Cystic Fibrosis: Facebook Trolls Attack Birmingham Mom For ‘Hitting’ Baby With Life-Threatening Disease [Video]

A mother’s visual attempt to help parents of children suffering with a life altering malady was gravely misinterpreted as an act of child abuse.

Little Daisy Evans, the 15-week old daughter of Birmingham, England, resident Samantha Carrier, was born with cystic fibrosis, a condition that affects a person’s breathing by allowing mucus to fill up in a person’s lungs, which ultimately stops the organ from functioning altogether.

https://www.facebook.com/fordaisyevans/photos/a.1615465962090776.1073741829.1614327888871250/1641353369502035/?type=3&theater

To both learn and teach others about the sometimes-fatal affliction, Carrier and her husband, Rob Evans, joined forces and created a Facebook group, Daisy Evans’ Journey, where they often, as The Mirror explains, share pictures and videos of their baby, while occasionally interacting with other parents who bore kids with cystic fibrosis, to share stories and experiences of varied techniques to help their children breathe as normally as possible.

One such display, as Ms. Carrier recently performed in a video she posted to the group, is to lightly and continuously pat a child’s chest as they sleep, which helps to break down the mucus that builds up during slumber. Whereas most people’s lungs perform the function on its own throughout the night, Daisy’s body must be physically assisted by another person to help perform the usually-natural feat.

https://www.facebook.com/fordaisyevans/posts/1646737412296964

However, despite the act not being foreign to those who are familiar with the illness, others who follow Ms. Carrier on the page for Daisy saw the moment and believed that she was actually physically assaulting her sick toddler.

“How can you do that to your baby,” a user named Sarah Louise questioned.

“You’ll break her ribs,” another exclaimed.

Others were rumored to have sent death threats to Rob and Samantha, so says BBC Midlands, with many believing that the helpful act was actually one of violence. In reality, the mode of physiotherapy that is mostly referred to as “chest clapping,” is anything but, as explained by the UK’s Cystic Fibrosis Trust website.

“There are many different techniques [to treat cystic fibrosis],” the site’s FAQ partly reads.

“No one technique has been shown to be better than another, and this may be because each person’s chest can behave very differently, and people may prefer different techniques at different times in their life.”

As such, those who were more familiar with chest clapping in Carrier and Evan’s Facebook group were quick to throw their support behind the innocent Samantha.

“Well done for raising awareness,” follower Cheryle Hill expressed.

“My husband passed away in July at 47 from this horrid condition, and it’s treatments that kept him going and living a life.”

Others directly took those who were attacking Samantha and Rob to task by expressing that their complaints solidified the need for the visual to be shared openly.

#news Facebook trolls target mum of baby with cystic fibrosis: A mother who posted a video… https://t.co/5FOEs8xwR6

— NationalJobSearch (@Nationjobsearch) January 24, 2017

“This is exactly why she has posted this video,” said user Ann-Marie Edgington, “to educate all the morons that are to quick to judge and be a keyboard warrior before reading and listening.”

On a crowdfunding page that was created shortly after Daisy’s birth, Samantha detailed the moment she learned that her daughter was not as healthy as most parents hope their newborns are.

“On the 26th [of] October, I had a knock on my door from a nurse from Birmingham Children’s Hospital,” she wrote.

“My heart sank when she said she was here about Daisy’s heel prick test. Daisy tested positive for two strands of cystic fibrosis. One common and one rare. My world fell apart. It was one of the worst days of my life.”

Since news broke of her misconstrued act to combat Daisy’s cystic fibrosis, supporters have helped surpass Samantha’s initial 1,000-pound (£1000) goal by nearly another thousand pounds. She has since thanked those who helped to clear up the matter via a response in her Facebook group.

“And to [all] the trolls,” Ms. Carrier adds, “hopefully [you] will do a bit of [cystic fibrosis] research before you [add] silly comments in the future!”

[Featured Image by designer491/iStock]