An extremely rare medical condition caused doctors to believe that Reagan Sullivan wouldn’t reach her first birthday. Her parents, Pat and Kari Sullivan, were persistent about her care and found the right treatment for Reagan, who celebrated her 10th birthday this week.

Reagan Sullivan rips the wrapping paper off a birthday present and tears into the box.

“Sponge Bob coloring explosion,” the Langston Hughes third-grader shouts out. “Awesome, thanks.”

A 10th birthday may not seem like a monumental event, but it is to Reagan’s parents, Pat and Kari Sullivan.

“It’s a major event, double digits, 10 years old,” Pat Sullivan said. “It’s a milestone for her and a milestone for us.”

That’s because doctors didn’t expect Reagan would even make it to her first birthday. She was born with an extremely rare condition called hepatic and pulmonary hemangioendothelioma.

The disease caused lesions or tumors to form all over Reagan’s liver and lungs. She was in congestive heart failure and unable to breathe or eat on her own. Reagan spent the first year and a half of her life on a ventilator.

“The doctors had written her off and had thrown up their hands and said, ‘We can’t do anything for her,’ and we refused to accept that,” Pat Sullivan said. “We got a second opinion and a third opinion.”

The family, living in Arizona at the time, spent three months at a children’s hospital in St. Louis. Pat Sullivan was prepared to donate a portion of his liver to his daughter, but she was too sick to undergo a liver transplant.

“We wanted to do anything we could to help her and hopefully help her survive,” Kari Sullivan said.

The Sullivans refused to give up hope. They eventually came across a doctor in Boston who recommended the use of chemotherapy.

The treatment worked, but the battle was far from over. After Reagan was removed from the ventilator, she had to undergo intensive therapy to learn how to do everything machines were doing for her during the first year and a half of her life.

It took her until the age of 5 to learn how to eat solid food.

Reagan won’t have cake at her Hannah Montana birthday party Saturday. To this day she still has trouble eating certain foods.

But as her parents watch her and look back over the last decade, they can’t help but be amazed.

“She is special,” Kari Sullivan said. “She’s absolutely a miracle.”

“Everything that Reagan went through, she’s still here,” Pat Sullivan said. “Yeah, it was a horrible five years, but we’ve still got her. We’re lucky.”