Teen is coughing and asks dad to take her to hospital – within hours the truth becomes apparent

Over the next few years, Tom spent hundreds of nights with his daughter while they battled the terrible disease together.

Shayla endured hundreds of tests, blood transfusions, radiation therapy, chemotherapy and a cardiac arrest … but she never stopped fighting.

For Tom, it was agony. He held his daughter’s hair while she vomited, cried with her, laughed with her, and was brave with her.

Then, the day came when doctors accepted they could do nothing more for Shayla. Her body wasn’t responding to treatment and a bone marrow transplant had failed.

“How in the world was I supposed to have this conversation with my darling daughter?” he wrote. “How in the world was I going to be brave enough to tell my daughter she was going to die? I once heard a quote that sort of sums things up for me. “Can a man still be brave if he is afraid? … That is the only time he CAN be brave.”

“I knew I had to be brave for HER! I did of course have that conversation with her, and as unbelievable as this may sound it turned out to be the most amazing, beautiful, magical, wonderful conversation I’ve ever had in my entire life, and one that I hope you NEVER EVER have to have…”

For when Tom had finished talking, his daughter whispered back: “Am I still brave Dad?”

It was then that Tom looked back into his little girl’s eyes and saw how much pain she was in. She’d been fighting for so long, and he realized it wasn’t for her, but for him.

A few days later, Shayla passed away. Tom was devastated, but he knew one thing for sure: Shayla had fought hard and long – she had fulfilled her promise and was brave until the end.

"I love this crazy, tragic,Sometimes almost magic,Awful, beautiful life"-D. Worley

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