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”?