Brain Food for a Teen

Recovery from surgery to remove a tumor from her brain stem hasn’t been easy for 17-year-old Grace Connor, but she’s found incredible inspiration in something many of us take for granted — ice cream.

This is hand-crafted, creamy, delicious, and uniquely flavored ice cream, to be exact. The photo above is courtesy of the teenager’s quickly growing company, known as Little G Ice Cream Co.

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Connor was diagnosed in 2014 with a Rathke cleft cyst that was pushing on her pituitary gland. It was affecting her hormones and growth, and her muscle mass was literally “wasting away,” her mother told People Magazine in October 2016. It was the first time the family went public with her story.

Never one to sit for long, the teen wanted to be back on her feet after the tumor was removed. Connor pushed herself, working as soon as she got out of the hospital. Days later, though, there were complications — doctors discovered bleeding on her brain and ordered her to rest.

That is when Connor decided to make ice cream, “a passion she’s had along with baking since early childhood,” she told People.

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The decision has taken her from her own kitchen into a commercial baking kitchen and business that is now booming. Her product is flying off freezer shelves. Numerous Boston-area supermarkets are carrying her ever-expanding list of flavors. She is also now, on her own, distributing her product nationally. Connor ships what fans say are deliciously unique flavors from her website littlegicecreamco.com.

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Her health status has significantly improved, but Connor continues to require daily medications to replace the hormones the tumor prevented her body from producing, she told People. Her mother added that creating Little G’s was instrumental in her recovery.

“A driving force, like, ‘I will be better,'” said Grace Connor. “It’s given me a drive to do something I am proud of. It’s given me new energy.”