Four-year-old Karlee was the happiest little Princess you would ever meet. Talkative, bright, caring, healthy, loving and overall, just an amazing little girl. Karlee started complaining about headaches about mid-March 2019. She was given medicine to help but it was not working. She continued to have headaches and stomach-aches with each headache getting more painful. These went on for about 7 months until when she was getting off the bus after preschool, and the driver said that she passed out in her seat. Earlier in the day her preschool teacher said to her mother that she noticed she was "Walking like she was drunk". She was taken to the Emergency Room where the doctor examining her felt it necessary to send her to St. Frances to get further testing. It was discovered that Karlee had DIPG. Karlee had been doing Chemotherapy and it was keeping the tumor stable but unfortunately her last MRI on October 1, 2020 showed that the tumor has grown. The doctors told her mother that all they could try now is experimental treatments to slow the growth.

Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Gliomas which is a brain tumor found in a part of the brain stem called the pons. The pons controls essential bodily functions such as heartbeat, breathing, swallowing, eye movement, eyesight, and balance. Unfortunately, the survival rate for DIPG remains exceptionally low. Currently there is no cure for this tumor. DIPG accounts for about 75-80% of all childhood brain tumors.  There is still no effective treatment and no chance of survival. Only 10% of children with DIPG survive for 2 years following their diagnosis, and less than 2% survive for 5 years. The median survival time is 8-11 months from diagnosis.