My first day volunteering at the Child Life Department at the hospital was nothing like I expected it to be. I did not imagine it to be a location for the “rejects of society”. My supervisor told me that these were not ordinary children and that they were passed on from other hospitals that did not want to deal with their long-term illness.
As I walked around the ward, I felt really disheartened because I grew up in such a different environment from these children. I never felt rejected by anyone and never had to experience the feeling that I was close to dying like these children were. It really started to hit me that they were so different from me. They didn’t really have any visitors and their family and friends were very limited. I felt bad that they had to go through the pain from illness and hospitalization all by themselves.
Every week, I would play with Chris, a liver transplant patient, to help him cope with his stressful experiences at the hospital. He recognizes that the presence of his illness has been a major disruptive force in his life as he began to lose friends and became more secluded from society. While we were playing Rock Band one afternoon, he tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I was going to leave him just like all the other people in his life did. I told him “of course not."
After a few months, Chris was discharged from the hospital. Before leaving, he wrote me a card to thank me for being his friend and that he had a lot of fun playing Rock Band with me. Every now and then, I would read that card and remember the smile on his face as he was leaving the hospital. A sense of personal satisfaction and happiness would linger in my heart because I was able to touch his life and help him fight through the battle.
No matter how busy I am, I still wake up early every Sunday morning just to be there for the kids. It is very rewarding to see that just being there can make a child smile for the rest of the day.
Wdidwid? Because everyone deserves to be loved and no child should be left behind. With only a pair of hands and a loving heart, I can do so much.
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