Make-A-Wish Made This Young Cancer Fighter’s Dream To ‘Blow Stuff Up’ Come True

It took seven months of chemo and more than 30 blood transfusions, so once 12-year-old Declan McLean-Pauley was officially in remission for leukemia it was time to have some fun. To that end, things had been in the works for a while: He had discussed with Make-a-Wish Australia a bizarre and wonderful request – he just wanted to “blow stuff up.”

I’m sure the Make-A-Wish rep, expecting to hear another plea for Disneyland, was taken aback by the kid’s weird, wonderful fantasy . To their immense credit, the foundation didn’t get too judgy over this particular wish and made it happen.

Realizing that sending off an unsupervised kid with explosives would probably have sent Declan and others back to the hospital for entirely new reasons, the foundation paired him up with the Australian Federal Police’s Specialist Response Group. Not only did he get to meet this group of supercops, but also get their assistance in making his destructive dream come true.

Here’s a video account of Declan’s wonderful day out:

It started with a police motorcade, which seems quaint and cute enough. Then the powers that be upped the ante exponentially by tossing Declan in with the police group for a simulated hostage situation. Because that still failed to meet the caliber of awesomeness that Declan desired, the contingency then headed out to a training village where they blew up an armored car with explosive charges.

It sounds like a memorable day for everyone involved, but most of all, Dylan. As it should have been, since he’d been planning the day with Make-a-Wish volunteers for a year while he fought off cancer.

Congrats to Declan for his big win against cancer and congrats to the foundation, who really knocked this one out of the park for a deserving recipient.

If you’d like to see more kids live out their dreams during and after their battles with illness, consider donating to the great people at Make-a-Wish who make stuff like this happen.