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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

A small girl in Chilton County is putting up a brave fight, and now the community is stepping up to assist her and her family. Adleigh Bice has been battling since she was seven weeks old with biliary atresia, a blockage in the liver. The day after she was diagnosed she received the Kasai procedure, a procedure that was not available in the mid 1900s, where there was no cure if a child was diagnosed with biliary atresia.

“She has done well since then, but she has been in the hospital with cholangitis at least once a year most of her life, and sometimes multiple hospitalizations a year,” Adleigh’s mother Haley Bice said.

Adleigh Bice is now in need of a new liver, and the Children’s Organ Transplant Association is assisting with that by hosting the COTA Fundraiser for Adleigh Bice on Dec. 8-9. The fundraiser will be held in the venue beside Farm House Cafe in Thorsby from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. each day. All proceeds from the fundraiser will go to benefit the Adleigh Bice and the Bice family fund.

The fundraiser will feature a yard sale, bake sale and silent auction. Anyone interested in donating items for the yard sale are asked to tidy it up, put a reasonable price tag on it and bring it to the drop off location at Farm House Cafe on Dec. 7 between 1-6:30 p.m.

For the bake sale, all baked goods brought to the sale should include a list of ingredients for allergy purposes. Anyone interested in donating items for the silent auction can contact Marie Owens on Facebook. The fundraiser is also looking for volunteers to help set up the venue on Dec. 7.

In the meantime, the Bice family is traveling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Nov. 13 to see if there is a living donor available for Adleigh, and if not, she will be looking for a donor. However, the trip has not dampened her spirit.

“She is so mentally tough for being only a little girl,” Haley Bice said. “She is so tough and so brave, and she seems to find the positive in everything, like when we go to Pittsburgh she wants to go to Niagara Falls.”

COTA set up a fundraiser page for Adleigh Bice and set a goal of $60,000. There has already been over $15,000 raised through various fundraisers already held in Chilton County to benefit the family.

“Just being able to go and not having to worry about (finances), and our community has already surrounded us, praying over us and taking care of the financial burden, so we can go and take care of our daughter,” Haley Bice said.

When asked what keeps her in good spirits every day, Adleigh Bice’s answer was simple.

“Ice cream,” she said.

Donations towards the COTA Fundraiser for Adleigh Bice can be made at http://www.cotaforadleighsjourney.com/ as well.