Accepting Charity: Our Experience with the Make-a-Wish Foundation

My husband and I have three children, two of whom have a disease called Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome. Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome (SDS)is a rare, genetic bone marrow failure syndrome that can be life threatening.

Accepting that your child has a life threatening illness can be a struggle, one that lasts a lifetime. Accepting a wish from a wish granting organization like Make-A-Wish (MAW) can sometimes be scary because you are acknowledging that your child does indeed have a life-threatening illness -- something that we all want to forget. If you are a family like ours, you have medical bills stacked in every corner of the house, you spend hours each week talking to insurance companies and medical billing departments. It may seem as if you spend as much time in the doctor's offices as you do on the phone discussing the bills their visits bring about. Is this a reason to grant your child a wish? No, but it is a part of what Make-A-Wish is all about. They want the entire family to forget about doctors, hospitals and anything medical during the child's wish.