The story of Adalia Rose, a 6-year-old girl with progeria whose YouTube videos became an Internet sensation—and soon faced online attacks and death threats:
“Adalia knows she’s different. She can see she’s bald. She’s aware how small she is—at 14 pounds, she weighs less than Marcelo, and he’s one year old, a baby still, really. Unlike Mommy or Daddy or Gama, she doesn’t have eyebrows or eyelashes. Other children sometimes mistake her for a boy, even though she’s usually outfitted in pink. She needs help walking up a staircase. She can’t go outside alone to play. She doesn’t go to school. At the mall, people look at her funny. Her parents explain it’s ‘because they’ve never seen an angel.’
“Adalia knows that her difference has a diagnosis, progeria, a condition affecting approximately one child in four million. What she doesn’t know is how progeria ends: The average lifespan is 13 years. At six, there’s a distinct possibility she’s almost halfway through her short life. Natalia and Ryan refuse to talk about that. They focus on the present, not the future.”
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