3-year-old cancer victim's anguish on display in heartbreaking photos
INSIDE EDITION - Heart-wrenching photos show the reality of childhood cancer as 3-year-old Colt Wilson suffers through the pain of chemotherapy treatments.
Colt, of Texas, was initially diagnosed with cancer just a month after his third birthday in August of last year.
“He couldn’t pee," Cortni Wilson, Colt’s mother, told InsideEdition.com. "He was admitted to the ER and they found a tumor in his bladder. They determined he had a soft tissue muscle cancer and he started chemo on September 1.”
Colt has undergone 43 weeks of five separate types of chemotherapy and 28 days of radiation, for which he had to be put to sleep.
“It has ripped our family apart," Wilson said. "You have to do it and you have to treat him. It has been very hard. It was really hard for me to watch Colt be as sick as he is."
In some of the photos, captured by Sherina Welch, Colt throws up blood after chemotherapy caused extreme sickness. In others he is seen screaming in pain.
“Colt gets really sick from one of the chemo’s he takes and he’ll throw up for about 24 hours. Sometimes he is throwing up blood,” Wilson said.
Welch has documented Colt’s journey as part of a photo project, “More than 4,” which seeks to spread awareness about childhood cancer research.
Despite the $4.9 billion in the National Cancer Institute's 2014 budget, only four percent went to research of childhood cancer, according to the Coalition Against Childhood Cancer (CAC2).