ‘Fights On’ his Battle with Rare Cancer
Arts Oct 05, 2015
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By Terry Miller
One young patient at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) is inspiring people all over the world with his emotional performance a song – featuring Rachel Platten on a You Tube video. That video has gone viral, as they say.
Seven-year-old Jeremiah Succar was diagnosed in May with stage-four atypical rhabdoid teratoid, “an aggressive, fast-growing tumor that occurs in the brain and spinal cord,” the CHLA doctors say. The aggressive tumor is in the brain and spinal cord.
Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” has become a special pump-up anthem for people facing hardship of all kinds, including stage four cancer battles.
Music of all kinds has played an important role in his cancer battle but according to his family “Jeremiah loves ‘Fight Song’ — he memorized the lyrics after three or four times of listening to it,” the boy’s father, Jerry Succar, told CHLA. “He used to sing it when he got a lot of headaches, but now he sings it in the morning, before bed and during shots he has to get.”
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Photos by Terry Miller
When the singer Platten found out what her song meant to Succar through his family’s#RachelMeetJeremiah social media campaign, she simply had to visit him. Sitting on his hospital bed, they sang “Fight Song” together. Platten and Sucar’s duet has well over 60,000 views.
Paltten is best known for her 2015 single “Fight Song” which received worldwide success, peaking in the Top 10 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Slovakia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, where it reached number one.
During a rare ‘day off’ from treatments at Children’s Hospital, Jeremiah and his family visited Paint N Play in Monrovia’s old town to meet Lisa Barrios who has a unique “ Holding Hands, Helpin’ Hearts Program’ in her art studio.
The service, which by the way is totally free of any cost to the patient, offers a special memory hand print in clay that is then fired in the kiln. The patient chooses a plate and design from the hundreds Lisa has on display and places his/her hands for an impression that will be an eternal keepsake for the family of a truly special life.
The keepsake hand-prints for families if terminally ill patients is one way Barrios helps out those in her immediate and no so immediate community. Perhaps shining a light on a family’s struggle helps us all understand the value of life and the tremendous battles some face on a daily basis.
See the video at:
