Hadley Boucher, a seven-year-old girl from Lunenburg, Massachusetts, known affectionately as “Haddie B,” has passed away after a thirteen-month battle with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, one of the most aggressive and devastating childhood brain cancers. She was the youngest of three sisters and had just turned seven years old.
Hadley was only six years old when she was diagnosed with DIPG last April, a diagnosis that shook her family and eventually moved an entire community to action. DIPG is an inoperable brain tumor that forms in the brainstem, and it primarily affects children.
There is no known cure, and the prognosis is almost always terminal. For families who receive this diagnosis, the words represent the beginning of a heartbreak that few can fully understand…