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Elizabeth and her design team

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First-grader Elizabeth is a fashionista. Her "passion" as she puts it, is designing dresses and she hopes to one day make it her career. When she was three years old, however, her future didn't look so clear.

Six days after her family had moved to Reno, Nevada, Elizabeth was diagnosed with leukemia. Her father was just starting a new job, their things were still in boxes and all of a sudden, their world was turned upside down. "We had no support network," says Elizabeth's mom. "And then we had a new diagnosis to make sense of. It took a while to find a new normal." That new normal included 26 months of cancer treatment.

The treatment was hard on Elizabeth and her family. Then came a major infusion of support and positivity from the nonprofit Make-A-Wish, an organization that grants the wishes of children battling critical illnesses. The hope of a wish was something Elizabeth really needed; at the end of 2019 when she learned her wish was coming true, she still had six months of treatment left.

Last November, Macy's celebrated with Elizabeth at her local Macy's store in Reno, NV and surprised her announcing that her wish to design a dress was coming true.

ElizabethAll photos courtesy of Macy's

"The middle of winter, drained from 20 plus months of treatment, it really gave us something special to look forward to," said Elizabeth's mom.

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