(Germantown) While other students are in class, 16-year-old Max Burdette’s classroom is his dining room.
He had to leave Germantown High School after starting treatment for Liver Cancer.
“I don’t have enough energy to keep going through the day. It was just hard,” says Max.
It started last year, when Max noticed pain in his side, “It just felt like a regular cramp you get from a run, on my side, back here.”
The teen who enjoys music and is in the International Baccalaureate Honors Program, has Fibrolamellar, a rare form of Liver Cancer.
“At first I thought it was something that happened in old people or people who drank a lot,” says Max.
It happened to him, turning his active life into one of chemo treatments.
“You never think anything this catastrophic will happen to you,” says Christina Burdette, Max`s mother.
She says doctors have backed off doing the high risk surgery to remove the tumors, “Not only does he now have tumors in his liver, it’s gone to his lungs and abdomen.”
The family hopes to find a doctor who will consider treatment like radiation.
They also hope their story raises awareness about the cancer that has few symptoms but hits people between the ages of 13 and 30.
“I think if this type of liver cancer is affecting our kids, we have a vested interest in trying to find a cure,” says Max’s mom.
“The more aware people are it will get caught earlier maybe,” says Max.
A clinic in New York is researching this type of liver cancer.
Because there are few symptoms, Fibrolamellar is often caught in the late stages.
For more information about the clinic and research donations go to www.fibrofoundation.org