Make-A-Wish: JC feels the Broadway love and magic
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Julian “JC” Willis has always been a fighter. His mom, Lisa, said he was born premature and should have been in the NICU for an extended time, but they were released in three days.
Fast forward to 2015, and JC wasn’t out of the woods yet. He started having seizures.
“At first they started when he would get sick and then it started happening when he was stressed and we noticed that they were increasing with frequency,” Lisa said.
An MRI in 2017 revealed JC had a brain tumor, and because of its location, Lisa said professionals were reluctant to do any kind of surgery to better understand the tumor.
JC’s seizures started to get worse, so his family flew to Seattle Children’s Hospital for a second opinion and in January 2020, they found a surgeon willing to operate.
“The right temporal lobe. He was able to be fairly aggressive. They didn’t want to touch the motor function of my left hand and didn’t want to get into the brain stem, so there’s a very small amount left. The chance of anything happening is less than 10%,” JC explained.
During this time, a family friend nominated JC for Make-A-Wish, but because of the pandemic, his wish to go to Japan was put on hold. He was offered a second wish and chose to shadow a technician on Broadway.
”I had done theater work throughout high school. I loved it. A really supportive community there,” JC said.
He and his family got an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Broadway play, “The Book of Mormon.”
“I have a newfound appreciation of this industry. See the amount of magic that goes behind making something like that happen is astronomical,” JC said.
“They were just very generous with their time, they shared show secrets which was super fun,” added Lisa.
Just like how the theater community rallied around JC in New York, the Willis family is thankful for the hometown support as well.
“We couldn’t have gotten through all of this without our wonderful people,” Lisa said.
JC has been seizure-free for three years.
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