Taylor Swift creates enchanted evening for dying Edmonton girl
Ava Hadfield will soon be six years old.
She doesn't have much time left.
Those sentences don't belong together. Because little girls are supposed to have their whole lives stretched out ahead of them, with plenty of time to grow, to learn, to experience the world, and, perhaps along the way, if they're lucky, time to make their childhood dreams come true.
But Ava has brain cancer.
So her dreams will have to hurry.
One of them — a big one — will come true tonight, when Ava goes backstage at Rexall Place in Edmonton to meet her favourite singer, Taylor Swift.
It all happened kind of quickly.
"A friend of a friend" gave Ava free tickets to the concert. Local media picked up the story, the news spread on Twitter, and within 24 hours someone from Swift's record label called to say that a dying little girl would get to meet one of the biggest stars in the world.
"She's going through kind of a hard time right now," Mandy Hadfield said Tuesday morning from the doctor's office, where the family met to discuss Ava's latest MRI results. "We've realized that Ava's time here with us could be limited. And we just want to fulfil as many dreams for her as we're able to."
Today's dream couldn't have come at a better time.
Ava was diagnosed with a brain-stem tumour in December 2012. She has had three major brain surgeries, 46 rounds of chemotherapy, 31 rounds of radiation treatment. But nothing has stopped the killer inside her head.
Last week's MRI showed the tumour is still growing.
"Basically, Ava's prognosis is not good," her mother said. "It's … a terminal tumour."
That's what makes today so important.
Late this afternoon, Ava and her aunt, Tanya Norton, will be picked up in a limousine and driven to the arena, where they'll get backstage passes. Then they'll meet Taylor Swift.
Hadfield said her daughter has spent hours and hours in hospital rooms over the past two years, listening to Swift's songs and watching her videos on an iPad.
"Today is kind of a bittersweet day for us," she said. "I'm just so excited for Ava. Every time I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes."
