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Ten years. A decade. The
big one-oh. Who would have thought it possible, especially back
when he was fighting for every breath he took; back when I couldn’t
see ahead from one day to the next. My baby, who beat the odds
making it to his first birthday, my Evan turned ten years old on
September 4, 2000!
New Year’s Eve, 1999 found us talking with our special friends
the Mackenzie’s about the year ahead – the first year
of the new decade – speculating what might happen and planning
what we wanted to happen. We talked about our intended trip to
Walt Disney World, a gift to Evan from his parents for reaching
age ten, a milestone we thought he would never see. Trip
of a Lifetime After Ian was born and I returned to work full-time we decided
to take the little
bit of extra money left over from my paycheck
after the expenses were taken care of and set it aside with the
intention of taking Evan to Disney World. As Evan grew older and
gradually less and less susceptible to every illness going around
town, and Ian grew and changed physically and developmentally seemingly
from day to day, we felt that a Disney trip could become a reality.
We thought that the year Evan turned ten (Ian would be six by then)
would be a good time to go. So Spring, 2000, was what we were shooting
for. Ian would be old enough to enjoy and appreciate it; Evan,
we hoped would be stable enough medically; and we’d have
a good, long time to save for it!
Planning this trip was a milestone in itself. It was the first
time since Evan was
born that we planned something more than a
few months in advance. In many ways, the planning felt good. It
felt normal! But in some ways, it was scary.
There were lots of
what ifs. What if Evan got sick right before we were to leave
for
Disney and we had to cancel the trip? All that money, lost. What
if Evan got
sick at Disney? What if we ran out of Evan’s
special supplies? What if we had a wonderful time and I didn’t
even know it?
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