“You want to die”: Kate Langbroek shares intimate details about son’s cancer battle
Radio host Kate Langbroek has candidly revealed details about her son’s battle with leukaemia.
During the second series premiere of PodcastOne’s A Life Of Greatness, Langbroek talked in depth about being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and what caused her to leave.
In 2009, her son Lewis was diagnosed with leukaemia, and for the mother-of-four, it was getting increasingly difficult for her to find the strength to push her family through it.
“He nearly died and you want to die too,” she said in the episode. “You want to die rather than have to look at it or think about it or go into hospital and you just would rather – there were times when we were driving to the hospital when I’d think to myself, ‘God, I hope a car hits us because I cannot endure this.’ But you have to endure it because if you can’t endure it how can you possibly expect him to endure it? If his mother cannot make him feel like it’s going to be alright, who can?”
Another aspect of her life that took a hit during her son’s health battle was her faith in religion.
“I thought I could no longer believe in a religion because I didn’t want to be a Jehovah’s Witness,” she said. “But when Lewis was sick like that, I had to find a faith beyond. From where, I don’t know because I didn’t have one to draw on except that it was inside me because I’m alive and I’m a person and I think that’s an innate part of all of us that we sometimes try and shut out ‘cause it’s not cool or you think it has to come with a religion or a label. I had to go find that in me to continue.”
It didn’t take long for people from all different faiths and backgrounds to come together and support Langbroek and her family.
“Everyone came – from all their faiths,” she said. “Friends of Mum and Dad from this church they go to now – which is like a Dutch church – brought back a bottle of myrrh that they’d bought in Jerusalem and Catholic friends of ours, like everyone was saying prayers for us. Jewish friends of ours. Our Muslim babysitter. Everyone was saying prayers for Lewis.
“And there was something about the comfort of that and the humanness of that that I think gave us the strength to keep going. Winston Churchill said … ‘if you ever find yourself going through hell, keep going’. And I would say to my mother-in-law Marie, ‘Well we can’t stay here because here is terrible. We just have to keep going. We just have to keep going.’ And we had a miracle.”
In March 2013, Lewis was given the all-clear after fighting with the disease for three and a half years.