Aria Hodgkiss was diagnosed with the tumor on her third birthday in May 2021 and her parents launched a fundraiser for her treatment.
A four-year-old with a terminal brain tumor whose family had received a $12,000 donation from Ryan Reynolds has died. Aria Hodgkiss was diagnosed with the tumor on her third birthday in May 2021 and her parents, from Wrexham, launched a fundraiser so that she can receive better treatment. Their campaign got attention from Hollywood when stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who had bought Wrexham FC in 2021 donated £20,000 to help the little girl.
Our brave warrior, our baby girl Aria passed away peacefully surrounded by her family at 12.30am. 💔💔
— Aria VS Dipg (@AriaVsDipg) December 1, 2022
We are absolutely devastated and we have no idea how we will carry on each day. But, we promise you that we will carry on for you.
We love you so so much Aria.❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/ttgt0cXkgs
The family of the child wrote on the GoFundMe page, "Our brave warrior, our baby girl Aria passed away peacefully surrounded by her family at 12.30 am. "We are absolutely devastated and we have no idea how we will carry on each day. But, we promise you that we will carry on for you. "Dipg didn't win, you won baby girl. You fought for so long. You now deserve to run free and be a little girl. We love you so so much Aria.❤️❤️ #ariavsdipg #dipgwarrior #dipgsucks #dipgangel."
The baby girl was diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG), which is a terminal, aggressive brain tumor affecting almost 40 children a year in the UK.
So sorry for your loss. No adequate words for when a child is taken from us. I’m sure you’ll see to it that her legacy will live on.
— mgwrexham 🔴⚪️🏴🇮🇪 (@mgwrexham) December 1, 2022
In their fundraising post, the family that is Aria's parents Melanie and Carl said 1% of Children made in five years with the condition from diagnosis, with an average time of just nine months. Melanie,40 explained how Aria had been born prematurely, but they never something was wrong until she suddenly stopped walking at the end of her 2nd year. Aria could no longer walk or stand on her own and after seeing doctors and undergoing tests, her parents received the news that would change their lives forever.
Aria went on to undergo several sittings of radiotherapy and her family was spending thousand and thousand of pounds on experimental treatment in order to give her the best chances. Earlier this year in an interview with ITV, Melanie said " She started walking at 23 months, so she was quite late and then in September of last year we noticed that she was getting quite clumsy. "Then around the end of December last year, the start of January she stopped walking completely, she couldn't walk on her own, she couldn't stand on her own, so she was crawling everywhere."
She was later seen by a physiotherapist, then booked in for an MRI scan."At that point, he believed it was cerebral palsy. But three weeks later she had the MRI and they discovered she had a mass in the pons area of the brain," Melanie continued. "She also had a large build-up of fluid on her brain."
The family then took her to Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool where Aria was reviewed by an oncologist who confirmed she needed to have surgery immediately to drain the fluid from her brain. The family revealed on Tuesday that the little girl's condition had been deteriorating and that they may only have a few days with her. Sadly their worst nightmare came true.
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Cover Image Source: GoFundMe
