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Baby Anastasia is fighting an aggressive brain tumor and she needs our love and prayers

Baby Anastasia Rafter of Niagara Falls was born April 8, 2016 a healthy baby girl, but at only 8 months old, something terrible happened.

Baby Anastasia Rafter of Niagara Falls was born April 8, 2016 a healthy baby girl, but at only 8 months old, something terrible happened.

After being extremely sick and vomiting for several days right before Christmas and having vision loss, Anastasia’s parents took her to the emergency room where a CT scan found a large inoperable tumor and cyst on Anastastia’s brain.

Her family was heartbroken to say the least. Doctors say they’ve never seen such an aggressive tumor. Anastasia lost her vision and her ability to sit and walk. She also stopped talking. She’s been through countless treatments and surgeries and her mom, Lene’e Gray, is praying for a miracle.

“Being hurt this badly, you’ve become numb to your feelings. When your told bad news after bad news, having your heart ripped out time after time, you end up leaving your heart behind just so you can continue on. So you can pretend to be strong, so your child can be strong. So that when your child suffers, you don’t cry, because crying won’t help them. You leave your heart behind so you can survive because cancer not only tries to destroy the person that has cancer, but it tries to kill the ones who love them, too. And as long as she’s fighting, I’ll will be strong so she never gets as scared as I am. Some days, as I watch her suffer, I feel selfish making her fight this battle because I don’t want to go through the heartache of losing her. Because I can’t bare to watch her dad cry and because I can’t tell my son his best friend won’t be coming home. And other days , she gives me the biggest smiles and I’m reassured that she still finds happiness being here with us. When I get down, I remember that happy, outgoing, full of sass little girl we had walking around the house destroying everything, and just think, one day we will get that back and she will be happy that we never gave up on her.”

Ana is now 22 months old. She has spent months in the hospital, missing Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. She hasn’t experienced waking up in her home on Christmas yet. Her most recent scan as of January 2018, for the first time, showed slight growth, but it is the most stable it has ever been since diagnosis.

“Before coming to New York University, Ana didn’t have any options. We still don’t know what the outcome will be, but she now has a options, giving her a chance to beat this,” said Gray.

A GoFundMe page has been created to help Anastasia and her family through this difficult time:

www.gofundme.com/ap-anastasias-medical-fund.

But most of all, keep this angel in your thoughts and prayers.

Here is a Sweet Buffalo video we created for Baby Anastasia:

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