thats when he decided that he would build a shrine that would be a living place of children hopeless children with hopeless diseases hopeless children like daniel dr thomas merchant the division chief of radiation oncology told nightline in 2008 that daniel had great surgery hes getting excellent radiation hes going to have very strong chemotherapy still merchant acknowledged at the time that the survival rates for this type of cancer are very low i just cant even bring myself to say survival is not very common he said daniel underwent a series of mris to determine if the surgeons in upstate new york could remove the entire tumor in his brain and to see if cancer cells were still spreading he and his mother lisa then met radiation oncologist dr larry kun who informed them that there was no sign of spreading to the spine which is good for you and good for everyone i actually stayed up late one night researching they say once it gets to the spine you have to take action immediately daniel said at the time the spine just connects to all the organs thats true kun added and your spine looks perfectly good surviving treatment with strength hope faith despite the good news daniel still had a difficult journey ahead as he began a rigorous and painful course of treatment in an effort to save his life hes on a protocol that is very intense probably one of the most intense in the nation for this type of tumor so we have to hope that there are children who are going to survive this said merchant daniels radiation dose needed to be big enough to stop the cancer from returning while doing as little damage as possible to his brain it is a dose too strong to give to children under age 3 without causing significant brain damage throughout the treatment daniel was relentlessly optimistic saying he feels mentally and physically strong and doesnt ask why me hey you cant change it so why bother he said i would rather me than other kids who probably couldnt take it and i was the person who before all of this was afraid of needles and stuff like that so i pretty much right now am not afraid of needles as much as i was before daniel and i talked the first night the neurosurgeon told him that it was cancer and we were curled up together in the hospital bed and i said to him you know what daniel im going to turn off all my emotions right now except for strength and hope and faith said his mother lisa we have to get through this and i said to him im not going to cry about it because i cant i have to stay strong and he squeezed my hand and ever since then weve just thought this is something we have to do chemotherapy for children i was horrified by