The family of a nine-year-old Victoria-area girl has gone public with the heartbreaking end to her long battle with cancer.
Hannah Day died in hospital Saturday, surrounded by her parents and sisters.
“Today most will be celebrating Mother’s Day while I’m mourning the death of a child,” mother Brooke Ervin wrote Sunday in an emotional Facebook post.
“Having to tell Hailey her sister is going to heaven was the hardest thing a mother could do. Listening to poor Hailey say to her, ‘I don’t understand why you can’t wake up, I have to be the big sister now.'”
WATCH: Hannah’s Christmas Day
Hannah Day was just two years old when she was first diagnosed with Rabdomyocarcoma, an extremely rare form of cancer.
She battled back, and was declared cancer-free in 2014 after 15 months of chemotherapy. But a year later, she was diagnosed with leukemia, which her family believes was a side effect of her chemotherapy.
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A desperate drive for stem cells, which included a one-litre donation from her mother, proved fruitless.
WATCH: Family of 4-year-old Hannah desperate for a stem-cell donor
In March, doctors diagnosed Hannah with brain tumours. Following an invasive biopsy and chemotherapy, she developed a bacterial infection and went into septic shock. She was taken off life support, according to the family.
“Surrounded by family we told her how beautiful and loved she was. We do not know if she could hear us but we didn’t care. We kissed her over and over again. We told her everything we could to make life easier and have no regrets,” Ervin wrote.
“Life will never be the same. She deserved a beautiful life and it was cut short.”
Hannah is survived by her mother, father Robert, and sisters Hailey and Harper.
Throughout their ordeal, Hannah’s family has tried to raise awareness of the need to register at Canada’s stem cell and bone marrow network, Onematch.ca, so that other families don’t have go go through the same anguish.
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