CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski and his wife, Rachel Louise Ensign, of the Wall Street Journal, expressed their gratitude for the messages and donations following the death of their 9-month-old daughter, Francesca, on Christmas Eve due to cancer.
“Thank you all, your messages touched our hearts,” Kaczynski said. tweeted on Saturday. “We are so grateful for the amount of money raised in honor of Francesca for Dana Farber to fight this terrible disease, and we are going to spend the rest of our lives finding a cure.”
Shortly after sharing his thank you note on Saturday, Kaczynski posted a short clip of Francesca on Twitter that was filmed in late July. In the video, she smiles and laughs with her bubbling personality.
“I know many of you did not know Beans before her cancer diagnosis in September,” he said. wrote. “She had such a pep in her step before she started treatment. And we are so happy that she got six normal months of life.”
Kaczynski announced on Twitter in September that Francesca was diagnosed with an ‘extremely rare and very aggressive rhabdoid brain tumor.’
He shared the following over the months about his daughter’s condition. The baby has undergone multiple brain surgeries in September. In mid-December, the reporter shared that his daughter contracted a fungal infection as a complication of her chemotherapy and spent two weeks a ventilator and life support.
Kaczynski shared the tragic news on Friday that Francesca had died the night before, writing, “There will always be a bean-hole in our hearts for her.”
Kaczynski and Ensign described Francesca as a ‘brave and curious baby’ in the obituary they wrote for their daughter to capture her short life.
“Her many smiles sent a thrill through the world. She was so generous with them, even when most smiles were covered back by masks and even when she faced challenges that would frighten an adult, like a cancer diagnosis or birth with hearing loss, “reads the obituary.” Francesca showed her parents a kind of love they had never known and they will never forget. “
Instead of flowers, the family requested that donations be made in honor of Francesca to Team Beans in the PMC Winter Cycle, which raises money for cancer care and research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. To date, Team Beans has raised more than $ 360,000 for research on pediatric oncology and atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor (ATRT) by Dana-Farber.