By Cain Madden

The Natchez Democrat

NATCHEZ — Running around the house and singing as his brother played the drums would have once been difficult to picture for a Natchez kindergartner.

Gavin Avery Johnson, 5, of McLaurin Elementary School, now loves to sing, dance and run, but it took a while to get him there, said his mother Marcisha Ann Johnson.

When Gavin was approximately 10 months, his mother noticed he was breathing slowly.

“We knew he was sick, but it was one of those things where you didn’t know how sick he was,” his mother said.

On that night in February 2011, they were at Natchez Community Hospital until 11 p.m. The next day, on her way home from Alcorn State University, where she is majoring in political science and set to graduate this summer, Marcisha received a call from the doctors.

“They told me he has a tumor in his left lung that’s the size of a grapefruit,” she said. “I was like how? He’s so little.

“He was breathing with only one lung.”

At the Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, physicians repeated the blood work and X-rays that had been done at Community and took Marcisha’s story of what had happened.

“From that point on, I felt a lot better,” she said. “I felt like this was moving in a positive direction.”

By the end of the week, they diagnosed him with cancer — neuroblastoma specifically.

Surgeons were able to remove the tumor, but after six months, the tumor had returned.

“It grew back worse,” she said. “Instead of inside his lung, it was on the inside and outside of it.”

This time, doctors put Gavin through chemotherapy for four months.

“For the first time, we spent Thanksgiving away from my family — we were in the hospital,” she said. “We didn’t do anything for Halloween because he didn’t feel well.

“The one time he felt well enough to go to the fair, he wore a hat and a mask over his face because his immune system was just compromised. He was the center of attention, and not in a good way, but I can’t blame the people. They didn’t know what was going on with him.”

During the operation, they were able to remove most of it, and now it is the size of a 50-cent coin. Even more of a bonus is since 2012 the tumor has been in remission.

“Prayer,” Marcisha said simply as how she got through it. “Lots of prayer and support from family.

“It was hard. We couldn’t live a normal life. Every thought was about how to make that baby better.”

At first, he had to go to the hospital pretty often to be checked on.

“Now, his health is so good that he’s going once every six months,” Marcisha said. “He’s able to live a normal life. Both of his lungs are working.”

Gavin does have asthma and some other problems, but it’s nothing major, his mother said.“When he was able to go to daycare, it was one of the best experiences of his life,” Marcisha said. “Everyone just loved him there.”

And on Tuesday, the McLaurin student was running around the playpen at McDonald’s and playing games with his brother, Micah, 7, who is also a student at McLaruin.

“I like to go outside,” Gavin said. “I like to play. I jump on the trampoline and ride my bike.”

And going to school isn’t so bad.

“It’s good,” Gavin said. “We get to learn.”

After much debate, he’s also decided where he wants to travel through the Make a Wish Foundation.

“He wanted to go to where Buzz and Woody were,” Marcisha said of the Toy Story characters. “They were at both California and Florida, and he chose California.

“We’re going to Disneyland.”