When Your Village Is Life or Death

Imagine for a minute you’re moving along regularly with your life when something catastrophic happens. Maybe your baby is born with a disability. Maybe your preschooler is in a car accident and has sustained brain trauma. Maybe your teenager falls just six inches the wrong way on a playing field and can no longer move his or her right side.

They are horrible things to imagine right?

Now, imagine this: after these traumas, you of course devote yourself to your child’s full time care only to find it is nearly impossible because one doctor is in the central part of your state, the physical therapist is in the northern part of the state and your speech pathologist is down south and only sees people every other Tuesday. Imagine with all of this you also have to change your entire physical space and much of your lifestyle in order to bring your child home and you’re not sure even exactly how.

You want to stop imagining, right?

Thankfully, there are places like Children’s Specialized Hospital. At Children’s Specialized, the staff works hard to make all of these terrible situations just a little better for families. Not only do they have top notch doctors and specialists, they go beyond medical care to help entire families learn to live well with an often radically new life. At Children’s Specialized, they’re not just focused on the best patient care, they are committed to the best family care in and out of their facilities.

I had the absolute honor of visiting the Children’s Specialized site in New Brunswick last week where I was privileged enough to hear about the incredible work they do and see first hand how they have thought of every little detail for families in their care.

There are state of the art family lounges with kitchens and laundry areas for those that may be in for the long haul to be able to feel a little more at home. There are resource centers with information for every family, no matter what brought them in.

There are rooms for kids and tutors that have been completely transformed into classrooms so kids can feel like their schooling is happening at school, not in a hospital.

And the therapy room and pool are a sight to behold. It is hard to think of what Children’s Specialized is missing because they seem to have everything one might need for healing of every kind.

The best part about Children’s Specialized Hospital is the variety of services they offer, from PT and OT to tutors and family support specialists. Just when parents need to focus 100% on the welfare of their child, they can, because they don’t need to worry about tracking down all the pieces of the puzzle as they are all under one roof.

Here is where we come into play. Children’s Specialized is as beautiful and complete as it is because of donations from people like you and I. Every time you fill out on of those balloons at the grocery checkout for Children’s Miracle Network, you are donating to places like Children’s Specialized.

Right now,  we are starting our Miracle Marathon with Children’s Miracle Network. I will be running a mile every day for the next 26.2 days (really 27-we rounded). For every person who donates to my team or even starts a team of their own (It’s not too late) that money will go directly to places like Children’s Specialized. You can choose which hospital you donate too and every day you’ll get a message from another success story that happens in part because of generous people like you who are willing to run for or donate to these kids.  Please, consider helping kids like Joshua and his family. Without us, he may not be able to “dance and love it”.