'Fight Song' Singer Has Message for Texas Mom Whose Cancer Video Went Viral
Holley Kitchen has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.
-- A Texas mother-of-two has attracted the attention of “Fight Song” singer Rachel Platton after documenting her fight against cancer to Platton’s song in a viral video.
The mother, Holley Kitchen, was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2012.
“I took that punch to the gut and picked myself up,” Kitchen, 42, told ABC News. “I did chemo. I did radiation. I had a double mastectomy.”
One year later, Kitchen, of Cedar Park, Texas, found out the cancer had returned, in the form of has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, an aggressive form of cancer that spreads outside the breast.
“I thought I had no breasts, I could not have breast cancer,” Kitchen, a mother of two sons ages 4 and 6, said. “My doctor said, ‘This isn’t bone cancer. It’s breast cancer on your bones.’”
Kitchen used her diagnosis to help educate others. She filmed a three-minute video in which she presents the facts of metastatic cancer on white note cards that she holds up silently while “Fight Song” plays in the background.
Kitchen’s video has picked up 46 million views in just one week.
“The Lord said it’s time to share this message,” Kitchen said of her inspiration behind the video. “I posted it [and] I woke up the next morning to half a million views.”
“It was mind blowing,” she said.
One of the people who saw the video is Platton, the voice behind “Fight Song.”
“Thank you for educating us on metastatic cancer,” Platton said in a special message to Kitchen. “You are incredible. Apparently the world agrees.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s awesome,” Kitchen said after seeing Platton’s message.
Kitchen is now focusing on her treatments and make life as normal as possible for her two young sons.
“I get up every morning and I decide it’s going to be a good day,” Kitchen said. “Everyday life is normal. It’s loud. It’s crazy. We try to make it fun.”
“I want to see them graduate high school,” she said of her sons. “Right now that is my goal. Don’t tell cancer."