8-Year-Old Boy's Dream of Skydiving Finally Comes True After Lazy Eye Led to Terminal Cancer Diagnosis (Exclusive)

"In those moments, he's not a cancer kid," mom Amanda Idell tells PEOPLE of Paxton's big adventures

• What began as a lazy eye was revealed to be a cancerous mass in Paxton's brain

• Diagnosed at 5, the little boy had a brief remission before becoming sick again a year later

• Faced with limited time, Paxton's family are helping make his bucket list dreams, like skydiving, come true and tell PEOPLE about what it means to be able to do so
  

Amanda Idell and her family are working hard to make sure her little boy's life is full of adventure.

Amanda's son Paxton, now 8, was first diagnosed with Pediatric Medulloblastoma at the age of 5, in April 2021. After he experienced a lazy eye and some headaches, the mom of two took her son to urgent care. When they were sent to the emergency room, she knew it was something serious.

"Not even 20 minutes after we got there, they came in to say he had a very large mass on his brain that was blocking his spinal fluid. He needed emergency surgery right then and there," she tells PEOPLE exclusively.

Things moved fast, a whirlwind for the family of four. Paxton's surgery was considered a success. His next move was to St. Jude's in Memphis, Tennessee, where he underwent six weeks of proton radiation.

"He was being put under every single day, for five days a week, for 30 rounds. He had about a month of a break and then we came back for seven rounds of chemo," Amanda recalls. "That was pretty harsh because he ended up needing a G-tube. He ended up getting COVID. He ended up with a rare bacterial infection. There were about 31 blood product transfusions in that short time."

The family was in and out of the hospital with treatments until March of 2022. Throughout the next year, Paxton got to enjoy some of the best parts of being a kid — going to school, spending time with his sister. Sadly, at one year, almost two years to the day of his original diagnosis, doctors found evidence of disease once again.

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"We've been doing treatment for the last 14 cycles. Then this last scan that we had in May 2024 showed that even though he's been on this treatment, the cancer is starting to grow through it," she says.

At that time, the family made the difficult decision to start setting up end-of-life care for Paxton. Amanda believes it ensures his best quality of life moving forward.

"I put him on hospice pretty early on. I wanted his nurses and that team to know him and that way, it wasn't just another Tuesday for them. His nurse comes in and they play ball. They have fun together. And everything is already in place that when he starts getting to be in pain, those security measures are already there," she says. "He won't have to suffer. I don't want him to suffer."

In July, Paxton was granted his Make-a-Wish, a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was that trip that would invigorate the little boy with a sense for adventure.

"He wanted some place that was beautiful and an experience like camping. So we went up there and had planned activities. We were going to go horseback riding. We were going to go rafting. We were going to go up the ski lifts to the top of the mountain, because there's a little Waffle Shack up there," Amanda says.

"We get up there and he sees these guys paragliding. During cancer, he's become really involved in video games and at the time, he was really playing Zelda a lot. And Link paraglides, so he was watching them and we're like, 'Isn't that cool?' And he's like, 'I've never done that in my whole life. That's so cool.' "

The mom adds, "Hearing that and knowing that he's not going to live to be 18 — there's barely maybe, at best, two years with him — it gutted me to the core."

Once they realized that the paragliders were offering people rides, they went over to find out about it.

"As we're getting off this e-lift, these guys are offering the rides. We go to talk to them and there's an older guy who is on ski patrol in the winter time there. So we talked and Paxton and my daughter ended up getting to go. It was so exciting and it really started everything."

Over the next few months, the family focused on getting in fun moments for Paxton as he navigated treatment.

"Normally, when kids are diagnosed with cancer, most of the Make-a-Wishes that they have are, 'I want to go to Disney World.' Well, the time we went, Paxton didn't even like rides. So he went from that to going paragliding because of Link," she says.

"Since then, he has been to Disney World. He has gone to Universal Studios. He has gone to Disneyland and Nintendo World because he's also really into Mario. It's just coming up with things he wants to do. Being as young as he is, he hasn't been exposed to everything, so he doesn't quite yet know everything he wants to do."

One day, Amanda and the family took Paxton to iFly, where he could get the feeling of flying through a tunnel.

"He asked 'Can people actually do this outside of a tunnel?' We said yes, and he asked what that was called. I said skydiving and he's like, 'Well I want to do that.' "

Amanda admits she wasn't sure if it was even a possibility.

"I'm like, 'Buddy, I don't think you can,' because at the time, I knew other kids who had done skydiving, but they did it through part of their actual Make-a-Wish. These kids were teenagers, so I didn't even know if kids could do this," she says.

Her husband, Kris, was intrigued by Paxton's request and started making some calls.

"My husband called one place and explained, 'My son has cancer. He's 8. He wants to go skydiving,' and so they gave us some direction," she says.

It took a lot of work on the family's end to explain their situation and see what kind of access they could get Paxton.

"There were definitely times that I'm just like, are you sure you want to do this? Because I was ready to throw in the towel."

Still, Amanda and Kris persisted. In working with the USPA, they learned they'd be able to grant Paxton a tandem dive, but his doctors had to clear him. It would take some time for that to happen. During that period, the family learned of more growth in an updated scan. In May, they decided to take Paxton off of treatment.

"We have been doing anything and everything we can possibly think of," Amanda says, explaining the focus shifted to Paxton's growing "bucket list" of experiences he was after.

"We went up to Ohio to see my best friend, who is basically my sister, so he's up here getting the cousin experience. They took him to go toilet paper houses and pull pranks. They did fireworks and he got to hold a toad," Amanda says.

In early June, Paxton got his skydiving wish. Kris also joined him for the special moment, which went viral after the family shared photos of it on Instagram. Amanda says it "wasn't hard" to watch her son partake in the activity, despite her own fear of heights.

"Every consent form I've had to sign for everything ... I mean, he could have died that first day. He could have died in that first surgery. There was so much swelling in his brain and it was under so much pressure that we could have lost him. So reading all these risks of the medical procedures just to save his life and signing these consent forms makes letting him do some of this other stuff a little easier," she explains.

"Every time they operate on his brain, there's the possibility he wakes up and is unable to speak or walk. Everything we've done up until this point has been a risk. At least, if anything were to go wrong, it would be on his terms almost."

Amanda says that these moments have come to mean a lot to her family, as they're when Paxton gets to truly enjoy life to the fullest.

"This is what I want for him. I knew going into this that I wanted to preserve quality versus quantity and that's been a hard balance. I was prepared. I knew once you have a relapse, there's no cure for it. So I really wanted to be conscientious of when things weren't looking great, to be able to say, 'Enough is enough, go be a kid. Let's leave nothing undone,' " she says.

"It's been great watching him. It's the highlight for me, just watching him and seeing his expressions and seeing him live through that lens."

"In those moments, he's not a cancer kid. He's just living his best life," she continues. "To give him a full life when it's going to be taken away at such an early age is important. You hear adults talk about bucket lists, but not kids with terminal illnesses. There's Make-a-Wish but beyond that, there isn't much for a child that is going to die."

This experience has taught their family to "enjoy the now."

"You don't really worry too much about tomorrow. You make a few plans, but you live right now. I know as an adult, we get so caught up in having this bill to pay and that thing to do. Now every day is, 'How do we make today a good day for him?' Because what if he doesn't wake up tomorrow? What if any of us doesn't wake up tomorrow?"

Amanda has been grateful for the grace of her daughter Madison, 13, who has been "completely amazing" as the family navigates this difficult time.

"I tell my daughter that I don't want her to regret anything either. We took her out of things she had happening, and she's in virtual school so that she can be supportive of Paxton and spend more time with him. She goes along with things and is 100% a cheerleader for him," she says.

"I remember wanting to wait to take the trips to Disneyland because I wanted to wait until my kids were older. I missed out on all that time and now it's like, how do you cram a lifetime of what people do into literally a year?" the mom of two says. "We wing it. No two situations are ever the same. You just do the best you can with what you have."

Paxton's skydiving adventures led the family to more fun and wonder, with a trip to Honduras.

"We became friends of the United States Parachute Association president. We went out to lunch with him after Paxton's dive and they were joking about getting me up there, but I'm afraid of heights. And my husband pipes up and says, 'No mom's bucket list item is getting in the water with the sharks.' So Chuck, the president of the USPA, says he has friends who own a villa that you can rent out in Roatan in Honduras. So we were invited out by them," she explains.

The family recently returned and Paxton had a lot of unforgettable experiences.

"He got to zip line, see a sloth, learned to snorkel, got a taste of scuba diving — he only went about 6 feet under water. He even went snorkeling with sharks," Amanda says.

By sharing Paxton's story, Amanda hopes the world will realize his magic,

"You always know how special your own kids are. I never want him to be forgotten. I didn't want a world where nobody knew Paxton and who he really is, because it takes him a minute to warm up. I wanted people to know him and to know Paxton was here, Paxton lived and Paxton was special."

She also hopes it raises awareness of pediatric cancer to unsuspecting parents. "I hope people learn what pediatric cancer can look like in a kid."

"Paxton's initial symptom was just a lazy eye. That's what started everything. I wish I would have known more about what to look for. We talk about preventing SIDs or what different rashes mean but nobody tells you what the early stages of cancer can look like in your child," Amanda says.

The future is uncertain, but Amanda follows Paxton's lead and is living in the here and now, while he's "doing pretty well."

"He'll have another scan around August. The cancer is relatively small right now, still, but at some point in time, it's going to overtake his brain and he will sleep more and more. His brain will swell. It'll start to hurt."

Amanda wants those who have followed Paxton's story to know that it's felt "special" to see how many people care about her little boy.

"I've gotten different messages or had people come up to me and thank me for bringing him around," she says. "It feels special. Right now, he's doing what he wants to do. He's having a good time and that's really all that's mattered."

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