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Family dynamics

11th Jan 2018

Mum shares photo showing devastating effect cancer has on families

'How could this happen to us?'

Jade Hayden

cancer

A mum has shared a photo detailing the devastating effects cancer has on families.

Ally Parker’s five-year-old daughter, Braylynn, has an aggressive form of brain cancer that means she may only have weeks to live.

The mum’s father, Sean, is also suffering from a neurological disease which has made him terminally-ill.

Ally has been documenting her daughter’s journey on Facebook to raise awareness of Braylynn’s condition, Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, and to raise money for the child’s medical fund.

While doing this, she has been including photos of Braylynn in hospital.

Although all of Ally’s photos are of an extremely sensitive nature, one of her more recent images went viral due to how devastating it was.

It depicted Braylynn in her hospital bed with her granddad, Sean, sitting beside her and crying.

In the post’s caption, Ally wrote:

“Princess Braylynn is still with us.

“Her pulse is barely there and we can not feel it, but we can hear it with a stethoscope. Nurses say she may not make it through the next hour, but miracles can still happen.

“Today has been extremely difficult and I have no idea how I’m going to handle the next couple of hours. No one is handling this well…”

Earlier this week, Ally shared another photo of her daughter and dad.

She wrote that they should have outlived all of them, and that she never thought she was going to lose both of them in the same year.

She said:

“In a few days I will have to bury this beautiful little girl. Months, maybe even weeks, later, I will have to bury my father. Both of my heroes, gone, within the same year…

“How could this happen to us?”

Braylynn’s family are trying to raise medical funds to cover the costs of her hospital admission.

So far, they have raised over $35,000.