I've seen my share of bad parents but haven't seen anything like this before.
I've been a pediatric nurse for my entire career- 6 1/2 years. 4 1/2 in the hospital and the last 2 doing pediatric home visits. Most of my patients are oncology patients. They therefore all qualify for Make-A-Wish.
Last week I'm at one of my patients' homes and there's a flier from Make-A-Wish on the fridge. Mom is from another country originally, let's pretend it's Mexico. So she says to me "look how nice, these people are giving me a free vacation to Mexico." And I say "is that what your son wants to do? It's his wish." She says "No, he wanted to go on a Disney cruise but I don't want to do that." I was so mad at that point and told her that that's not how Make-A-Wish works.
Today, Mom wasn't home when I went to see the kid and he usually will tell me the truth about things when she's not there. So I start talking to him about his Make-A-Wish and he says "I'm going to Mexico." And then when I ask him if that was his choice he says "no, my Mom wanted to do that." As he continued talking, he said "My Mom made me say that I wanted to go there." The kid's grandmother lives there, there is no doubt in my mind that if they did this as his Make-A-Wish, he'd get left with Grandma while Mom goes out clubbing.
One of the rules of Make-A-Wish is that the wish has to come from the child. This kid is not going to have another opportunity to go to Disney. He lives in the projects and, though he's stable right now, his prognosis is very poor. That this woman would use her son's cancer to get a free vacation for herself is disgusting. I called his Social Worker and am considering calling the local Make-A-Wish office myself. People don't donate money to that organization so a child with cancer can sit in his grandmother's house in the developing world while his mother has herself a free vacation.
