Ryan Butler, 2, left, and his aunt Mae Parks, 10, center, spend time drawing as Brett’s sister, Dana Butler, 5, right, looks on at the Butlers’ home on Grange Hall Road a few weeks ago.(The Vicksburg Post/C. TODD SHERMAN)

A Vicksburg toddler is set to take a trip by air Wednesday, something he also did shortly after he was born. This time, though, he’s headed to a place where the goal is to have fun.

When Ryan Butler was born to Brett and Tracy Butler in a Chicago hospital two-and-a-half years ago, he had a rare heart condition that required a helicopter airlift to a different hospital for immediate specialized care. Three heart surgeries and a move to Vicksburg later, he and his family are set to board a jet to Florida Wednesday to spend a week at Walt Disney World, courtesy of a nonprofit wish-granting organization.

“He had two holes and two bad valves (in his heart), and the left side of his heart was too small to function,” Brett Butler said. “It was just big enough to get blood through.”

Beginning two days before his first heart surgery, when he was 3 weeks old, Ryan required the support of a mechanical ventilator to stay alive, Butler said.

“He was hooked up to 13 fluids all at one time,” Butler said.

In April, doctors at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago completed the three-surgery series they used to treat Ryan’s condition which is called hypoplastic left heart syndrome and affects about one in 5,000 newborns.

Every four to six months Ryan continues to make visits to Jackson’s University Medical Center for checkups by specialists, but his prognosis is good, the Butlers say.

“He’ll never be 100 percent,” Butler said. “He won’t be active as a football player. But he’s getting better since the surgeries are done you can tell.

“We tell him to repeat some words. We say cookie’ and he’ll say cookie.’ We say cake,’ he’ll say cake.’ He already knows how old he is. He’ll say 3′ because he thinks he’s 3 already.”

Left untreated, about 95 percent of babies born with the same syndrome do not survive their first month of life, according to the University of Michigan’s congenital heart center. The condition may be treated with the three surgeries or a heart transplant. What causes the condition is not known.

Brett, 29, and Tracy, 26, moved to Vicksburg from Chebanse, Ill., a town of about 1,200 people eight miles from Chicago, in May 2001, after Brett accepted a job at LeTourneau Inc. Practically all of Ryan’s medical expenses, which Brett estimates will total between $1.5 million and $2 million, have been covered by insurance, he said.

“They did a Ryan Butler week,” Brett said of Chebanse’s pulling together in support of his son before the family moved. He added that Ryan participated in ceremonial duties such as throwing out the “first pitch” for sports teams near there, and he was to perform a similar duty Friday at the Jackson Bandits hockey game in the Mississippi Coliseum.

On their New Year’s trip, granted by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Mississippi, Ryan and his family are to stay at a group of cottages called Give Kids the World, foundation spokesman Casey Traxler said. “There will be other wish children there,” she said.

Butler said the staff at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s suggested the Make-A-Wish program when the family was there for Ryan’s third surgery.

“We get referrals from parents, guardians and medical professionals,” Traxler said of the foundation that finds the children it treats to such trips.

She said Ryan made his wish known.

“He pointed at the pictures of Mickey Mouse,” she said.

Traxler said the Mississippi Make-A-Wish Foundation granted about 140 wishes in 2001 and has granted about 100 this year. She said the organization’s goal is to grant about 120 wishes in 2003.

The national program began in 1980 when a Phoenix, Ariz., 7-year-old with a terminal illness was granted his wish of being made an honorary state trooper. By 2000, it had granted more than 97,000 wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses.