ZELIENOPLE — The Zelienople Rotary Club’s annual pancake and sausage breakfast fundraiser will help the family of a 7-year-old Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School student who has an inoperable brain tumor.

The all-you-can-eat breakfast will run from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. Sunday at the American Legion Post 474 on W. New Castle St.

Cheyannia Marburger of Evans City was diagnosed in December with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a rare and lethal form of brain stem cancer that afflicts about 700 children annually, according to the American Cancer Society.

It attacks the nerves that control all of the body’s motor functions, including walking, speech and bodily functions, according to Cheyannia’s mother Deb Plaisted.

“They said once the radiation quits, the tumor will start to grow at a rapid rate — and there’s nothing we can do,” Plaisted said.

Plaisted and her two other children, Shayne, 21, and Sammi, 17, have pulled together to help buy time for Cheyannia, who with radiation treatments five days a week might have a year to live.

Plaisted, a single mother, took a leave of absence from her job.

Sammi started cyber school so she can go to radiation treatments with her mother and sister, and Shayne does all of the shopping and errands.

“My older children have been amazing,” said Plaisted. “With all this going on, they had to grow up in a hurry and become a man and a woman, and they have transitioned amazingly.”

The community has rallied around the family. Plaisted’s co-workers organized a spaghetti dinner in January to raise money for the family.

The Zelienople Rotary Club agreed to donate the proceeds from its breakfast Sunday to the family.

“The Rotary always try to look out for the good of the community. If we see a need in the community, we try to help out,” said Ken Boustead, president of the Zelienople Rotary Club.

“I have a 6-year-old daughter who goes to CVE, and it’s unfathomable what this family is facing. It’s truly every parent’s worst nightmare,” added fellow Rotarian Dan Fazio.

“Zelienople Rotarians want to help out any way we can because, by God, that’s what Rotary is all about,” Fazio said.

Cheyannia has not returned to school since her diagnosis. She has lost considerable strength in her left side and must be carried from room to room.

A family friend recently bought Plaisted a wagon so she didn’t have to carry Cheyannia from the car to the lobby of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

“She has been a trooper,” said Plaisted of her daughter. “She knows she has a brain stem tumor, but doesn’t know the prognosis.”