Hospital gives kids comforts of home
Doug Williamson, Windsor Star
Published: Friday, January 18, 2008
If Jessica Wolf were alive today, she'd love her new room.
Although Jessica did not die of cancer, her father's sister and mother-in-law both did -- in 1969 and 2002 respectively. So her family and friends at Transition to Betterness thought it fitting that room 3110 on the unit be named after Jessica, Karen Ann Wolf and Luigina Shincariol.
Eight rooms in the unit have been refurbished with eye-pleasing animal shapes on the walls, plasma TVs, CD players, PlayStations and even Wii units, all designed to make a once-sterile hospital environment comfortable and homey for children being treated after their initial cancer treatments.
Children in the unit are receiving chemo and other forms of therapy, thus avoiding the necessity of having to drive back and forth between primary cancer care facilities in London, Hamilton or Toronto. Transition to Betterness, or T2B, has been in existence for 11 years providing cancer patients with comfortable and compassionate hospital settings, working in this case in partnership with Windsor Regional to refurbish the rooms.
The project took five months and cost $250,000, paid for by fundraising and corporate sponsorships.
"It's wonderful, the atmosphere is so wonderful," an emotional John said during a tour of the brightly coloured rooms. "It's a very comfortable atmosphere for children."
Lisa Yascheshyn's sister Kerri died of cancer in 2003 at the age of 17, and would have loved the newly refurbished rooms, Lisa said.
"So much of her time was at the hospital," she said of Kerri's three-month illness. "She had friends that came in all the time -- it definitely would have meant a lot to her to have the comforts of home."
There are 22 children being treated at the unit, said Kathy Lyons, director of pediatrics at WRH. Of the rooms in the unit, four are for treatment and four are special isolation rooms for patients who need to be kept away from any possible infections.
The rooms keep "children at home," said T2B co-founder Doris Lapico. "They have their own space." She said when she first visited several years ago, she was bothered by the fact it was such a sterile unit.
"I said, 'Kids don't have a comfortable setting in this community, they need to make it feel like home,'" she said. "We are all winners; there are no losers in Transition to Betterness."
