Woman Behind Viral Breast Cancer Video Dies

CEDAR PARK-LEANDER, TX -- A Cedar Park woman whose video documenting her battle with breast cancer became a viral hit has died three years after her diagnosis.

Holley Kitchen reached millions of people after posting a three-minute video of herself with note cards detailing her fight against Stage 4 breast cancer. While she doesn’t speak in the video, her desire to educate others about breast cancer is powerfully delivered in the 3 ½-minute video.

“I just wanted people to understand the metastatic diagnosis a little bit more than what’s out there,” she told KEYE-TV when the station first profiled her in October.

Hopeful to the end, she also expressed a desire to see her two sons grow into manhood.

“My goal in life is to see my children graduate high school,” she told the television station. “Any more than that are just bonus years but that is my goal, and my child just started pre-K so I got 13 years.”

But this month, her condition took a turn for the worse. In a Jan. 7 message to supporters via Facebook, she amended her wish: To see her son turn five years old next month.

Sadly, she wasn’t able to fulfill either of her fervent wishes.

A friend took to Facebook Tuesday morning to announce the sad news of her death. Kitchen died at a Central Texas hospital after succumbing to metastatic breast cancer, the most aggressive form of the incurable disease.

Kitchen was initially diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 2012, and underwent a double mastectomy before going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

You can see Holley’s video here.