Last spring, Piper Barrington spent her 11th birthday in a Warner Robins hospital bed — hooked up to machines, surrounded by uncertainty, unsure of what her body was doing to her.
Tomorrow she turns 12. And instead of just celebrating, she’s making sure the kids currently in those hospital beds don’t have to feel alone on their special day.
Piper was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s encephalopathy, an extremely rare autoimmune condition that attacks the brain, after suffering multiple seizures last spring. It started without warning at a softball scrimmage on March 6, 2025 — her mother, Tristan, was sitting behind home plate when she heard something in her husband’s voice shift.
“He doesn’t really use that kind of voice anyway,” Tristan said, “so that was immediately kind of like, ‘Oh my God, something’s wrong.'”
What followed was nearly a month of hospitalizations, MRIs, lumbar punctures, and frightening uncertainty. Piper had three seizures in less than a month. After the third, doctors had to intubate her. She spent three to four days on a ventilator. Her birthday arrived in the middle of all of it.
Piper doesn’t remember much of that stretch — the disease affected her memory — but she remembers the nurses.
“I felt very appreciated,” she said. “And I wanted to give the other kids who had to spend their birthday in the hospital the chance to feel appreciated like I was.”
That feeling became Piper’s Promise — a toy drive collecting donations for children in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Beverly Knight Olsen Children’s Hospital in Macon, where Piper was treated. She chose the PICU specifically because those kids can’t leave their floor to visit the hospital’s toy room. Nobody comes to them.
Piper wants to change that.
The idea grew out of a simple conversation about what she wanted to do for her birthday. Her mom said she didn’t need much — she has four sets of grandparents and plenty of love around her. But Piper had something else in mind.
“She just wanted to find a way to make someone else’s day a little bit brighter,” Tristan said.
The drive is being hosted at Tricky’s Cards and Games in Warner Robins, the local shop where the Barrington family spends their Friday nights playing Pokémon and Lorcana. It felt like the right home for it.
For Tristan, watching her daughter go from a hospital bed to organizing a community toy drive is hard to put into words.
“I can’t even describe the thought of your child not being who they are anymore,” she said. “And now she just wants to give back — which is all I could ever ask for as a parent.”
Piper, who also serves as a Children’s Miracle Network ambassador, said she hopes her story gives other sick kids something to hold onto.
“I came back,” she said. “So I think they’ll be able to survive the hospital and eventually come back and be able to be a normal kid with a normal life.”
Toy donations for Piper’s Promise can be dropped off at Tricky’s Cards and Games in Warner Robins through March 31. All toys will go directly to Beverly Knight Olsen Children’s Hospital in Macon.
