Ella Norris There have been funds and fundraisers springing up in Thomasville to help a little girl. Her name is Ella Norris and she is now 17 months old.

She suffers from an inoperable brain tumor in her medulla that was discovered when she was 16 months old.

Tamara Norris called it "a parent's worst nightmare."

"At first, they told us that she was dying and there was nothing that could be done for her," Norris said.

"We started getting concerned about Ella a while back when she had not started walking yet." she said. "We talked to Ryan's (one of Ella Norris' brothers) doctor and he thought it was a good idea to have a CT scan done. Her CT was done on a Wednesday and they found her ventricles in her brain to be a little large, just like her brother. Ella got sick on Friday and Sunday and they wanted us to come to Birmingham. Her CT was not a concern anymore but they still wanted to do an MRI to see if she had Chiari like her brother." The MRI was done on the following Tuesday afternoon and an hour and a half later the Norrises were told the news.

This was not the first time the family has had to deal with bad news. Ella is the family's third child. She has two older brothers; Hunter who is 7 and Ryan who is 5. Ryan has had 4 brain surgeries in Birmingham and is doing fine today.

Ryan was diagnosed with Chiari at 18 months old in 2004. He also suffered from Hydro cephalous and has two Syrinxes in his spine. He still suffers from the Chiari slightly after the surgeries and has to live with a shunt in his head from the hydro.

"The reason we found out Ella was sick was because of Ryan. They normally would not have done anything to find out why they're not walking at such an early age, but because of what Ryan had, they wanted to make sure she didn't have same thing Ryan did."

"When they told us, we asked him flat out, is she dying, and the brain surgeon said yes. Later we were told we could do chemo, so to us the chemo is a tremendous gift we've been given."

So now the family has to go every Wed. to Birmingham for chemo and will go for the next 15 months and pray for progress. "We can't even biopsy her tumor," Norris said.

Where her tumor is located, it's extremely rare, it's slow growing but doctors don't expect it to spread.

The community response to her need has been "unreal," Norris said. People have brought food, held prayer vigils for her, held fundraisers "all of that is just unreal."

There will be another MRI at end of January to see if the chemo is working. After that she will do an MRI every three months.

If the chemo is not working, the family can try a different chemotherapy method. After she's three they can try radiation if they have to. "Our prayer is for this to go away. The biggest phrase that comes up is the search for a miracle. The chemo can't even make it go away. It can stop it, it can make shrink, but it can't make it go away."

Ella stays sick a couple of days after chemo, but after that, she bounces back, "she's happy and plays just like any other child. She does well with it."

But she's starting to show effects of all the medicines, like steroids to keep swelling down, and losing her hair to the chemotherapy.

"The main thing is we want people to know how grateful we are. It would have been impossible for us to do that without the town and everything people have done for us."

Norris reported good recent news on Hanna Grace Harrison, another little girl who also had a brain tumor, and with family in the area, that she's making progress in her fight.