The truth is, there is a tremendous amount of fear involved in parenting. If you could measure the amount of love you have for your child, the amount of fear you have concerning your child would challenge its height.

From the moment you find out you are pregnant, you have feelings of joy and excitement, followed by fear that you are now responsible for another person’s life.

When your baby finally sleeps through the night, you have feelings of elation, followed by fear that they aren’t actually breathing.

When your child is ready to eat real food, you enthusiastically  prepare delicious meals, followed by an unsettling fear that they might choke on any given bite.

When you leave your kids with a babysitter, you savor a few quiet moments by yourself, but it is always followed by a fear that something bad will happen while you are gone.

When you drop your kids off at school, you are excited about the challenges they will face that day, followed by a fear that something could go terribly wrong.

With every great moment, fear lingers.

But the greatest fear, a fear that is always present, is the fear that you will outlive your child. From car accidents to school shootings to cancer, the media fills parents’ heads with unsurmountable amounts of fear. Anything can happen. And all we can do is hug our children tighter, make them feel our love a little stronger, inhale their beings, be scared, and hope everything works out right. As long as we are parents, there will be fear.

There is a little boy I know. I am sure you all know him by now. And for this boy’s parents, this fear has become a reality. It is not some distant thought that ‘oh my, this could potentially happen to my child’…. This IS their child. Their worst fear is standing in front of them.

But thanks to some incredibly compassionate people (and a little help from social media), Chimerix, the drug company withholding the sole potential key to Josh’s survival, heard our voices and carved a new path for their drug. A path that starts with Josh Hardy and will hopefully lead to thousands of other patients who will benefit from this new policy.

Josh deserves to live. He deserves to walk on his own, drink water when he wants, go outside when ever he feels like it, and play sports with his brothers. And his parents, his amazingly strong, loving, and inspiring parents, deserve to have fear, as every parent does, but not the kind of fear they have been faced with this week.

There is an amazing energy, an aura, surrounding this little boy. I am certain that he can feel the love and support pouring in. And by being a hero and releasing the drug, Chimerix is giving Josh a chance to see all this love and support first-hand. He will see it and he will have one heck of a scrapbook to show his kids.

Please continue your positive support and hope and pray that the Brincidifovir heals Josh and gives him another chance at life.

If you haven’t already, LIKE the Save Josh Facebook Page, to show your support and receive the latest updates. On Twitter use #savejosh.