Father’s haunting image shows his little girl beaming with joy moments before a freak tragedy struck
A haunting photo shows a little girl smiling for the camera just minutes before she suddenly collapsed with an unexpected brain aneurysm.
Rodney Medway took a picture of his ‘happy, healthy’ five-year-old-daughter Saylor taking her beloved new puppy Major on his first ever walk en route to the park near their home in Busselton in south-west Western Australia on January 17.
He had noticed his daughter had begun twisting and slurring her words a bit but didn’t think too much of it.
Five minutes later, Saylor collapsed and began vomiting.
She was rushed to the local hospital, where Saylor’s right eye started to swell and the right side of her face turned red.
‘And then she woke up and she was banging on her head saying ‘My head feels funny, my head feels funny’,’ her mum Taylor told Yahoo News.
A CT scan revealed Saylor had a major bleed on her brain.
She was airlifted to underwent emergency surgery and spent the next 12 days in an induced coma as doctors desperately tried to stop the bleeding.
This photo of five-year-old Saylor was taken five minutes before she suddenly collapsed while taking her new puppy major for its first walk on January 17
Her father Robert Medway (right) helplessly watched on as his daughter collapsed and began vomiting near their home in Busselton
Doctors discovered the bleed had been caused by a blood vessel that never properly formed which triggered a brain aneurysm and a stroke.
Saylor has since undergone three more surgeries in two weeks where doctors coiled the aneurysm to stop it from bleeding and removed a blood clot.
Saylor finally woke up from an induced coma on Wednesday.
Doctors are now running tests to figure out if the aneurysm was a freak accident or if there may be some unknown genetic condition.
Friends and family have launched a GoFundMe to help ease the financial burden on Saylor’s parents.
When Saylor got to hospital doctors discovered a massive brain bleed inside her head
Saylor (pictured right with her family) has undergone four surgeries in less than a fortnight
The Medways are currently living at the hospital more than 200km away from home separated from Saulor’s younger sister, who’s being cared for by relatives.
Ms Medway is remaining hopeful that things will get better soon for her family and that Saylor’s aneurysm was just ‘bad luck’.
‘It hopefully was just a bad luck vessel that didn’t form properly from birth,’ she told the publication.
‘So now it all depends on her response when she’s awake, as to her functions — the aneurysm was in the right frontal lobe which can affect behaviour and inhibition.’
Saylor will soon begin the process of rehabilitation which will help her to re-learn how to walk, talk and eat again.
‘Hopefully we get our Saylor back,’ her mother said.
