We finally left Hershey Children's Hospital last night around 6:30pm. We drove to the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) to thank everyone there, make sure we checked out, and show Emma where we had lived for the past week. Emma made lots of friends (nurses, Respiratory Therapists (RT's), student nurses, social workers, Megan-someone hired to go around and keep the kids happy, the man with the Great Dane that visited the patients***, resident doc, attending doc, student doc, volunteers who come play bingo with the patients and siblings and hand out amazing gifts, tons of Ronald McDonald volunteers who go around with their Ronald McDonald cart every few hours). We asked Megan if there were many patients that don't have parents stay in their room 24/7. She said oh yes. Tons. We started to notice as we walked by the rooms - rarely any had people in there. One child we passed often had bandages on his feet and hands and he lived in a caged crib basically with the TV on all the time. Every so often I would notice a parent. I assume they either have other kids to tend to or have to work. But it just broke my heart. Aaron said he had so many opportunities to whip out his skills there - so many people in need. He wanted to offer to go read to the one kid. He would be down at the Subway and people notice each other's blue bracelets us parents had to wear, and you start chatting. The next thing you know, he said, the woman is crying about stuff. There were grandparents there from NC. Their grandson had a hole in his heart and had to have surgery to fix that and some things. 6 month old grandson. I almost puked when they told me because I just thought of Judah being stuck in a crab cage with a 5 inch scar down his chest attached to IV's etc. It was almost too much to bare seeing some of these kids. They were at full capacity while we were there - Emma had just gotten a room open up Sunday for her. 125 kids from 0 to 18 I was told. Wow - what a mission field. And so many volunteers at the hospital and the RMH. Holy cow. This blew my mind and every volunteer that I spoke to told me how blessed they were and how fun they have doing what they do. Do YOU volunteer? I may help out at church at times, but there were so many people that blessed us in our stay there, whether paid or volunteered, totally blessed us. Emma said she wanted to be a "Megan" when she grows up. I can definitely see that about my Emma. I can tell you I am going to call my hospital and see if they'll let me volunteer somehow. They'll probably kindly tell me no but I'm gonna try. Maybe I could bring Kattor. Or Judah. People like babies. I could take Judah around - he sure had an affect on the people at Hershey Hospital, sick or not.
****So, the gentleman that brought his Great Dane around to visit the children at Hershey's Hospital - odd fella. He was, again, a volunteer, bringing in his own dog "Banelli", on his own time, to make children smile. Us Detwiler's who love dogs, freaked out. Judah was ecstatic. The man asked if there was anything wrong with Emma's legs. She said no. He said, pat your bed. Sure enough, Banelli jumps up on her hospital bed. A Great Dane! It was so awesome. I was so intrigued, I asked this guy how he ever got the name of Banelli? (I am fascinated hearing stories of how people come up with names). He seemed so proud as he said, "It's the name of my shotgun." I smiled and thought, what the hell kind of man comes around telling kids he named his dog after his shotgun. Yikes.
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