A Single Sheet of Paper

Much of the past week I've spent visiting Damien, my two year old grandson, at Mott's Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The rest of that time, I spent with my one year old grandson, Donovan, so that his mother could be at the hospital. It was during this time that I realized just how important paper can be to a child.

My grandson Damien was diagnosed with nephrotic syndrome, a nasty, chronic kidney disease that required him to be hooked to an IV for four days while they replenished the protein in his bloodstream and gave him other medications intravaneously. His veins in his arms were too small so they had to place the IV on the top of his foot which made him even more immobile. The first two days in hospital he was too ill to do much but lay cuddled in my daughter's arms. However, on the third day his albumin infusions perked him up and the prednisone made him hyper. Nothing would calm him, not videos of his favorite movies, or the television, or singing or even when some volunteer high school girls came in to try to cheer him up. What did calm him and occupy him was paper and crayons.

Mott's has a wonderful Child Life center which offers video games, VCR's, and a lot of toys for chronically ill children to utilize and make their time in hospital more normalized, less stressful. They had a plethora of coloring books with familiar Disney characters and similar themes but my grandson, inventive as ever, colored the cover of the book and then went on to find napkins. Whenever he had to have a shot or a medication or had to have his blood pressure taken, my daughter brought out the crayons and paper and Damien would draw and draw and draw until he finally decided that the bed sheets were fair game.

It made me realize that something as simple as a sheet of paper and a marking implement could mean the difference between being uncomfortable and being happy, even in the worst of circumstances. As I walked around the halls of 6th Floor Mott's I noticed that several of the walls contained pictures that some of the chronically ill patient's had drawn, Other walls contained poems written by inpatient's. There were two things that struck me:

1. A child named Tyler whose room was decorated like a bedroom, even down to the sheets on the bed and curtains on the window. This child had spent a large portion of her life in the hospital and had made it her own by creating signs, posters, and pictures on paper that were stuck on the walls of the room. She'd even painted a large sign that hung from her door and said "Tyler's Room".

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