Make-a-Wish from Disney: 23 years later, she’ll help grant other kids’ wishes
ORANGE, Calif. — Her goal in life is to grant wishes like a princess in a fairy tale.
What better way to pay back the wish that was granted to her more than two decades ago?
Ayesha Kazim, 30, of Orange, Calif., recently signed up to volunteer at Make-A-Wish. She works for Disney (a fitting job for someone who dreams of granting wishes) in the online travel department. She’s awaiting her first Make-A-Wish assignment. She already has figured out what she’s going to tell the first person she meets with a life-threatening illness.
“I’m here,” she will say. “My parents didn’t think I would be here. So don’t ever give up.”
Disney said it will donate $5—up to $1 million—for every picture shared on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that shows someone wearing mouse ears. Kazim had her picture taken in mouse ears at Disneyland, where she was telling her story to offer hope to people who may be going through similar horrors to those she endured as a child.
Kazim carries a scrapbook with a kindergarten photo of her holding a book under her right arm and smiling. She remembers the pain.
“I couldn’t hold that book with my left arm,” she said. She was living in Olney, Md., at the time, and she remembers wearing a purple sweatsuit when the phone call came with her test results. She was rushed to a hospital in Washington, where she had the first of five operations.
That scrapbook also holds a drawing a doctor made of the tumor. When she was 5, she got a diagnosis of rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of the muscle tissue.
Doctors gave her parents a best- and worst-case scenario. At best, she might live to see her 16th birthday. At worst, she had about six months to live.
She went through chemotherapy and radiation, and by the time she was 7, the cancer had spread to her shoulder. She had lost all her hair, and her brother pushed her in a wheelchair. She remembers her father praying in the hospital.
Her family grimly braced itself for what would happen next.
It was at one of the low points that Kazim’s family was connected with Make-A-Wish. She wanted to go visit a Disney park in Europe but she told she couldn’t stray very far from her hospital.
So she choose Disney World, which was a two-hour flight away.
“This was going to be our last trip as a family,” she said. “To think about it that way is terrifying.”
It wasn’t the end. It was the beginning.
Kazim remembers eating peanut butter ice cream with Reese’s Pieces for breakfast. She remembers how nice everyone was to her and her family—her father, Fazlur; her mother, Seeta; a brother, Ijaz; and a sister, Samina.
“It was a magical trip,” she said. “My dad said he didn’t realize how compassionate people could be.”
She remembers Chip and Dale, the chipmunk characters, pushing her wheelchair. She rode Space Mountain 10 times in a row.
“I never thought about why we were there,” she said. “We were just there. My whole family acted normal, and it was perfect.”
Something else happened to Kazim on that trip. She fell in love with Disney and Make-A-Wish.
“That trip reaffirmed what my parents taught me about charity, caring and giving,” she said. “That’s what Disney is all about—hopes and wishes and dreams coming true”
Kazim has been cancer-free since she was 7. She still has trouble moving her left arm, but she’s doing physical therapy to help her deal with the pain.
And in July 2012, her boyfriend, Suresh Francis, proposed to her at Walt Disney World in Cinderella’s Castle.
Kazim and her husband live in Orange, just a few miles from Disneyland. Working at Disney has fulfilled one of her lifelong dreams.
Occasionally, she will handle the travel arrangements of a child with cancer.
“I say, ‘Oh, my God, I had cancer, too,’” she said. “I make a connection with them. And when they say this might be our last trip, I tell them, “Once you get here, everything is going to be fine.’”