A heartwarming photo of two young cancer patients embracing as they look out the window of a hospital in Pittsburgh has gone viral after being posted to Facebook.
Five-year-old Maliyah Jones and two-year-old Madelina DeLuca hadn’t known each other for very long, but their chemistry was clear.
“We’d just met and Maliyah ran up to her and they were hugging and looking out the window,” Maliyah’s mom Tazz Jones told NBC-affiliate WPXI.
That’s when Tazz snapped a photo that has been seen around the world.
Maliyah and Madelina are both cancer patients at Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital. Maliyah is battling neuroblastoma and Madelina acute myeloid leukemia.
“Children helping other children is the best support,” said Tazz. She captioned the photo: “This is the perfect example of love.”
The snapshot evokes a sense of hope and friendship as the girls look out onto the Pittsburgh skyline.
And both girls have good reason to keep their hopes up.
With specialized care from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Tazz says Maliyah has been responding well to treatment.
“This morning Maliyah had scans done and a bone marrow biopsy to determine what’s going on inside her body after the chemo and radiation. The preliminary results showed that things look great. And they don’t see any present from that particular test,” she wrote on Maliyah’s donation page.
And according to her GoFundMe page, Madelina’s latest tests also show no signs of cancer in her body.
“I want people to feel hope,” Tazz told Today.com. “I want people to know that there’s always someone out there for you, always a friend. It doesn’t matter if you’ve known them for 50 days, for your whole lifetime, or for just a few hours; there’s always someone there for you.”
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