Students Help Ease Pain of Hospital Stay

During a visit Tuesday to the Columbia West Hills Medical Center, Calabash Street Elementary School students met for the first time people who said the fourth- and fifth-graders helped them through a very difficult time, a recent hospital stay.

As part of National Hospital Week, medical center officials invited students from their adopted school to tour the facility and meet with former patients who were recipients of the children’s letters, cards and drawings.

Calabash teachers said the experience of sharing letters has been a positive one for the children and the patients.

“We see high school students do more and more community service, but these students felt they were limited in what a 10-year-old can do,” teacher Pat Martin said. “But as a group, they can do a lot.”

At a brunch in the hospital cafeteria, the students were introduced to three former patients who wrote to the school after they were discharged from the hospital.

One patient, Jerry Sanders, was hospitalized with a stomach ailment on Valentine’s Day this year. He said he was hooked up to an intravenous tube and he didn’t want to eat, brooding over a missed romantic dinner with his wife.

But, he said, his attitude changed when he noticed the small card on his food tray.

“It made me feel so good inside because I was feeling sorry for myself when I got the note,” he said. “I stayed for three days, I had eight meals here and I got two notes on my trays. I was kind of disappointed when the other trays came and there weren’t any notes on them.”

The students said that although it is often difficult to know what to write to someone they’ve never met, they can see that they have made a difference for some of the patients.