At eight years old, Gracelyn Springer was living the carefree life of a small-town Iowa girl—painting, singing, and dancing her way through childhood. But early one autumn, quiet symptoms began whispering that something inside her was terribly wrong.

It started with occasional headaches. A little nausea. Nothing alarming at first. But the episodes grew more frequent, more severe.
“It got to the point where it was almost every day,” her mother, Kelsey, remembers. “She wasn’t just nauseous—she was vomiting.”

Then came the troubling detail that made Kelsey’s heart catch: her left eye began drifting toward the center. At school, Gracelyn grew sensitive to sound. Something was happening to her little girl, and no one yet knew what it was.

For six to eight long weeks, her parents searched for answers. Blood work looked normal. Exams appeared fine. But Kelsey’s intuition told her otherwise.

That instinct may have been the thing that saved Gracelyn’s life.

“This wasn’t normal.”

On the morning of November 14, 2020, Gracelyn woke again with a headache—then began vomiting uncontrollably. This time, nothing stopped it.

“I had had enough,” Kelsey says. “There was something seriously wrong with our daughter. This wasn’t normal.”

She rushed her straight to the emergency room.

Doctors sent her for an urgent CT scan, and within minutes, a staff member returned—face pale, expression tense.
“I could tell immediately by looking at them that it was serious,” Kelsey says.
The doctor spoke five words that would shatter everything:
“We found a mass in her brain.”
Kelsey collapsed.

Within hours, Gracelyn was in an ambulance, racing toward University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital—the place that would become her lifeline for the next nine months.

A Surgery No Parent Is Ready For

At Iowa City, an MRI confirmed the mass. Specialists filled the room with urgent purpose. They scheduled acraniotomy, a delicate surgery requiring removal of part of the skull.

COVID-19 visitor restrictions were still in effect, but Gracelyn’s father, Marty, was granted special permission to be by her side “just in case surgery didn’t go well.”

“That compassion meant everything to us,” Kelsey says. “She needed her daddy, and her daddy needed her.”

Before surgery, the care team explained they would need to shave half of Gracelyn’s hair. It was a small detail medically—but emotionally, it felt enormous.

“Her hair was her favorite part of herself,” Kelsey says softly. “It was long and beautiful.”
They chose to shave it all. “It was excruciating,” she adds. “But she didn’t want it half gone.”

Doctors discovered the tumor had grown from her mastoid bone, behind the ear, pushing inward toward her brain. The surgery lasted eight to ten hours.

They warned her parents of possible devastating side effects: loss of speech, loss of vision, neurological damage.

But when Gracelyn woke, something remarkable happened.

“She had none of that,” Kelsey says. “They removed the entire tumor. She came away with no deficits. It was a blessing we never expected.”

A Diagnosis Rarer Than Rare

The biopsy confirmed the unthinkable: Ewing sarcoma.

Most Ewing tumors form in long bones or soft tissue. Only 1% occur in children. And of all Ewing cases, only1% appear in the skull.

“Gracelyn is 1% of the 1%,” Kelsey says. “It made the fear so real. So much more plausible.”

She would need the most aggressive treatment available.

Nine Months of Hospital Life

Every other week for 14 rounds, Gracelyn was admitted for intense chemotherapy.
On her off-weeks, she was often just as sick.

“The hospital became our home away from home,” Kelsey says. “We were there every week.”

She underwent 30 rounds of radiation at another hospital specializing in her rare case. The treatments saved her life—but they left deep marks, too.

Radiation damaged her pituitary gland, causing permanent growth hormone deficiency. She now takes adaily injection and will continue until she’s finished growing.

Radiation also caused permanent hair loss on the left side of her head—something she still struggles with.
She also faces hearing loss and cardiomyopathy, a serious condition affecting heart function.

But through every battle, Gracelyn fought back.

A Team That Refused to Give Up

Today, Gracelyn still sees multiple specialists and undergoes regular scans. But her family’s faith in her medical team has never wavered.

“Her doctors have never treated someone like her,” Kelsey says. “That might shake another parent’s confidence. But not ours.”

She pauses, choosing words carefully.
“They listen. They respect us. They fight for her. They research. They try to improve. We worry about so much as parents of a child with cancer—but her medical team is not one of them.”

A Life Moving Forward

Now 10 years old, Gracelyn is in fifth grade. She loves painting, crafts, singing, and dance—creativity flows through her like light.

Her cancer is officially in remission.

“A cancer diagnosis for your child is life-shattering,” Kelsey says. “But we truly appreciate every member of her team. Each one played a role in saving her life.”

She smiles.
“We would trust no one else with our daughter’s future. They gave our little girl a chance to grow up.”

And Gracelyn—1% of 1%—is making the most of it.