Pizza and Parents

The event at the UCSF Children’s hospital was a great success. The Family Advisory Council (FAC) hosted a pizza dinner for the parents of kids who are in the hospital. As is often the case, it started out slowly, with everyone keeping to themselves, but as the time passed, the parents started visiting with one another. As you may imagine, it was easy for everyone to find common ground.

Because all of the members of the FAC are also parents of kids who are or were frequent patients at UCSF, we too could relate. Sometimes we relate generally, as parents of sick kids, and other times it’s specific. For instance, one mom rather shyly asked what my daughter’s condition was and I told her. She told me her otherwise healthy child had just been diagnosed with a specific disease. She was devastated. I said, "Oh, you need to meet Ms. X. right over there. Her daughter has the same thing. The two of them chatted the rest of the night. I know that woman felt better after talking to another mom dealing with the same disease. Spanish speaking parents could converse with Spanish speaking members of the FAC and get information they might otherwise not be able to get.

We had about twenty stockings full or goodies to raffle off. The goodies included hand knit scarves donated by the mom of one of our committee members and $5 Starbucks cards donated by Tim’s boss. The parents loved it. Many had returned to their children’s bedsides by the time the drawing happened. I had the happy job of delivering the goodies to the parents who didn’t know they won. Generally, I do not like to invade someone’s space in the hospital, but knowing they had filled out the raffle ticket and would welcome the intrusion, I was happy to have the job.

As the event wound down the members of the FAC munched on the fabulous desserts and chatted with one another. One mom had us laughing about getting her daughter airlifted out of Yosemite. Admittedly, this is not normally a funny situation, but this group lives this and is able to see the humor in these situations. At that point, her daughter was not in huge danger, but they were so remote that airlifting was the only safe thing to do. She spoke of feeling like a movie star as the helicopter landed in a field with tourists and her husband snapping pictures. She said when they asked her weight she knew she could not lie. It was a helicopter, and if she lied about her weight, they could all go down. She did not want to be responsible for that. Someone else suggested giving them to total weight of mom and child and averaging them. I said I would make my skinny husband go.

I hope a dreary holiday in the hospital was brightened even a little bit for those families.

I know mine was.