I feel the need to say a little something.

[Doc]

I just spent most of the day down at the Shriners Hospital for a little Christmas celebration.

Parents, hug your kids, do not let them go.

Parents, love your kids and be thankful you have them at home with you for Christmas. I remind you to be gracious when they wake you up at an unholy hour on Christmas Morning.

Bloody awful really, and this year I will not be having any drinks to numb this sort of pain. It's an odd, unpleasant feeling for me. An empty aching feeling. Usually, after such an event, I would come home and go dead after a few drinks. I no longer have that escape, and now, here I sit with these feelings that I have no idea what to do with. Most unpleasant feelings.

My fellow human beings, please remember to be kind to one another this Christmas. Love one another.

[Griselda]

We spent my daughter's first Christmas in the hospital with her. She wasn't breathing very well and needed to be in an oxygen tent thingy with asthma treatment medicine piped in every now and then. Being that she was old enough (11 months) to be aware and terrified of the whole thing, I stayed in the tent with her. By the time I got out after 3 days, I saw fog in the corner of my eyes for a full day after that.

One nice thing about being in there around Christmastime is that people really do go out of their way to recognize the kids in there. She got two anonymous presents- one terrifyingly happy teddy bear that was about twice as big as she was (we called it "scare bear"), and a homemade M&M dispenser that had her name woodburned into it. It really meant a lot that people would take the time to do stuff like that, even though little Gris was too young to notice or care at the time.

Of course, there are kids that are a lot sicker than she was, and that must be a very trying experience indeed. 3 days is the longest I've ever spent in a hospital, and it was plenty.

[Doc]

We spent my daughter's first Christmas in the hospital with her.  She wasn't breathing very well and needed to be in an oxygen tent thingy with asthma treatment medicine piped in every now and then.  Being that she was old enough (11 months) to be aware and terrified of the whole thing, I stayed in the tent with her.  By the time I got out after 3 days, I saw fog in the corner of my eyes for a full day after that.

One nice thing about being in there around Christmastime is that people really do go out of their way to recognize the kids in there.  She got two anonymous presents- one terrifyingly happy teddy bear that was about twice as big as she was (we called it "scare bear"), and a homemade M&M dispenser that had her name woodburned into it.  It really meant a lot that people would take the time to do stuff like that, even though little Gris was too young to notice or care at the time.

Of course, there are kids that are a lot sicker than she was, and that must be a very trying experience indeed.  3 days is the longest I've ever spent in a hospital, and it was plenty.
[right][snapback]97847[/snapback][/right]

You are a good mom. All that oxygen was a danger to you... Er, I dunno what to say but wanted to say something.

What unnerved me today was the number of single mothers... Seeing a whole family was, well, rare. There were only like three or four whole families out of maybe 60 or so kids. Heartbreaking to me, and down even more from last year.

Some of these kids in here are victims of abuse. Physical abuse. Fathers or mothers that had beaten them. Or starved them. And other kids... There was all the usual suspects. Cancer. AIDS. Diseases of all kinds. There were some kids with no parents... Whatever horrible accident that had disfigured or hashed them had killed their parents. (Or parent, as the numbers seem to indicate)

I made it a point to sit down and speak with the horribly disfigured ones... Kids that were probably going to have to spend their whole lives with some serious scars or some sort of disfiguring mark. Kids are not stupid... And they don't need to always be sheltered. Some times, it's best to sit down and talk with them as equals, and not talk down to them, or treat them as children. Kids hate that. Kids also know when they are being fed a line of happy horse#$%& and just like adults, they don't like it either. It's good to sit down and shoot straight with them. Of course, a lot of the people that talked to them about being disfigured were full of #$%&. People with perfect faces, and perfect teeth, and perfect eyes, and perfect skin, trying to tell them how difficult life might be. Somehow I don't think those kids bought a single word that these perfect looking beautiful people were saying about how hard life was going to be. Frankly, it is of my own opinion that the perfect looking people do more damage to the kids trying to talk about these issues, and that somebody with practical experience, you know, somebody that is actually horribly scarred or disfigured should be having these sorts of chats with the kids and shoot straight with them.

I spent time with all of them. I read them "The Night Before Christmas." We had cookies. Some kids were obviously not in to it... And I reminded them that they were in the hospital for reasons they could not control, but being miserable was something that they did have power over. It's optional. And in their situation, maintaining power over whatever they did have some small say or control over was important. Quite a few kids got it... And attitudes improved considerably. A lot fewer party poopers. There was some concern by a few "child psychology specialists" about me talking to them like adults, but I had these kids in better moods and brought quite a few out of their shells, so some of those guys in labcoats are full of crap. Speak to these kids like idiots... With loud slow voices and carefully pronounced words, treating these kids like they were some moronic hothouse flowers... It really bothered me. These kids are sick. Not deaf or stupid. I can't bloody stand that stupid voice so many of the staff used on the kids. So forced, so canned, so full of crap. And the kids know it too, and it gets on their nerves.

I guess it gets on my nerves that some of these nurses expect these kids to act like kids... And these nurses have this hideous chipper attitude. Damn near impossible to act like a kid when you are hauling along an IV drip along with you as you shuffle down the hallway. Such a cold, clinical, textbook method of dealing with these kids. And it's wrong.

I just realised that I hate these visits. I think I always have, hence the usual bout of heavy drinking that always seemed to follow. I mean, I love the kids... And I love making them feel a little better if I can. I love handing out toys, and gifts, and spending time with them. I love giving them advice. But the staff... The nurses, the doctors, the adults, most of them have got to go. I can't stand those people. I loved being able to sit around with the kids today and talk about Harry Potter and how most of them wanted so much to go out and see "The Goblet of Fire" and they couldn't. One kid remarked he wanted to see it before he died... And he wasn't joking. Quite a few of them wanted to see "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" too. I very much wanted to pack them all up somehow and take them all out to the movies... I wanted to very badly. So much so that it ached. And it still does. I hate this feeling... Feelings like this drove me to drink. It's not bloody fair. Sure, it will come out on video someday, and they can watch it on the pissy little hospital tv in the rec room... But what about the kids that might not make it that long? And it's not the same, at least not to a kid (Or most adults for that matter) watching a movie on tv that they wanted to see in the theatre. In the theatre, it's huge, it's loud, the sound is better, and there is a certain magic. Somebody needs to set up a theatre right there on the hospital grounds and somehow make arrangements to have kids movies shown there at the hospital theatre.

Some of these kids hated Christmas. It broke my heart. Some of those kids had spent a few Christmases in this hospital... And they have become bitter and hardened. They have come to realise that just about the only time the outside world cares about them is on Christmas... Every other day of the year is the same old grind. It makes me sad to think about this... That some kid actually thought about that.

Reminds me why I have always hated Christmas my self.

I think I have said enough. I have so much more to say but would be accused of rambling.

[[wcip]Angel]

I'm a part of a Norwegian Internet community affiliated with the Battlefield/Counter-strike-series. I post at their message board, and I am a server admin on their Counter-strike Source-servers. About two months ago, the guys running the site (private individuals like Bolty and Griselda, who do these sorts of things simply as a hobby) launched "Juledugnad". I'll translate the first couple of lines:


Doing something for others.
Battlefield.no is an internet gaming community based on good, old-fashioned collaboration. It's amazing what can be accomplished by working together, and it was perhaps with this thought in mind that our propagandhi-minister and contact person Ghandi (or "Jostein" as he is commonly called), made the following remark in one of our internal admin-forums.

What about doing something for someone else? It's Christmas!

With this idea as a starting point, we started talking about what we could do, and we quickly agreed that it was about time we did something for someone else. And thus, "Juledugnad" (roughly translated: Christmas Collaboration) was born. And what did we want to do this time? What about donating gaming consoles to the pediatric cancer wards at St. Olav's Hospital? With this in mind, we started working behind the scene. But little by little, we had to start going public. After all, what's the point in collaboration, if you've got no one to do it with And what's a better starting date than December 1st?

In bed sick, on Christmas Eve

Sadly, this is the reality many children know. Not only are they sick in bed on Christmas Eve, many of them are also suffering from cancer, a sneaking, awful illness, that harms too many; even sadder, when children are afflicted. What's even worse, is that there's not much we can do about it.

Our Contribution
What we *can* do, however, is to make sure that their hospital stay is a bit less tedious! Seeing as this Internet community is based on people (of all ages) with an interest in gaming, it comes perhaps as less of a surprise that we plan to do this by donating video game consoles and games.



----------------

Basically, what we did was to advertise on our message board what we were doing and that we were going to collect and donate various gaming equipment to children who had to spend their Christmas holiday in a cold, sterile hospital. People sent in their Gamecubes, Playstations, X-boxes, Playstation Portables, Gameboys, etc to us, and we transported all the stuff by car to the hospitals (we got so many donations, we had to spread it out over two of Norway's largest hospitals, the one in Oslo and the one in Trondheim). After having talked this over with the various hospitals , we also learned that they needed DVDs and music CDs. Both private individuals as well as certain companies that distribute these things learned of our little project and started sending in more stuff.

We also asked people to donate money, and people have been *very* generous. As of December 23rd, I'm not allowed to say how much we've managed to collect and donate. All I can say, is that I had to pick up my jaw from the floor when I saw the number of contributions people had made. I was floored.

Granted, this is a kind of support that's a bit "unorthodox". What we *could* have done was to ask people to donate money to some cancer fund, but we wanted to do something different; something that we *knew* would affect those poor children. Another concern was that this could *not* become a publicity stunt for our website. We couldn't have newspaper reporters storming down the doors eagerly wanting a photo-op of one of our guys handing a poor kid an X-box.

Although this project was not for us, I must say I feel mighty proud having been a part of it, and I'm even more proud of all the people who donated their stuff. There was a Counter-strike-clan that donated 4.200 NOK (almost $650 (!)).

----

Somehow, I thought this story was relevant to the thread. If not, my sincere apologies.

[yangman]

Kids are not stupid... And they don't need to always be sheltered. Some times, it's best to sit down and talk with them as equals, and not talk down to them, or treat them as children. Kids hate that. Kids also know when they are being fed a line of happy horse#$%& and just like adults, they don't like it either. It's good to sit down and shoot straight with them.

It drove me nuts as a kid when adults didn't listen, now as a "young adult" and brother to a 6 year old, it irks me even more.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that feels that way.

[Doc]

It drove me nuts as a kid when adults didn't listen, now as a "young adult" and brother to a 6 year old, it irks me even more.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that feels that way.
[right][snapback]97854[/snapback][/right]

A lot of adults seem to forget what it was like to be a kid when nobody took you seriously.

[Doc]

I'm a part of a Norwegian Internet community affiliated with the Battlefield/Counter-strike-series. I post at their message board, and I am a server admin on their Counter-strike Source-servers. About two months ago, the guys running the site (private individuals like Bolty and Griselda, who do these sorts of things simply as a hobby) launched "Juledugnad". I'll translate the first couple of lines:


Doing something for others.
Battlefield.no is an internet gaming community based on good, old-fashioned collaboration. It's amazing what can be accomplished by working together, and it was perhaps with this thought in mind that our propagandhi-minister and contact person Ghandi (or "Jostein" as he is commonly called), made the following remark in one of our internal admin-forums.
With this idea as a starting point, we started talking about what we could do, and we quickly agreed that it was about time we did something for someone else. And thus, "Juledugnad" (roughly translated: Christmas Collaboration) was born. And what did we want to do this time? What about donating gaming consoles to the pediatric cancer wards at St. Olav's Hospital? With this in mind, we started working behind the scene. But little by little, we had to start going public. After all, what's the point in collaboration, if you've got no one to do it with And what's a better starting date than December 1st?

In bed sick, on Christmas Eve

Sadly, this is the reality many children know. Not only are they sick in bed on Christmas Eve, many of them are also suffering from cancer, a sneaking, awful illness, that harms too many; even sadder, when children are afflicted. What's even worse, is that there's not much we can do about it.

Our Contribution
What we *can* do, however, is to make sure that their hospital stay is a bit less tedious! Seeing as this Internet community is based on people (of all ages) with an interest in gaming, it comes perhaps as less of a surprise that we plan to do this by donating video game consoles and games.

----------------

Basically, what we did was to advertise on our message board what we were doing and that we were going to collect and donate various gaming equipment to children who had to spend their Christmas holiday in a cold, sterile hospital. People sent in their Gamecubes, Playstations, X-boxes, Playstation Portables, Gameboys, etc to us, and we transported all the stuff by car to the hospitals (we got so many donations, we had to spread it out over two of Norway's largest hospitals, the one in Oslo and the one in Trondheim). After having talked this over with the various hospitals , we also learned that they needed DVDs and music CDs. Both private individuals as well as certain companies that distribute these things learned of our little project  and started sending in more stuff.

We also asked people to donate money, and people have been *very* generous. As of December 23rd, I'm not allowed to say how much we've managed to collect and donate. All I can say, is that I had to pick up my jaw from the floor when I saw the number of contributions people had made. I was floored.

Granted, this is a kind of support that's a bit "unorthodox". What we *could* have done was to ask people to donate money to some cancer fund, but we wanted to do something different; something that we *knew* would affect those poor children. Another concern was that this could *not* become a publicity stunt for our website. We couldn't have newspaper reporters storming down the doors eagerly wanting a photo-op of one of our guys handing a poor kid an X-box.

Although this project was not for us, I must say I feel mighty proud having been a part of it, and I'm even more proud of all the people who donated their stuff. There was a Counter-strike-clan that donated  4.200 NOK (almost $650 (!)).

----

Somehow, I thought this story was relevant to the thread. If not, my sincere apologies.
[right][snapback]97853[/snapback][/right]

That is just about the most awesome thing I have read all day. Thank you, you have officially made my night bearable.

Money is quite often the very WORST thing you can donate. Money will ALWAYS wind up mired in some committee or some beaurocratic swamp debating the proper way to spend it on whatever. You NEVER want to give money when you have the option to give something else instead. Money gets tripped up by people with agendas. Some of those people with agendas would have never have bought those video game systems for those kids, because so many child professional types believe that videogames = bad. Cash donations might get turned in to idiot crap... Like cowboy wallpaper along the walls because some dolt thinks that the wallpaper would be "cheerful" and so much better than an actual distraction from the pain, like a nice Nintendo would be. Because that person that makes that decision is an idiotic #$%&tard that shouldn't be anywhere near kids.

Nice work. You did good. Real good.

[DeeBye]

Parents, hug your kids, do not let them go.
[right][snapback]97843[/snapback][/right]

I got two goodnight hugs from my son tonight :D

My brother once spent Christmas in a hospital. He had Whooping Cough. I was really young, but I do remember visiting him and feeling really bad that he was seemingly all alone in a hospital for Christmas. It was really sad.

[jahcs]

Doc, perhaps some of the hospital help was putting up a facade to prevent the hurt of seeing so many sick children day in and day out from digging too deep.

I do agree with you that the children deserve to be treated like people and not "moronic hothouse flowers," as you so aptly described it.



[wcip]Angel, congratulations on a successful charity drive. And than you for not making it into a commercialized media circus. You kept the event for the children and didn't turn it into some advertising stunt.

[Occhidiangela]

----
Somehow, I thought this story was relevant to the thread. If not, my sincere apologies.
[right][snapback]97853[/snapback][/right]

It is relevant, and you guys roxor the universe for doing that true spirit of Christmas thing. :D

*Applause*

Occhi

[--Pete]

Hi,

I'm a part of a Norwegian Internet community [right][snapback]97853[/snapback][/right]

And a 'community' is indeed what you are, in all the best senses of that word.

Thank you.

--Pete