‘She’s been patiently waiting for heaven’

A terminally ill six-year-old girl, who fulfilled her bucket list dream of playing in the snow earlier this year, has lost her battle with brain cancer.

Maddie Higgins from Arlington, Texas, passed away early Monday morning and her mother, Melanie, announced the news to her 8,000-plus supporters via Facebook.

‘Our precious baby, our angel bean, our little mandolin, my pumpskins . . . passed away. God better be ready to give her the biggest most beautiful wings ever because she has been patiently waiting.’

She added: ”My baby girl, I’ll be waiting until I get to see those beautiful eyes and that smile again. Mommy and Daddy love you so very much.’

Maddie was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2011.

Initially it was thought to be a benign mass, but the mass hemorrhaged, requiring instant surgery.

After further investigation, surgeons discovered it was a grade 4 malignant tumor, called glioblastoma multiforme or GBM, one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer, usually affecting adult males.

Maddie underwent 33 radiation treatments, where she was put under anesthesia every morning, and she started an oral chemotherapy routine.

Her parents were warned that there were no successful therapies or treatments in pediatrics for this type of cancer.

‘Cancer cannot dictate my daughters life anymore, it cannot haunt my every passing moment’

‘The one approved chemo that where were desperately counting on showed no effect in children, but it was all we had so we fed out daughter poison every day hoping praying that she would be the exception,’ Mrs Higgins explained.

However, in November 2012 another tumor appeared and the following July a third mass was detected.

After exhausting all forms of treatment it was decided that Maddie should live out her final days in peace.

This July she fulfilled her bucket list wish of playing in the snow, thanks to a Kinsley’s Kure, a non-profit focused on enhancing the lives of sick and terminally ill children.

Working with Emergency Ice, a Dallas manufacturer of man-made snow, and 20,000 pounds of ice, the group was able to transform the Higgins’ family lawn in the middle of the summer to a wintery wonderland.

‘It’s impossible, it’s summer!’ an awestruck Maddie told NBC 5 News as her blindfold was removed. ‘I can’t believe it.’

Her parents, Patrick and Melanie Higgins, were overjoyed to see her in such high spirits.

‘We wanted to give her every experience she can possibly have,’ Mrs Higgins told Star-Telegram, ‘We are just making her happy. I’m just overwhelmed with emotion.’

Following the news that Maddie passed away this Monday, hundreds of people offered their condolences to her family via Facebook.

Mrs Higgins wrote on Tuesday: ‘I feel a sense of relief that even though my heart yearns for her . . . she is not in pain.

‘We have lived the last 22 months of her life dreading yesterday, every waking moment preparing so that she would be ready, we would be ready for her to go home. We knew we would never be ok without her but knew that she would be ok once this was all over.

‘I’m relieved to know I have control back in my life. Cancer cannot dictate my daughters life anymore, it cannot haunt my every passing moment.

‘My beautiful baby is safe, and cancer-free and playing with all those children that have gone before and those that have gone today and will go tomorrow.

‘I know my angel meant something to so many, was LOVED by so many, thank you so very much from the bottom of our hearts.’

Written by Sadie Whitelocks for The Daily Mail, September 26, 2013.

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