Picking presents for their peers
Published: November 14, 2006
Ruth Ruley was pushing her son, Doug, in a wheelchair through the aisles of the Wal-Mart Supercenter toy section Monday when a Hot Wheels display caught his eye.
While still clutching a large black teddy bear in his arms, he started by picking out a five cars of different colors on one side of the display. But then they turned the corner. And then he decided he needed to pick out five more, including a miniature airplane.
The Cedar Rapids boy was one of four children who got to participate Monday in the shopping spree for toys for the children in the Children’s Hospital of Iowa at University Hospitals. The youth has been in and out of care at the children’s hospital for all of his eight years, his mother said.
“I think it’s helpful,” Ruth Ruley said. “It gives them something to do. It motivates them to do everything they need to do. It lets them know they’re special.” [In Sickness and in Play: Children Coping With Chronic Illness]
Children and child life specialists from the Children’s Hospital of Iowa had a total of $5,000 to spend in one afternoon, thanks to the Aiming For A Cure Foundation.
The Aiming For A Cure Foundation began locally in 2003, formed by Steve Ries of Alburnett and his son Ben. The nonprofit organization focuses on children with cancer, like Ben, who died last year.
“It has brought a whole new donor group to us,” said Lisa Baum, director of the Children’s Miracle Network at the Children’s Hospital of Iowa.
The Aiming For A Cure Foundation also organizes a two-day pheasant hunt each year featuring four hunters who are teamed with a celebrity participant. The next hunt is March 16-17 at the Highland Hideaway Hunting complex in Riverside. In the three years since the hunting event started, the foundation has raised nearly $200,000 for children, Baum said.
At the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Coralville, the child life specialists and interns started shopping at noon, filling carts with toys for children and teens of all ages.
“We noticed with working with the kids, what some of them brought from home and what children like,” child life specialist Robin Ostedgaard said.
The child life specialists at the Children’s Hospital of Iowa work as part of the healing team, developing activities everyday for children in the hospital. There are designated playrooms in the hospital, or activities are taken to the rooms of children who need to stay there.
The Children’s Hospital of Iowa has the longest developed child life program in the state and is a national leader in family-centered care, Baum said.
“It was fun. It was fun to try them out,” Ostedgaard said of buying toys for toddlers. She said she preferred buying more developmentally based toys rather than electronic ones.
“That’s what I try to keep in mind when buying for the toddlers, development and safety,” she said.
Although the four child shoppers were picking out toys that they wouldn’t get to play with themselves, the store gave each shopper a stuffed animal as a participation prize.
Three-year-old Megan Sacia carried a yellow Funshine Care Bear by the ear as she filled a shopping cart with mostly pink princess items.
Megan was 2 years old when she was diagnosed in April 2005 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Her 8-year-old brother, Adam, was the first prenatal diagnosis of cystic fibrosis at University Hospitals.
“This is pretty cool,” their mother, Stephanie Sacia, said. “They were very excited,” talking about the other kids at the hospital and what they thought they would like on their drive from their home in Eldridge to the store on.
“The whole child life program makes what they have to go through there so much more tolerable,” she said.
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