This Is Why We Watch a Reality-TV Star's Heartbreaking 10-Minute Video About His Daughter's Leukemia
Ashley Cain, star of MTV’s The Challenge, revealed in a heartbreaking Instagram video this that there are very few options remaining in the treatment of his baby daughter’s leukemia. After learning that the disease had spread to her brain and throughout her body, Cain and his partner, Safiyya Vorajee, made the difficult decision to let her live out her remaining days at home. Though many people try to hide such extreme grief for their child, feeling it’s taboo to share publicly, Cain talked for 10 minutes while walking through the streets surrounding the hospital. He took his fans through the steps that led them to their decision and publicly shared the sorrow that they’re living with on a daily basis since learning of the worsening of her condition.
Azaylia, who is 7 months old, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia — a rare and aggressive form of the disease — at 8 weeks old and has undergone chemotherapy, surgeries, and a bone marrow transplant in hopes of saving her life.
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Cain and his partner, Safiyya Vorajee, shared identical photos and captions revealing that Azaylia’s cancer had spread throughout her body. The couple chose to take their daughter home from the hospital to spend what time remains making her comfortable.
The decision to move to palliative care is a gut-wrenching one, but Cain’s honesty and openness about the process, sharing both frustration and dismay at their lack of options, are sure to be a comfort to parents or anyone else facing similar decisions about a loved one. Normalizing grief, especially that of a parent losing a child, is a help to anyone who finds themselves in such a devastating situation.
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“We’re going back home and we’re gonna try and make our baby as comfortable as possible,” Cain said in the emotional Instagram video. “We’re gonna be strong, and we’re gonna go out with honor.”
“She’s had a tough, tough life. From 8 weeks old she’d been in hospital having chemotherapy, operations, transplants,” he said. “And I feel like for the last part of her life, I just want to take her home, see her like a baby, and give her the best rest of her life that we can give her.”
Vorajee also shared an update on Azaylia’s condition on her “With a heavy painful heart I share the saddest news of my life,” she wrote before describing the events of the last few days and the diagnosis of new tumors throughout Azaylia’s body. “I am so proud of my baby girl. She has been fighting for so so long, and doesn’t deserve this to happen to her! There isn’t enough words out there to describe the heartache & pain I’m feeling but I’m incredibly honoured to have become a mummy to my precious girl.”
As we think about the end of a life, let’s also honor the beginning with these beautiful photos of childbirth.
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