Sophomore Aliyah Lantau has been painting portraits to help friends and family deal with grief for several years now. What originally started as paintings of dying pets has recently turned into something more. Lantau has painted a portrait of Hadley Osborne, a nine-year-old with Alström syndrome, a rare disease that causes many health conditions, such as hearing and vision loss, and can cause childhood obesity and heart and organ failure.
“There isn’t a known cure for it. The most that you can do is be monitored and possibly get a heart transplant, which is also kind of a struggle for them because of how many complications there are,” said Lantau
Lantau has been very close with Osborne and her family for years, Osborne being the niece of Lantau’s brother. “I absolutely adore them. We’ve all gone on many trips together and just tried to make as many memories as we could for this little girl together.
The painting Lantau made of Osborne shows her in her mermaid dress with her arm around a flamingo, her favorite animal. The painting took Lantau around 2-3 weeks to finish because of its larger size. “At first, this painting was going to be potentially auctioned off and used to raise more money, but as we were going into it, we realized that maybe it would be best if it went to her mother, Jennifer, as something to keep forever.”
The painting was made as part of Osborne’s Flamingo Ball. A party, thrown because Osborne was sad she couldn’t go to prom with older kids and because she had a major operation coming up. Osborne was known as the High Empress at the ball. “Over a 1000 people showed up to make her dreams come true.”
The first time Osborne had this surgery, there were complications. Lantau said, “She went into what we believed was cardiac arrest while on the table”. The second time she had the surgery was initially more successful, but there were more complications later. While she was unresponsive for a time, Osborne has woken up and is doing much better. “She is doing incredibly well! She is an absolute miracle. She is now able to sit up all by herself.
