Dear Children's Hospital,

I have to admit - I wasn't a fan of you for a real long time. You were the epitome of embarrassment, anxiety, and humiliation. All things a seventeen-year-old girl hates. Your attempt to cover up the crippling fears lingering throughout your building with Pink Unicorn elevators and colorful chandeliers made me want to barf. The chipper smiles of your staff did not comfort me in the slightest at first. In fact, it felt like they were mocking me...that my pain would go away if I just put on a smile and pretended like this place was Disneyland.

Every time I entered through the Yellow Submarine elevators, I panicked. I wanted to kick and scream and run as far I as could from where you stood, looming over a city who often forgets you exist. Walking through your sterile halls would make anyone uncomfortable. I didn't want to see seven-year-olds in wheelchairs or newborns with scars on their recently formed chest. I hated coming face-to-face with the reality kids much younger than me were living and, therefore, hated you because of it.

Despite the bitterness I held towards you, my attitude towards you changed after my unplanned lengthy stay, and I have to say "thank you".

I don't think I will ever be able to understand how your staff works in such a depressing place with such contagious joy. Thank you for the dependable smiles, silly jokes, and upbeat personalities that help ease the fears in each patient no matter their age. Thank you for the calm way your doctors, surgeons, and nurses explain critical information to nervous parents and guarantee their devotion to a cure. Thank you for their passion for healing. Thank you for the way your staff goes above and beyond in order to bring the best care to their patients. Nurses and CNA's easily became family simply after a few weeks' stay.

Thank you for the bright artwork that distracts from the dark presence of worry and grief. Thank you for the way your colorful chairs and cleverly named corridors bring smiles to many who forgot they were allowed to be happy. Your cheesy signs were easy to make fun of which brought much needed comic relief to a too-cool teen and her mother. (And even though I acted like I hated the animal themed wings, I couldn't contain my giddy and excitement when I found the elevators that brought me to the giraffe halls.)

Thank you for your carefully ordained outside space of beautiful gardens, spacious patio, and long pathways which quickly became my father's sanctuary to decompress and breathe. Thank you for your game room which offered my family and I a place to play Bananagrams and BS as we awaited test results. There was so much laughter in that room. Thank you for your cafeteria which allowed my family to eat dinner around a table for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. There was so much comfort in that moment. Thank you for your purposed spaces to bring peace to fragile families.

Children's Hospital, thank you for all the good you do in the midst of a painful reality. You offer hope, joy, and comfort in incredibly selfless fashion. You allowed my stay with you to be a memory I can look back on with gratitude.

So, thank you.

Sincerely,

One of many satisfied patients