"Beccaroni" Benefit Raises Funds For 8-Year-Old's Brain Surgery

Friends and family gathered for dinner this weekend in Shelton to raise money for a local 8-year-old girl's medical bills.

Rebecca Marcinauskas was born with a rare chromosome abnormality--only three cases have been reported worldwide. Shas had twenty hospital stays in her eight short years and recently had her fifty-first MRI/CT scan.

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Volunteers in the community, co-chaired by JoEllen Lisi and Connie Rohe, organized a pasta dinner fundraiser to help defray medical costs. The evening included homemade pasta sauce and meatballs from Derby's Marc Garofalo, a raffle with all prizes donated by local businesses/organizations, special performances by members of Center Stage Theatre, and a whole mess of homemade dessert treats.

The family is in the process of meeting with surgeons to discuss when Rebecca will go in for surgery, the Shelton Herald reports. She has hydrocephalus, or fluid on the brain, and the back of her brain is growing into her spinal cord, her mother said. She also will need a hip replacement because of Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease.