PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – A child’s cancer diagnosis affects the entire family and the consequences can be enormous and come in different forms. For the Taunk family, this means stress due to the cancer and subsequent side effects of treatment.
It means a show of life-saving brotherly love, and it means they fight the battle together until they win.
Kabir Taunk is a smart, happy, curious 11-year-old who loves food and video games.
He was just four when he was diagnosed with a high-risk form of leukemia known as Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
“The morning he was diagnosed, I was lying at his bedside around 4 a.m. crying because I felt really frustrated because we didn’t know what was wrong with him,” said Kabir’s mother, Bhavika Taunnk. “He didn’t get better, just worse and worse and worse.”
“I remember my legs hurt so much that I couldn’t fall asleep,” Kabir recalls. “I was very tired and I got very scared when we went to the hospital. There were no odds in my favor and there haven’t been many odds in my favor in my entire life.”
That’s not Kabir feeling sorry for himself, it’s the grim reality of the life he’s been living since being diagnosed with cancer in 2017. That reality initially consisted of a two-and-a-half-year course of treatment for Kabir.
“It takes more strength than you can imagine to put your child through chemotherapy, knowing that yes, it is a medicine, but it is also like poison running through the veins,” his mother said.
Kabir’s treatment ended and it was a success, until it wasn’t. Kabir relapsed in July 2019, again six months later and a third time in July 2020 during the pandemic.
Each case required more aggressive treatment and associated side effects that took their toll on Kabir’s young body. The pain and problems he has faced and endured are too long to mention. A sample includes problems with his bladder, kidneys, nerve damage, heart anxiety, weight gain, cognitive problems and much more.
Mom and Dad, tireless and selfless as they are, have been with him every step of the way. But so does his younger brother, Ayaan, who is nine. He volunteered to donate his bone marrow to Kabir.
“There were two options we could take, but we knew which was the better option,” Ayaan said. ‘It was either the bone marrow transplant or we just let Kabir die. I didn’t want to let him die alone.’
Talk about brotherly love. Their bond was fostered by their parents.
“One of the concepts we worked on with Ayaan is ‘fair is not equal,’” his father said.
His parents are staunch supporters of Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation and have raised more than $100,000 for the organization. They’ve even started a tea company and are donating a portion of the sales from a special blend in Alex’s honor back to the foundation.
“It’s really important that charities like Alex’s get more funding so that children who are receiving treatment get better treatment, treatment with less toxicity. So these are the kinds of things we’re really advocating for.”
“There’s a saying that Kabir loved… If you mess with one of us? You’re messing with all of us,” Ayaan said.
Siafa Lewis
