Cancer-stricken kids beg Bernie Sanders to pass life-saving bill — after the senator was branded ‘evil’ for blocking it
NY Post
Jacob Knudsen would give anything to be an ordinary college freshman.
He’s resuming classes following winter break at California State Long Beach next week — and he’s also in the fight of his life.
“There is something currently in my lung, and there’s a 50/50 chance that it’s cancer,” the “panicked” 18-year-old California native told The Post ahead of diagnostic scans. “I’m willing to bleed, I’m willing to lose limbs, I’m willing to lose organs, I’m willing to do anything just to survive.”
Over the past seven years, Knudsen, who was first diagnosed with osteosarcoma at age 12, has endured 21 surgeries and countless, gruelling rounds of chemotherapy and radiation after tumors were subsequently discovered in his lungs, kidney and a lymph node.
“I remember a lot of nights crying,” the teen recalled. “Because I’m thinking, ‘How precious is this life? How beautiful is this life? I never had a girlfriend. I never got to fall in love. I’m going to have to leave my brother behind.’ I don’t want other people to experience this.”
Amidst the anxiety over whether illness remains lurking in his body, Knudsen is pushing for the passage of the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act — a bipartisan bill named after his friend, a fellow osteosarcoma patient and advocate who died late last year at age 16.
