A brave seven-year-old girl is running a lemonade stand to help pay for her own extensive brain surgery.
Enterprising Liza Scott has three rare, life-risking, malformations in her brain and suffers from crippling seizures.
The family have health insurance, but will still have to pay around $10,000 in out of pocket expenses, so Liza decided to help out.
She set up the fresh lemonade stall inside her parent’s bakery and is doing a roaring trade.
Liza’s mother, bakery-owner Elizabeth Scott, helped build the stand inside her shop, Savage’s Bakery in Homewood, Alabama.
Elizabeth, 41, said: “The lemonade stand was all her idea. She is homeschooled right now and so she’s around the bakery with me all of the time.
“I’m a single mom and I work a lot because it’s a family business and I’m raising her basically alone.
“She came up to me and said that’s what she wanted to do…let me tell you, there’s no stopping Liza, so that’s what she did.”
Medics discovered the brain malformations after Liza began to experience a series of seizures.
Elizabeth added: “She had a couple of pretty massive seizures. She actually ended up in two ambulances in one day and was sent to the children’s hospital in Birmingham.
“When they finally admitted her for testing they had to run EEGs for 24 hours-a-day for four days straight.
“In almost every instance of these rare malformations, doctors only see one – in Liza’s case she has three.
“She has two which are vascular, so basically they’re like aneurysms.
“One is what they call a schizencephaly. So it’s basically a cleft in the frontal lobe and we think that’s what’s causing the seizures.”
The lemonade stand was originally opened as a way for Liza to participate in the bakery more.
Elizabeth added: “We opened it in February of 2020 when she said she wanted to have something in the bakery to do, but then because of COVID we had to close it almost immediately.
“So when we found out about her condition, she came to me and said she wanted to help me pay by reopening the stand.
“She’s very creative and energetic and loves people. She’s a natural born salesperson.”
Elizabeth has insurance to help fund the ongoing surgery, but is still looking at nearly $10,000 in out-of-pocket expenses.
Liza’s first operation will take place in Boston on March 8th, 2021.
Elizabeth says she “has faith” that it will be ok and added: “Liza is truly amazing.”
