But it’s a truly incredible scene. Rhett survived nearly four years of chemotherapy for leukemia and has been in remission for a year and a half.
Now he has another challenge — the children who are not immunized at his school in a state where the number of measles cases grows each week.
The boy’s father, Carl Krawitt, often wonders: “Is there a scenario if a parent doesn’t vaccinate and their child gets sick and get my kid sick and…he dies?”
Rhett’s cancer treatment wiped out antibodies the child developed after being vaccinated when he was a baby. His immune system is still too weak to get new shots, so he depends on “herd immunity” — being surrounded by others who are vaccinated — to stay healthy.
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The Krawitts stressed to CNN that they didn’t want to fight with the school over this issue, but they want to start a meaningful conversation with parents who’ve decided not to immunize their children.
Asked what he would tell a parent who chose not to vaccinate, Carl Krawitt said he would say: “We were in hospital for 156 nights. We … thought we were going to lose our child. It would sadden me greatly if one of these illnesses — (measles, mumps, whooping cough) affected your child …It would make me very sad to think that you would have to go through the same emotions, the same trauma that we went through because we love our children and we want them to be happy.”
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CNN’s Dan Simon and Rosalina Nieves contributed to this report.
