When John Rufo learned his baby daughter had a cancerous tumor on her kidney, he stepped out of the hospital emergency room and vomited in the parking lot.

“How can anything go wrong with a 10-month-old baby, especially my child? It’s such a young age. It’s something that is just unfathomable,” he said. “Children are supposed to be untouchable. You let them grow and experience and become adults. You expect that to happen to older people, not to children.”

Diane Rufo, an occupational therapist, felt the hard lump of a Wilms’ tumor on Milana’s side a year ago and knew instantly something was very wrong with her bubbly, wide-eyed daughter. There was no time to stop and think or let the bad news sink in, she said.

“You put your head down and you plow right through,” Diane said.

On the advice of pediatrician Susan Brown, the Rufos drove straight to Children’s Hospital in Boston. Milana spent two weeks there, undergoing surgery to have her right kidney removed on Halloween last year.

From there it was a whirlwind of daily doctors appointments, chemotherapy and radiation, Diane said. Throughout, the couple dealt with their worries as Milana’s weight dropped and hair fell out as she underwent treatment. There were no more trips to the park or play dates. Relatives were asked not to drop by for fear Milana might catch a cold. One trip to the isolation chamber for a mild case of the flu was enough, Diane said.

But now Milana is on the mend – her last round of chemotherapy ended in June – and pent-up emotions have poured out.

“You’re so busy, you don’t really have time to get depressed,” Diane said. “After everything was done we both fell apart.”

John still feels the anxiety of the past year. He calls his wife daily to check on Milana.

“She’s out of the woods and you sit back and look at her and she’s running and playing and laughing and then it hits home, more or less like a wake-up call: this terrible thing had taken our daughter,” John said. “Everything comes kind of like a freight train in a way. You step back and sometimes I cry for no reason, just looking at her.”

Out of the three of them, Milana may have taken it the best. She’s quick to smile and eager to share her toys – though not for too long – despite her ordeal. She was a “trooper,” Diane said, Milana kissing her nurses’ hands even during injections or when they’d draw blood.

But if Milana walks away with no more than a few surgical scars, Diane and John will live with what they saw during daily trips to the hospital: dozens of children as sick or more so than their daughter.

To help, the couple has partnered with friends they made since last Halloween to coordinate local blood drives for cancer patients.

It’s the least they can do, John and Diane said. They received a lot over support over the past year and want to pay it forward. Treating Milana cost $300,000, which the family was able to offset through fundraising, social services, insurance and help from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Jimmy Fund. They also received a lot of emotional support from friends, co-workers and doctors, the couple said.

“As they say, every pint helps four kids,” John said. “The more blood that they’re going to get ... the more that get better.”