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Aidan Fraser is running around the apartment in Brooklyn like his pants are on fire. "Are you going to interview me now?" he asks impishly, his blue eyes sparkling. But he runs away without waiting for an answer, swishing two toy swords vigorously as he charges into the next room. This is typical behavior for an active seven-year-old boy. But it's remarkable for this youngster who, less than three months earlier, was in such a precarious physical condition that a simple fall could have been fatal. At that time, Aidan needed to be positioned against strategically placed pillows on the sofa or carefully transferred to a wheelchair just to sit up. Still, his mind raced a hundred miles an hour, and he described the ceiling-high robot he planned to build with his LEGOs, not to mention his more ambitious goal: "I want to be a superhero," he exclaimed. He spoke animatedly about his favorite characters, the colorfully costumed Power Rangers, while ignoring the cumbersome metal brace attached to his head. The superheroes seemed to be a symbol of strength to this child who had battled a rare disease his whole young life.The brace, called a halo vest, was a necessary evil designed to manage the effects of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). It's a genetic condition that can cause tumors to form along nerves. Aidan was diagnosed with the illness when he was five months old. But as he grew, the condition became so aggressive and severe that he developed a rare large tumor called a plexiform neurofibroma, visible from the back of his shoulder and collarbone.
Over the years, it has grown bigger than a grapefruit, expanding into his chest and around his spine, distorting several vertebrae in his neck in a reverse C shape and, as a result, placing severe pressure on his spinal cord. As the tumor got bigger, so did the risks of further damaging the spine. (Aidan's tumor is benign, but such tumors can become cancerous.) The spinal cord was being stretched to its limit over the bone. Any kind of jostling or bumping could potentially cause severe pain and even paralysis.
His mother's worst fears were realized when he took a tumble one night at his grandparents' house. "He fell down and lost the use of his arms for about a week and a half," Suzanne explains. "We're actually very lucky that when he fell, he didn't stop breathing."
The growing alarm over his delicate state led the Frasers to a group of real-life superheroes, specialized surgeons who saw the danger ahead and put Aidan in traction for a few days before attaching the halo vest. They formed a team armed with the medical know-how to perform an unprecedented procedure aimed at repairing Aidan's deteriorating spine.
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