Carrie Bickmore brought to tears live on air after emotional interview
The Project host Carrie Bickmore fought back tears during an emotional interview with a mother whose four-year-old son is battling brain cancer.
Carrie lost her first husband to the disease and choked up as mother-of-two Sarah McNees opened up about the pain of watching a loved one fight the incurable illness.
Sarah is running Tasmania’s Point to Pinnacle, which is known as the “world’s toughest half marathon” and is doing so for Carrie’s charity Beanies 4 Brain Cancer.
Sarah teared up as she explained her son George has not known “a life any different” from having cancer.
George has been living with the cancer since he was 11 months old.
“It’s something that you have no idea what it’s going to be like until you’re in the world of treatment,” Sarah said during the interview.
We’ve had to relocate (for his treatment) on more than one occasion, we’ve had to leave our family and our friends and our support network, our jobs. It’s definitely been the biggest challenge of my life and my husband’s,” she explained.
Carrie asked what it was like seeing as a mother to see her young son endure such intense treatment.
“It really knocks him around when he’s on active treatment … It’s definitely very challenging as a parent to see your child’s personality completely change, which I find happens when he’s on treatment,” Sarah said, adding that George is soon to undergo a trial therapy in Melbourne.
“We don’t really know what’s ahead of us … we’re ultimately hoping this gives our son more time with us.”
Carrie’s voice wavered as she explained that what Sarah and her son George are going through was one of the main purposes of her foundation.
“One of the main purposes of my foundation, Sarah, is to help develop treatments like this because as you said there is no cure currently, but new, effective treatments are coming on board all the time, and then that then allows more time with our loved ones and hopefully in that time we can find a cure for our loved ones,” she said.
After Carrie lost her late husband Greg Lange to brain cancer after a 10-year battle with the disease, she said that she doesn’t want that pain to be experienced by anyone else and used her heartache to form the charity which aims to raise funds for research.
“Let’s beat brain cancer together and try and save so many families from extraordinary pain,” she wrote on her website.