Mom Samantha Duran had big dreams for her little boy. She envisioned him taking his first steps. She eagerly awaited the first time he rolled over.
Maybe he would become a doctor or a teacher. Maybe he would cure cancer.
But those dreams were shattered when an ultrasound during Samantha’s pregnancy revealed her son had spina bifida. But that wasn’t all that was wrong…
Baby Maddox endured 16 surgeries and before every single one, she feared he wouldn’t survive. Things escalated when at age two, doctors found a cyst on Maddox’s spine. Samantha realized that time was running out for her son.
Spina bifida is a group of congenital disabilities that affects the spine. A baby who has the most severe form of spina bifida will be born with part of the spinal cord outside the body. Mild spina bifida might not cause symptoms.
Spina bifida happens during the first trimester of pregnancy when the structure that eventually becomes a baby’s spinal cord (the neural tube) doesn’t develop properly. A cyst is a fluid-filled sac that can develop in the spine as a result of degeneration and can lead to spinal stenosis or other painful, serious conditions.
After swallowing the lump in her throat and drying her tears, Samantha pulled herself together enough to decide that she and her husband would make the most out of what little time they had left with Maddox.
“He’s been having these choking episodes which are typically neurologically related for him. They predicted that it could herniate or compress his brain stem and be a life-ending event, and naturally we were beside ourselves. And we started making all the memories that we could.”
One realization dawned on Samantha … she might never have the chance to dance with her precious little boy on his wedding day.
There was no way this devoted momma was going to miss out on that milestone. So she put on a fancy dress and suited up Maddox in formal attire just so they could dance together just like they would on his wedding night.
The dance they shared was captured on video by Samantha’s husband and shared on social media where people’s hearts broke watching the emotional moment shared between a mother and her dying son.
He remained hooked up to machines while they swayed back and forth in the living room.
“At the beginning, I was just giving him some kisses on his head, and it sounds weird, but I was smelling him. I was just soaking in everything that that moment was. But then about halfway through, I turned my head to the right and that’s when you can see that I’m trying so hard at that moment not to lose it, because that’s when it hit me exactly what we were doing … It was just something that escalated into something that I just never imagined. I was doing it to have just one special moment like this with my baby boy to keep forever.”
We pray that Maddox is blessed with a miracle and he and his momma have many more memories in the years to come.
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