LEWISTON – Two years ago Karen Nash curled up in her grandmother’s chair, a white knit cap covering her small, bald head, and ticked off a list of Christmas wishes.

A lava lamp. Toys. A pair of doves. A FurReal kitten that would sit on her lap, purring on three AAA batteries.

Her parents wished for something a little bigger: a cure for the rare childhood bone cancer that threatened their 7-year-old daughter’s life.

Last week, almost two years to the day after the Sun Journal featured Karen in a story about her struggle with Ewing’s sarcoma, her parents announced their Christmas wish is a giant step closer to being granted.

Karen’s cancer is in remission.

“We got so much support, we just wanted to say thank you,” said Karen’s father, Fred Nash III. “That Christmas Eve, the phone rang off the hook with well-wishers and people wanting to know how to help. Even now, the thing that means the most to us and costs the least is the prayers.”

Once too sick and weak to do more than watch “Animal Planet” and play with her grandparents’ cats, Karen, now 9, is a bright-eyed fourth-grader at Trinity Catholic School, where recess is her favorite part of the day. She’s a Girl Scout, a video game aficionado and a talented artist who likes to sketch pictures of animals and Pokemon characters. Her hair, once devastated by chemotherapy, is long and thick.

She feels, she said simply, “Better.”

Karen got sick soon after her parents’ divorce four years ago. Doctors said the pain in her side was a bladder infection. Then a kidney infection. Gas. An injury from falling off her bike.

Then doctors found a baseball-sized tumor eating through her ribs.

They diagnosed Ewing’s sarcoma, which most often affects children and teenagers. About 150 young people are diagnosed each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

Doctors removed two of Karen’s ribs and started her on chemotherapy. She rotated weeks on and off the powerful drugs, driving every day to Portland with her parents or grandparents. She endured daily shots and near-daily blood draws.

When the Sun Journal profiled Karen just before Christmas in 2006, she was thin and bald with dark smudges under her eyes. Doctors had just discovered live cancer cells in fluid around her lungs and she was scheduled to return to the hospital for another round of chemotherapy and, right after the New Year, radiation.

Karen’s story ran on Dec. 22. Her parents began hearing from readers right away.

Some offered the toys on Karen’s Christmas list – she received four lava lamps that year. Some offered things Karen hadn’t even dreamed of – a redecorated bedroom with a canopy bed, a flat-screen TV, a Hello Kitty bedspread and pink striped walls.

Others offered prayers and get-well wishes.

Karen went through months of chemotherapy and a month of radiation. Doctors told her parents that she had a 20 to 30 percent chance of survival.

In the summer of 2007, Karen went on a Make-A-Wish Foundation trip to Orlando, where she did a weeklong, whirlwind tour of Florida’s most popular theme parks, played with dolphins, rode in a limousine and got made up like Tinkerbell. When she returned to Maine, her parents noticed she seemed to be feeling better.

Soon after that, doctors confirmed what the family had hoped: There was no sign of Karen’s cancer.

Since then, Karen has gone for checkups every three months. Her last visit was a couple of days before Thanksgiving. Doctors were so pleased with the results that they talked about moving those checkups to every six months.

It’s good news. But good news makes her parents nervous after dealing with bad news for so long.

“It’s kind of like waiting for the other boot to drop,” her father said.

Still, the family is happily adjusting to life away from hospitals and doctors.

“We’re getting a lot better night’s sleep,” said her mother, Ruth Doughty.

Doctors won’t consider Karen cured until she’s been cancer-free for nine years. In the meantime, between checkups, Karen leads a 9-year-old’s life – going to school every day; teaching her cockatiel, Mr. Cuddles, how to talk; planning a career as a veterinarian or “a person that tests games and game systems and stuff.”

Her parents say the family couldn’t have gotten through Karen’s ordeal without help. They wanted to thank everyone, from the companies that donated items for Karen’s bedroom makeover two years ago to the nurses and doctors at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital in Portland, where Karen received treatment.

“The outpouring of help, it was amazing,” her father said. “It didn’t cure it, but it made things a lot better.”