Thursday, July 26, 2007
I figured it might be good to explain a little bit about Shriners Childrens Hospitals. But I also figured it would be better coming from Mrs Duck, since shes the one with experience.
As you can see, Sparky is blogging for a very special organization called Shriners Hospital for Children. Unlike most Children's hospitals, Shriners services are free of charge to all children under 18 years of age that suffer from a special ailment, such as in my case, which was a brittle bone disease. Shriners in Philadelphia specializes in Orthopaedics with residents doing there interships under some of the finest Orthopaedic surgeons in the world.
I was a very fortunate individual, seeith that I have a very rare bone disease that not many doctors were familiar with. When I was diagnosed as a 7 year old, back in the 1970s, there were under 500 total diagnosed cases of my particular disease. And that was across the world numbers. As you can imagine, there were not a lot of doctors lining up to treat me, in fact, most were unwilling to even touch me. Fortunately for me and my parents, we were referred to Shriners.
At the time i was treated at Shriners in Philadelphia, it was a full service hospital and clinic. I can remember spending many days sitting and waiting for doctors to see me, from X-rays and attendings and then the orthopaedic surgeons themselves, there were alot of lines. Now, you would probably think that all that waiting would be a nuisance for a child that was in pain and could not really move. However, that was not the case, many of the greatest moments that ever happened to me happened in the waiting rooms of Shriners. I was able to meet and see other kids that had ailments that were many times more severe then mine was and there stories were something that I will never forget. I always say that Shriners not only gave me excellent care for my many bone problems, but they also gave me my mental health. I was able to see, that while it was extremely painful at times (i will spare you the details) but it also helped me to recognize that I was not alone and that there were so many children out there that had things much worse then I could ever imagine.
When I first signed up and was accepted into the Shriners family, my mom was told that Shriners would benefit much more from me then I would benefit from them. I always feel that my experience is what made me into the adult that I am today and I also know that some of the information Shriners gathered from treating me will help in researching and helping others who are diagnosed for my particular disease.
Don't forget the little button in the right hand corner of the blog if you wish to make a pledge for this weekend and thanks for reading.
Posted by Sparky Duck at 6:19 PM
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