With a little over a week left until his birthday, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday.

As usual, he answered with Mario video games and legos, his favorite things. Then as we left to go to the store, we checked the mailbox and found a package inside for him. It was a birthday package. Suddenly he said, for my birthday, I want more mail.

I laughed and thought to myself, how am I going to make that happen? Later that night I sat at my computer and sent a short email to an editor at our local newspaper and asked her what it would take to publish an article in the paper. She picked up on my email and asked me a few questions, then I didnt hear from her again. I also posted a small post on facebook.com asking for some birthday cards for Danny.

As the week went on, we made plans to go away to New Hampshire for Danny’s birthday weekend. As we drove on Thursday, in the car with my parents on our way up north, my sister called and told us that Danny’s story was on the front page of every newspaper in the convenience store. I was shocked.

By the next day, we found out that his simple request had gone viral on the internet, and suddenly we were receiving messages from people all around the world. Then the news channels picked up on his story.

Suddenly the letters and cards from around the world began to pour into the post office. On Monday we received around 500 cards, Tuesday we received 3,000, Wednesday 8,000 and as the week went on we ran out of ways to get the mail home. On Friday, we were told that the post office sorted more mail for us then the entire town combined received in a single day. We began to run out of places to store the mail until we could open it. We had our whole family surrounding us helping us to open Danny’s birthday cards.

Suddenly Danny was a local celebrity. The news channels wanted to meet him and talk to him. We were invited to so many incredible places. Bob Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, invited Danny to the stadium so that he could hand deliver a card signed by all the members of the team, and then he sent us out for lunch. On Danny’s actual birthday we were invited to have a private party at the new Legoland in Boston.

The day after his birthday we were invited to the stadium again. This time, we didnt know quite what to expect. We arrived and were joined by news crews and our family. We sat on the side walk and waited. Suddenly a motorcade of police officers began journeying up the 2 mile long driveway of stadium. Following them was an enormous line of police cars, firetrucks, and motorcycles from all over Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They all came together to give Danny his very own incredible birthday parade.

Everyone that came for the parade came by to give Danny a card also. Then the Police officers gave Danny his very own police power wheels car that he got to drive all over the parking lot and field.

All of Danny’s dreams were coming true. He was only 6 years old, and had no idea the magnitude of what was going on around him. In total, we received over 800,000 cards, letters, and packages for Danny’s Birthday. And it all started with one simple wish.

While we were going through radiation, we were contacted by the Make a Wish Foundation. At first, I was terrified. Why do these people want to get a hold of me? Did my doctor contact them and tell them something about Danny that I don’t want to face yet? To me, Make a Wish meant that the end was near. That may seem crazy from the outside looking in, but I didn’t know what to expect.

We immediately got to work on planning our trip to Disney, and we were in a rush to get there as fast as we could because we knew that even though Danny was doing great, his health could change at any moment.

Our family decided to join us on our trip, but there were going to meet us on January 13. So we had a few days alone before they joined us.

We boarded our plane on January 11 and headed south for the trip of a lifetime. For the first 2 days of our trip we stayed at Universal Studios. My incredible aunt and uncle did some behind the scenes work and got in touch with a relative of theirs who happens to work at  Universal Studios and she arranged for Danny to be the star of their “Super Star Parade” that day. Our little family got to ride on the first float in the parade. We were shocked and so excited, and definitely scared. We felt like celebrities waving to the crowds as the float drove through the crowded streets of the park. We were later told that we were the first people that were ever allowed into the parade that weren’t an employee of the park. The whole ride I kept wishing that someone that we actually knew could have been there to see us. As the parade was about to end, we looked to our left to see our entire family standing there cheering for us. We were so shocked to see them because they were not supposed to get to Florida until later that night. But then they shocked us even further by telling us that they had been in the park all day and they wanted to wait till after the parade to surprise us.

For the rest of our trip we stayed at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. Danny met the “Pin King” and became obsessed with collecting Disney pins to put on his new Disney lanyard. Each day at around 4 the pin king would come and children would line up to trade pins with him.

We visited all the parks and we were given a special pass so that we never had to wait in any lines. We followed behind Danny and let him lead us all over the park.

It felt good to be “carefree” and up in a bubble away from our harsh reality that we faced everyday. We got to spend normal time with our family, Danny got to be the kid the he was. We were away from the hospital and away from pain and crying.

Even if it only lasted for a week.

Then we were back home in the blink of an eye and so excited to tell everyone about our trip. But being home meant back to reality, back to the hospital. We continued with our protocol of chemotherapy infusions and having blood drawn every two weeks. Life skated forward smoothly. Danny remained healthy and strong, running and acting like a perfectly normal child. His hair even grew back, finally covering the scar from his tumor biopsy that he received in October.

However, with each passing day, I grew more anxious. The number 9 burned into the back of my mind. 9 months was a “good” case I repeated to myself. I cherished each passing holiday. Imagining that they would be my last one that I would be able to celebrate with him. Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. 9 months since his diagnosis was quickly approaching. 9 months would land us exactly one day before his 6th birthday. I could feel my heart racing as I thought about how the doctors said 9 months was a good case. I constantly wondered what made it a good or bad case and how they knew. I found myself wondering what kind of case they considered Danny’s to be.

I always tried to live in the moment, but i found myself always wondering what the next day would bring. Would he pass the 9 month milestone? Will he surpass the “good case”?