Sonny's favorite holiday came a week early and included a ride in a fire truck after residents in one Illinois neighborhood found out that he'd be sidelined during next week's festivities due to an upcoming surgery. (Fox 2 Now)
A 4-year-old boy was given the chance to celebrate his favorite holiday early this year after a neighborhood in Illinois heard that he would miss the chance to trick or treat because of a vital surgery. Sonny Mead, who donned a Superman costume for the special day, hit more than 20 houses along his special trick-or-treat route and was even treated to a ride in a fire truck.
“He thinks today is Halloween,” Jackie Mead, the boy’s mom, told Fox 2 Now on Wednesday. “We let him pick his costume, and up until today he was going to be Spider-Man, and then he decided that he wanted to be Superman because he wants superpowers.”
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Sonny was diagnosed with craniosynostosis, which causes the skull bones to fuse prematurely, impacting brain growth. Sonny had pieces of his skull removed to give his brain more room to grow in 2015, and the bone was supposed to grow back but never did, his mom told the news outlet.
So on Friday, doctors will use a 3-D printer and bone from a cadaver to rebuild Sunny’s skull. His recovery is expected to take between two and six months, meaning he'll be sidelined when Oct. 31 comes.
But once Amanda Richert heard that her friend’s son would miss out on the trick-or-treating fun, Goshen Meadows residents, in Edwardsville, Ill., banded together to make sure he had his turn.
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“He wasn’t going to be able to trick-or-treat, and I just, as a mom, could not let that happen,” she told the news outlet.
Richert said the response was overwhelming.
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