Haley, 15, had a few innocent bruises and felt tired… days later she was dead. Now in a heartbreaking double tragedy, her cancer doctor mom is gone too

It is a story almost too poignant for words. 

A cancer doctor who spent her life dedicated to helping patients – only to find the same disease striking down her beloved teenage daughter, and then snatching her away in a matter of days.

Little wonder that when single mother Dr Shridevi ‘Shri’ Singh saw her 15-year-old girl pass away just a week after being diagnosed, she felt she could not go on with life.

Just weeks later, the grieving mother also passed away, following a gut-wrenching social media post in which she wrote: ‘There isn’t a world where we exist without each other. Our bond [was] incredibly strong and unbreakable. Everyone knew about Haley being my center and how I cherished her so much.’

Dr Singh, 41 when she died, had moved to New York with her parents from Suriname in South America as a child. Later, she settled in Long Island.

Determined to pursue her dream of becoming a cancer doctor, she worked tirelessly and instilled the same discipline and work ethic in her daughter Haley – who she often described as her ‘center’.

Now both Haley and Shri have left behind a community in shock, while family members told the Daily Mail they were too grief-stricken to comment.

It was in early October that Haley was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a rare and fast-growing blood cancer that mainly affects young children. In older children, however, it is often easy to miss because its early symptoms — fatigue, pale skin, easy bruising, or bone and joint pain — can be mistaken for ordinary tiredness or growing pains.

By the time Haley was diagnosed, it was too late.

The bleak irony that her mother, a breast cancer surgeon, had committed her career to helping those with cancer now seems impossibly sad.

After Haley was rushed into hospital for surgery, her mother was by her side speaking about her to everyone.

‘The OR [operating room] staff would hear about my little Haley baby all the time,’ Dr Singh later said on social media. ‘Even though she was 15, I talked about my baby like a proud momma of a toddler making its first steps!’

Tiffany Troso-Sandoval, a New York oncologist, said ALL grows very rapidly and a patient can go from being completely fine to gravely ill as cancer cells ‘completely take over,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘It can manifest within hours or days.’

Haley’s family and friends remember the young girl for her ‘strength, kindness, and bright spirit.’

One tribute on the GoFundMe page said simply: ‘She faced every challenge with grace beyond her years and inspired an entire community with her bravery.’

Singh’s friend, Francesca Prudente, who met her at Nassau University Hospital, where they both studied, said she couldn’t imagine a world where the mother and daughter weren’t together.

‘When I found out about her daughter’s sudden passing, who she lived for and breathed for, I could not imagine a world where Shri was Shri without Haley.

‘We checked in on each other’s careers and children, and wished each other Happy Mother’s Day because we both knew that was the most important thing to each other, being a mom.

‘That was the driving force behind both of our accomplishments.’

Singh detailed her own grief in a heart-wrenching post the day after the high school sophomore’s death, writing on Instagram: ‘Mom and daughter, always. ‘My baby girl was an incredible soul, and I always knew that, and I am so glad that all of you did too. She was a sweet-spirited, joyful, kind, loving, thoughtful, affectionate, intelligent human who always made sure to compliment others [because] she loved bringing light into people’s lives. That’s her.

‘The strength I need after losing her suddenly and the ordeal I have been through this short time will be of the greatest one a human could need, a mom would need. I’m not sure, but I will try.’

Little did she know she would be with her daughter beyond the grave such a short period of time later.

Her family remember her for being a brilliant breast cancer surgeon, a profession she only began two years ago.

Shridevi had gone back to school to obtain her medical degree to pursue her dream of being a doctor, all while studying as a single mother. 

She received a biology and biochemistry degree from Queen’s College in 2011 before attending the American University of the Caribbean (AUC) for her medical degree, her LinkedIn said. 

Shridevi did her residency at Nassau University Hospital in New York, where she was chief resident, before doing her breast surgical oncology fellowship at Rutgers University in New Jersey. After that, she joined The Cancer Center at Good Samaritan University Hospital on Long Island.

The Singhs are one of a growing number of families affected by the rise in childhood leukemias.

Cases of ALL have been gradually rising worldwide in recent decades, particularly among older children and adolescents.

While better testing is partly to blame, it doesn’t tell the entire story. Environmental exposures – such as pesticides, industrial chemicals, or radiation – may play a role in triggering mutations in blood-forming cells.

Genetic factors can make some children more susceptible, with inherited or spontaneous mutations increasing their risk.

Lifestyle changes over recent decades, including shifts in diet, reduced physical activity, and delayed or altered early-life infections, may also influence immune system development in ways that affect leukemia risk.

With ALL, a patient might only notice minor symptoms, like feeling a little more tired, before suddenly getting diagnosed because the cancer cells’ geometric growth is ‘not linear’, and any acute disease is much more aggressive, according to Tiffany Troso-Sandoval.

It was exactly such a thunderbolt that struck Haley Singh – whose loss, it seems, was simply too much for her bereft mother to bear.