When I sat down to write a reflection of Purdue Dance Marathon 2015, I had trouble getting the words together in any manner that did the event justice. I was feeling so many different emotions at the close of the marathon; I couldn't tell if I was happy or sad, relieved or worried, elated or exhausted. I am sure, to some extent, that I was experiencing all of these sensations in some capacity, but my jumbled head couldn't make anything of them -- at least not until after a nap.
As corny as it is, a dance marathon is not something you can fully understand from the outside nor fully explain once you have participated. This year I participated as a committee member and I can hardly imagine the rush of emotions Executive Board members felt when those numbers were held up, knowing that they put their full heart and soul into the event. I have lived all of my life around hospitals and examination rooms, but for a very, very different reason than the Riley kids have. My dad is a surgeon and my mother is a nurse, so the medical world is nothing foreign to me. I played with stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs at the same age that I played with Barbies and Polly Pockets. It was not an uncommon thing to jump up onto my dad's lap in his office and see an exposed femur or tibia on his computer screen. Hospitals were fun to me -- I got to wear a fake white coat of my own and go on rounds with my dad on his less busy or gruesome clinic days. I loved the smell of the hospital, the nurses' smiling faces, and the fascinating technical "thingymabobs" my dad messed around with on the regular. This past semester, most importantly, this past weekend (the past 18 hours to be specific) I got to experience the viewpoint from the other side, on the rudimentary scale upon which I could see parents and children who had excruciatingly different memories of their first encounters with doctors and hospitals.
Recommended for you
And it broke my heart.
I am lucky. I am so incredibly lucky. My siblings and I have never visited a hospital other than for minor knocks to the head or easily sewable flesh wounds or socializing with our parents. I live in a fantastic bubble where hospitals were great and fun and not a place of sadness and worry. As the families were speaking, I tried to put myself in their place. It was naive of me because I am neither a parent nor a sick child, but I tried. I imagined my own mom hearing the news that my little sister needed an immediate and invasive procedure or that she was missing a donor for the transplant she needed or that the insurance payment didn't work out. In a world where my biggest worry is a B in a class, this was so difficult for me. My realm of experience and understanding was SO limited it made me frustrated and relieved all at once. If I were any of these families I would never want to set foot in another hospital or ambulance or transplant center ever again. But, oddly enough, this was not their perspective.
Until recently, I had never set foot in Riley Children's Hospital; however, now that I have and now that I have attended my first Purdue Dance Marathon, I completely understand what the families are saying when they say they believe Riley is a home to them. The staff was smiley and helpful and the hospital didn't look very much like a hospital to me at all. There were swanky child's life areas where wonderfully patient and skilled people work with the kids to sensitize them to hospital life and treatment; there was seemingly every accommodation that families could ever want or need. The combined experience of touring Riley and meeting families had me hoping that when I have kids (which, mind you, I didn't even really know that I wanted) I want to live near a facility like Riley because it would feel safe.
So why do I dance? I have no personal Riley stories or personal experience with needing extreme health care, I am the farthest thing from personal inspiration. That's true and that's not where I get my inspiration. One look into any of these kids' eyes and you can feel their spirit. You can feel the love that radiates around them and their families and those that work to care for them and you just want to be a part of it. You see their excitement to come hang out at dance marathons and interact with all sorts of college students and you want to be there. I want to be there! It is true that kids are resilient -- they are some of the strongest little suckers I know! I look up to them. I wish that everyone in the world could experience their exuberance and I want to work hard to see that they carry that exuberance with them for as long as possible. These families are the true American heroes. I dance also to raise awareness. Not many people think about what being a sick child is like. I think an even smaller number think about the fact that they could be the bone marrow or blood transfusion match that could save a child's life. If everyone I knew donated blood or was registered as a marrow donor, the world would be a very different place. There are often too many people with the "not me" or "not my problem" mentality. I dance to change that!
I question everyone: What impact could you make with just 18 hours of your life?
I challenge everyone: Find out.
