Premature twins who are BOTH fighting heartbreaking battle with cancer
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A heartbroken mum has told of her anguish as her premature twins were diagnosed with potentially deadly eye tumours - at the same time.
Cayden and Carter, who are nine-months-old, were born prematurely at 34 weeks in Norwich, Connecticut, America.
Mum Tayla Barker noticed a lack of light in in one of the twins eyes and alerted medics.
They were referred to a children's hospital in Boston where the devastated family were told that both babies had cancerous eye tumors.
“He's got retinal blastoma, which is a cancer in the eye, and I was like, 'excuse me, what’,” Tayla told wfsb.com .
And Cayden's tumor was particularly alarming, being the largest on the scale for that type of tumour.
(Image: WFSB.com)
(Image: gofundme)
(Image: WFSB.com)
The family, who also have two other children, aged five and nine, suddenly had to decide whether to operate to remove little Cayden's eye.
Tayla said: “We had to sit down and really think about what was going to save his life because if that tumor didn't get killed by the chemo, it was sitting on top of his optic nerve which was connected to the brain so if it started to travel through that nerve and get to his brain, brain cancer you don't come back from.
Cayden's left eye was removed this week.
(Image: gofundme)
(Image: WFSB.com)
(Image: gofundme)
And medics found three tumors in Carter's right eye and one in his left and the baby begins chemotherapy next week in the hope that it will save his sight.
Tayla is a paraeducator at Norwich schools and dad Angel works at a restaurant but they have had to devote all their time and resources to saving their sons.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family cover the mounting medical and travel bills which has raised $10,031 of it's $20,000 goal so far.