The Webb family took their three children on what was supposed to be a dream family vacation last summer: a Disney cruise.

Parents Allen and Melanie said their 7-year-old twins, Brayden and Bella, and 10-year-old son Ben were enjoying their final day at sea off the coast of South Florida by playing on the waterslides. That’s when Brayden, a usually-active swimmer, said something out of the ordinary.

“About noon, he says, ‘Dad, I’m tired, I want to go lay down,'” Allen told Fox 5.

“So I take him back to the room, my wife goes off with the other two, and he sleeps for 3 and half hours,” his father recalled. The worried father took Brayden to the ship’s infirmary, which was just opening for the day.

“By the time I got him down to the infirmary, I was having to hold him in my arms,” Allen said. “He just couldn’t move.”

The boy’s belly was rapidly swelling, painfully filled with fluid. The physician on-board decided the situation could not wait until the ship docked in the morning.

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“The physician is taking X-rays and says, ‘Look, I’ve contacted the captain of the ship. We’re stopping the ship. The Coast Guard is coming to get you,'” Allen said.

The ship was about five miles off the coast of Miami when Coast Guard officials pulled up alongside their vessel.

“By the time they loaded on a fast boat, to the time we hit the doors of the ER, it was 30 minutes,” Allen said.

Doctors in the emergency room delivered grim news to the family: they suspected Brayden had cancer. Within hours, the Webb family was on an Angel Flight to the AFLAC Cancer Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Oncologists confirmed Brayden had a large, stage-3 malignant tumor in his abdomen. After 14 rounds of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, Fox 5 reports that Brayden was declared cancer-free.

“Exactly nine months later, my son rang the bell at the AFLAC Cancer Center, signaling his end of treatment, that he was cured,” Webb says. “He was reborn. We had a new son.”

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