JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Two surgeries, a trans-Atlantic flight and several acts of generosity have all brought a young boy to Jacksonville for a chance at life.

A 4-year-old boy from England was recovering Thursday night at Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville after a 5-hour operation to remove a tumor in his brain, for the second time.

The child's mother, Rosalie Barnes, said she still couldn't believe all of what has happened to her son Alex.

She told Channel 4 her life was thrown upside down last February when Alex had the chickenpox. She said that's when her nightmare started to unfold.

"In the end, he didn't run around, and that's not Alex. He runs everywhere and jumps everywhere and he's very active and sporty. So, I thought, 'That's not like him. It's still not right.' So, I went to a different hospital and they did a C.T. scan and they found a giant tumor that was really, really big and really dangerous," Barnes said.

Alex was rushed to a hospital in the Barnes' home country of England to get an emergency surgery to remove the brain tumor. Then, came the more devastating news that the boy had anaplastic ependymoma.

Alex was too young for radiation therapy because the side effects could have been far too severe.

"He could have terrible memory problems, walking problems, speaking problems, all sorts of side effects -- none of them, all of them maybe," Barnes said.

Doctors gave Alex chemotherapy for 14 months, but as soon as they stopped, the boy's tumor came back on a more critical area of his brain.

Desperate for answers, Barnes said she knew she had to find another way to help her son. After searching on the Internet, she found a treatment called proton therapy. However, no one from the Barnes' home in the U.K. could do it.

Only five cities in the U.S. have facilities, and one of them is in Jacksonville.

"I thought, 'Well, my mother lives in Jacksonville. This has got to be fate -- the hand of God,'" Barnes said.

The problem of how to foot the bill for the surgery was solved when Barnes called the radio and TV stations in England desperate for help. She said before she knew it, the donations started to come and everything started coming together.

"I got checks from people for $1,500 from people I know can't afford it, to a complete stranger. They don't know him and they'll probably never meet him, but they still give their hard-earned money to someone they'll never meet," Barnes said. "How can you say thank you? Words are not enough."

Alex had his second tumor removed on Wednesday. In three weeks, he will undergo the proton therapy at Shands-Jacksonville Medical Center.