Tag: You are Here

Our Kids Inspire Us

Posted in Compassion, Family, Resilience, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment

Often times, it’s our kids who inspire us.

They don’t know that they’re supposed to feel bad for themselves.  They just want to feel better so they can get back to being kids.  They bounce back quicker, not just because they are young, but because they want to move forward, they want to get past their illness.

They don’t dwell.

Even if they’ve had a crappy day, a day filled with pain and anxiety, with pokes and prods and tests and sticks, even after surgeries, or chemotherapy, or dialysis, or injury, they go to sleep and the next day they re-evaluate.  If they are better, even just a little bit, you can tell because their eyes are clearer, their smiles are wider, they want to do more things.    We as parents help them celebrate small victories, marking their progress the way we mark their height in tiny increments on the kitchen wall.  We are their cheerleaders, and they are our heroes.

SickKids in Toronto has launched a new ad campaign called “VS.” It’s a moving video showing sick kids versus their illnesses. It shows kids as knights, or prize fighters, or motorcyclists, or professional wrestlers.  It shows them beating the odds.  It is powerful because it manages to show you the steep hill they are climbing with these illnesses in a short amount of time.

Watch it here.  Have tissues ready.

The picture I’ve posted above is of Wendy.  Here, she is four years old.  She had spent over 100 days in the hospital, she was taking 14 medications in different combinations, every two hours.  She was on five blood pressure medications, and she was getting up to eight shots a day of insulin. You might not recognize her because she had chubby cheeks because she was in kidney failure and one of her medications made her grow extra hair all over her body.   But just look at that smile.  That’s a kid who still played on the playground, climbed up trees, swam in the pool.

We just worked the medical stuff around her.

The other night Wendy and I were lucky enough to be invited to an event for the hospital, called the Storybook Ball.  At it, there were many people who had heard of her video and came up to her, both to tell her that they had cared for her as a patient, and that they were inspired by her video.  It couldn’t have been possible without the Architectural Firm Payette, who led the way through the whole cartoon.  They utilized all of their extra talents, the ones they don’t use every day, to create this video.  Wendy inspired them, and they created an inspirational work.

They have written about the video from their perspective, and you can read that on their website.  It is fair to say that it is impossible to thank them enough.

One of the sweetest moments since the release of the video last week, was a short email from an Emergency Room Attending Physician.  She wrote to say that she was already using it with her patients when they arrived and that it seemed to be entertaining and calming to them.

It’s so amazing to know that after all that time, after all that work, that it’s going to make a difference in the life of kids who are in pain.  It’s actually working.

This kid inspires.  Lots of kids inspire.  They teach us to keep moving forward.

I’m going to end this rather short post with one of my favorite quotes, one that reminds me of lots of kids like Wendy, lots of Brave Fragile Warriors:

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”
― Mary Anne Radmacher

 

You Are Here! With Wendy!

Posted in Compassion, coping, Education, Emergency Department, Resilience, UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , 8 Comments

The Cartoon has been completed and sent to the hospital!

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should read the #projectW blog post first.)

After over two and a half years, through multiple drafts, multiple meetings, and multiple mediums, we have a finished product that will (hopefully) benefit young children and their parents.

Picture this.  Your kid gets hurt, to the point where you need to go to the emergency room.  Your child is in pain, and is scared, and is nervous.  Do you know what is going to happen?  Probably not, because not many people spend a lot of time in the Emergency Department.  So you as a parent are also stressed and wondering what is going to happen.  Most stress in the hospital happens in the waiting room of the ER.  So how can that be alleviated?

Wendy and I wrote this little story with that in mind, giving an introduction to the Emergency Room and to the hospital in case the child gets admitted.  It runs about nine minutes long, enough time to get settled and have your questions answered.  It also gives you some suggestions on how you can prepare yourself for when you meet the doctors.  You can write out what hurts, when it started, what you’re worried about, how you feel, and it will get the conversation going more quickly.

So it’s designed to alleviate stress and foster communication.  Imagine if all hospitals worked on ways to incorporate these things into their care scheme.  We had whole teams on this project, both in the hospital and at Payette, an architectural firm that specializes in hospitals.  In the hospital, the Family Advisory Council brought together a group of experts to comb through the script.  There were doctors, nurses, social workers, and child life specialists, who all added their advice and counsel.  Then at Payette, there was another whole team of creative people who put it together.  There were animators and musicians, people who were good at the storyboarding and composition.  There were people who spent Saturdays recording Wendy’s voice and teaching her some elocution so she could enunciate well.  They made sure they included Penny in one of the pictures (that’s Penny getting the thermometer over her forehead!) and they included Wendy’s stuffed animal Teddy who has been through all of the hospitalizations with her.

And get this, all of these people did this out of the goodness of their hearts.  Nobody was paid for a moment of any of this, through months of preparation, meetings, and work.

They did it because they thought it was important.

Think about it another way.  Every time you go on an airplane, you get instructions on what is going to happen during the flight, including what might happen in an emergency.  Do you get the same instructions when you go into the Emergency Room?  Why not? Wouldn’t you feel better, as an adult, if you did get some instruction or information while you were waiting to be seen?

Now imagine how much scarier it must be for a kid to be hurt and worried.

Here is my hope.  My hope is that this post and video go wild, that it helps thousands of sick and scared kids, that it inspires other hospitals to do the same thing.  I hope it encourages collaborative efforts because they are important, not because someone is going to get all the money or all the credit associated with it.  My hope is that there are fewer sick and scared kids, but when they arrive to Emergency Departments around the country that they will be given an introduction on what they can expect so they won’t feel so lonely and vulnerable.

Please watch this video.  Please think how many people put their hearts into this production.  Please share it widely.

https://vimeo.com/186454486

Thanks to everyone for your support through these efforts, including your kind words and suggestions.  Thanks for not letting me give up on it.

I asked Wendy what she thought about the whole thing, the more than two years, the different iterations, the meetings, the pictures, the recordings, and she just said, “I think it’s pretty cool and I think it’s going to help a lot of kids.”

She said it better than me, and in fewer words.