“Chickaroos are brave. Chickaroos are strong. Chickaroos are tough. Chickaroos are winners.” That’s the motto of nine-year-old Caroline and her family. On April 26, 2007, they learned that Caroline, their little Chickaroo, had an inoperable, currently incurable, plum sized tumor in her brain. Caroline was just seven years old.

Brain tumors are the leading cause of cancer death in children and the second overall cause of childhood death. Caroline has a tumor called a Pediatric Low Grade Astrocytoma, or PLGA. PLGAs currently affect over 20,000 children and over 1000 children are diagnosed with some type of astrocytoma brain tumor each year.

I came across Caroline a few years ago when I started taking lessons with her violin teacher and playing in the teacher’s orchestra. Caroline struck me as a very bright, happy young girl whose smile could light up a room. It was later that I learned about her condition.

I found out that Caroline and her family had put together a website to raise awareness and share Caroline’s story with others. Her story was so amazing that I read the whole website in one hour. Caroline’s Make-A-Wish story even made me cry. It wasn’t because of the wish she made though, even though her wish was pretty amazing. She could wish for virtually anything she wanted. She wanted to meet Pope Benedict XVI. And Caroline got to. The Make-A-Wish Foundation sent Caroline and her family to Rome for four wonderful days. What made me cry was that there were people in this world who were willing to do almost anything to make a child who has it rough feel better.
Caroline once told an adult family friend with a serious illness, “God picks people like us to show other people how to be brave.” Caroline is an amazing young girl who has survived so much in her short life, and everyone whose life she has touched hopes she continues to live a long, wonderful life, not as a victim, but as a survivor.
Caroline’s website is www.teamchickaroo.com. If you would like to learn more about this little girl and her currently incurable disease that affects so many children around the world please visit her website. Caroline is a brilliant girl with an amazing family and, as her parents told her while driving past Harvard Medical School on the way to the hospital, “she is going to have a great topic for her college admission essay…a genuine survivor story.”