What started as a promise during cancer treatment ended with a hug at a high school graduation in Kansas City, Missouri.
Dylan Mwaniki was 14 when he was diagnosed in 2022 with Stage 4 kidney cancer. Doctors gave him eight months to live.
He is now cancer-free and a graduating high school senior, and his family says Dr Mary Austin helped him through far more than the medical treatment.
“We made arrangements to grab a lunch together and he’s met my kids, and it just evolved naturally as a friendship,” Austin told CBS News.
“She’s my partner in crime,” Dylan said. “I call her my second mom.”
“She chose to check on him, just like a mom would,” Dylan’s father, Paul Mwaniki, said.
“Every step of the way,” his mother, Lucy Mwaniki, said.
Through 52 weeks of chemotherapy, Austin stayed by Dylan’s side, especially in periods when his family said there was serious doubt he would live long enough to graduate high school.
“She just hyped him up,” Lucy said. “Like, ‘I promise you if you keep going through with this and you can live, I will come to your graduation.'”
“Just that trick of saying, ‘Hey, I’ll make it for your graduation’ changed everything. He just decided, you know, he has the will to keep fighting,” Paul said.
“Her making promises like that and kind of giving me hope definitely uplifted my mood,” Dylan said.
Austin now works at Seattle Children’s Hospital, about 1,500 miles away, and getting to Dylan’s graduation in May was difficult.
“She has not made one promise that she hasn’t kept,” Lucy said.
“And we’ll forever be grateful for that,” Paul said.
Dylan’s parents kept Austin’s visit a surprise until the day of graduation.
“Be kind. Be kind. Be kind,” Lucy said.
Read more from CBS.
