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'We make sure they know we're talking to their teachers,' said Meshell Woliver, one of the hospital instructors. That's why CHKD's 11 teachers keep up with lesson plans from patients' schools and run summer classes on everything from boats to space travel, with science experiments for the older kids. Christopher, weak, weary and nearly bald after seven weeks of treatment, immediately eyed the ice cream sandwich on his tray.Īt the same time, nobody wants to bend the usual rules of childhood too much.

'You get to eat dessert first when it's something cold,' said Scott Pierce, whose 10-year-old son, Christopher, has a rare blood disorder. Recent lunch offerings included chicken fingers, cheeseburgers, pizza, ravioli and macaroni and cheese, with graham crackers, brownies, apple turnovers, ice cream or cake for dessert. On a daily basis, kids get to place meal orders off a kid-friendly menu. 'It's because all of that stuff gets done to me,' she said.

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Keondra, hospitalized for severe pain from sickle cell disease, was a pro with the stethoscope, blood pressure cuff and tongue depressor. 'Take some cough medicine and I'll see you in two weeks,' 14-year-old Keondra Cuffee of Portsmouth told one of her patients last week, sitting in a wheelchair and jotting down 'sore throat' on a medical chart. An annual 'Doctor Switch Day,' for example, lets patients examine and 'diagnose' their doctors. 'He would go crazy if it weren't for all of this entertainment,' said his mother, Amy Ozmon of Chesapeake.īeyond having fun, the child-life staff also aims to give kids a sense of control whenever possible. Zachary has leukemia, and his treatments can take anywhere from six to 13 hours a day. 'Oh my goodness, that's a fast choo-choo,' Adams said. Near Sarah's chair, hospital volunteer Sherry Adams trailed behind 21/2-year-old Zachary Ozmon with an IV pole as the toddler pushed a line of trains around a floor track.

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'I'm watching 'Mean Girls' now,' Sarah said on a recent day, leaning back in an armchair with one of the hospital's portable DVD players. To kill the four hours typically needed for her checkups, she watches movies in a waiting area decorated in a beach theme (complete with surfboards and a 'hut' doubling as a restroom). Sarah is in remission now, but she still goes to the hospital's outpatient cancer and blood disorders center once a month. We'd joke about me being able to sleep in whenever I wanted.' 'I used to visit other people and party with the nurses. But sometimes, especially at night, they'll venture into the hallways, said Sarah Swaim, a 16-year-old leukemia patient from Virginia Beach. If kids aren't in an activity room, they tend to be in their rooms with the doors closed.

'She is so intelligent that she needs distractions from the day-to-day parts of being here.'Īs the Reid family discovered, CHKD can be surprisingly quiet for a place that averages 125 inpatients a day. 'Getting out of her room is an essential part of her therapy,' said Lori Reid, Julie's mother.

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