The room always smelled like hand sanitizer. Machines beeped and beeped and beeped. Nurses came and went, and doctors used words I didn't understand. I was 5 years old; I didn't know what leukemia meant. I didn't understand why I couldn't go outside and roll down a hill, or why I couldn't visit my new baby sister. I didn't understand why I had to spend so much time in hospitals. I just knew I was sick.

During those long hours, Frozen became the unofficial soundtrack of my days. Anna and Elsa became my friends. They were brave when things felt scary. If they could face blizzards, I could face chemotherapy. And if I was listening to Elsa sing, I didn't have to hear my parents worry.

The weeks stretched into months, then into years. Every night, long after I'd fallen asleep, my parents would sit in the quiet room. The only light came from the blinking machines and the moonlight reflecting on the tubes stuck in their daughter. They held my hand tightly, waiting through the silence for the next round of nurses to come poke and prod me awake. This became our routine. Get through the next treatment, the next appointment, the next day. Cancer was a carousel that never stopped spinning. Round and round we went.

Then one day I was given the chance to make a wish. I wished to go to Disney and meet Anna and Elsa. And a few months later that wish came true.

Suddenly, I was standing on a street that smelled like caramel and popcorn instead of hand sanitizer. The air was filled with music and laughter instead of beeping machines. Everywhere I looked, there was color, to my left bright banners snapping in the breeze, to my right flowers spilling out of planters, and up above there were balloons bobbing against a cloudless sky.

Suddenly, I was standing on a street that smelled like caramel and popcorn instead of hand sanitizer. The air was filled with music and laughter instead of beeping machines. Everywhere I looked, there was color, to my left bright banners snapping in the breeze, to my right flowers spilling out of planters, and up above there were balloons bobbing against a cloudless sky.

And to my astonishment, my favorite two people had somehow stepped out of my imagination and into real life. Anna and Elsa knelt down to talk to me, just like we were picking up a conversation we had started months before. I remember staring at them, trying to grasp every detail: the sparkle of Elsa's dress, the way the sunlight caught Anna's bright red hair, and the feeling of my parents standing behind me, smiling for what felt like the first time in forever.

Make-A-Wish brought my family all the way from the land of blood counts and IVs to the land of talking snowmen and ice palaces. My wish showed us the post-cancer reality we were too scared to hope for. It showed us that we could smile and laugh, and not live in constant fear. But above all, it gave us hope.

The hope that Make-A-Wish gives families can shine through hospital windows on the hardest days. It can help them keep moving forward when the road feels impossibly long. It can remind a child that there is still joy waiting for them beyond a diagnosis.

Today, there are children sitting in hospital rooms just like I once did. Children looking out windows, wishing they could be anywhere else. They are facing painful treatments and uncertain futures, and they need wishes. Wishes are the best medicine; they are the strongest part of treatment. It is your help that transforms wishes from dreams to reality.

All my love, Merin Blake