Cinderella and a court of other princesses turned up Saturday for a 5-year-old Spartanburg County girl's birthday party, granted by a nonprofit after her family shared that doctors had diagnosed her with an aggressive, inoperable brain tumor. A local car dealership also stepped in, agreeing to donate a car to the girl's family.
The girl, Ada, was diagnosed in August 2026 with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a cancer that forms on the brainstem, according to FOX Carolina News. Bailey Dickert said doctors gave Ada less than six months to live. Ada's family reached out to the Fairy Godmother Foundation and asked for Cinderella and other princesses to attend her party, and the nonprofit obliged.
A GoFundMe has been set up to support Ada and her family, and the report notes a local car dealership agreed to donate a car to them as well. The Fairy Godmother Foundation said that every child deserves to feel wrapped in magic, and that giving that to Ada and her family, alongside a community that showed up in the most beautiful way, is the whole reason the organization exists.
Why DIPG Leaves Families With So Little Time
DIPG is diagnosed in roughly 300 children in the United States each year, striking mostly kids between ages 5 and 10, according to the National Cancer Institute. It is the leading cause of pediatric brain tumor deaths in the country. Median overall survival is just 8 to 11 months from diagnosis, and fewer than 10 percent of children survive two years, per St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Standard chemotherapy has shown little effect, and focal radiation remains the primary way to temporarily slow the tumor's progression.
Surgery is generally not an option because the cancer cells diffusely infiltrate the pons, the brainstem structure that controls breathing, heart rate, and facial movement, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders. That deep anatomical location is why aggressive surgical removal would itself be life-threatening. In its 2021 classification update, the World Health Organization reclassified DIPG under the broader molecular category diffuse midline glioma, H3K27M mutant, reflecting genetic mutations rather than just tumor location, per StatPearls, a clinical reference published through the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Molecular testing of those mutations now helps determine which children qualify for clinical trials.
How The Fairy Godmother Foundation Answered The Call
How The Fairy Godmother Foundation Answered The Call The Fairy Godmother Foundation answered the call by arranging for Cinderella and other princesses to attend Ada's party.
Families searching for help sometimes encounter another group with a similar name, The Black Fairy Godmother Foundation, founded by Simone Gordon in 2017. That national nonprofit has mobilized online donor networks to deliver more than $2 million in direct aid to over 225,000 marginalized families, according to SignalNews Milwaukee. Its focus is largely on housing, domestic violence, and financial emergency aid rather than character visits or hospital wishes, distinguishing it from the group that brought Cinderella to Ada's party.
A Wider Push To Find A Cure
Ada's diagnosis lands amid renewed investment in DIPG research. Seattle biotech company BrainChild Bio secured $116 million in Series A funding this month to advance Phase 2 clinical trials for BCB-276, a CAR-T cell therapy delivered directly into cerebrospinal fluid, as Hoodline previously reported. The approach is designed to bypass the blood-brain barrier that has historically blocked systemic CAR-T treatments from reaching the brainstem. For now, the disease's prognosis remains dismal, which is part of why families like Ada's and communities like Spartanburg County continue to focus on creating moments of joy alongside the search for treatment.
