Camp

Okay so it's now June 19th? It's been about a month since I've been home from Denmark and it already feels like my study abroad experience was months ago, as if I went last fall rather than this past semester.

Looking on the bright side of things, I am working at a sleepaway camp for the summer. While I will not disclose the name of the site, since I'm writing this on a public blog, I'll just say that the camp serves kids from 6-16 with life-threatening/chronic illnesses. So far I'm into my fourth day of training and it has been great so far. I'll be working with girls ages 9-12 but I won't be sleeping in the cabin. Instead I will be sleeping in the program staff building, which is essentially like old hotel rooms with 2 queen-size beds and private bathrooms in each room. Although I haven't had a roommate since freshman year, I'm digging the queen-size bed and the privacy. It will be nice to have my own place to go to at night and not get woken up at 2am by a camper. So far in training we have gone over the various illness of the population we serve: blood disorders such as hemophilia, sickle cell, and HIV; neuromuscular disorders such as cerebral palsy and spina bifida; cancer, and some others. It was a lot of information to take in at once and I left feeling a bit overwhelmed and nervous about forgetting how to take care of a camper. However, everyone here is extremely helpful and friendly, and all the returning counselors were helpful in reassuring us that not only will we learn over time, but there will always be other counselors around to work with us. Some of the things are easy to remember, such as hydrating the kids (especially for sickle cell) and sunscreen (especially for cancer), which are things we should be doing for all the kids anyway since it is summer. Although the pictures of the various types of catheters, which are tubes that go into a child's body be it in the chest, side, or stomach, were a little disturbing and made me feel a bit queasy. I think that will take some time getting used to. Today we went over how to lift children safely out of wheelchairs so as not to hurt ourselves or the child, which was not only extremely important information, but helpful.

I've already cried about three times this week, so I'm sure it will be an emotional summer. Everyone here talks about how magical this place is, and I cannot wait to experience this for myself. This camp allows children to be a normal kid for one week and to have fun. For one week in their entire life they get to be out of the hospital, run around, and do fun summer activities that the rest of us take for granted. For some children, this will be there first time getting into a swimming pool, or their first time on a horse or the high ropes course. These children who are told "no, you can't do this" their whole life, get to prove everybody wrong. So I can't wait to experience that. Listening to some of the staff's stories, there are counselors here who were former campers. They all have such moving stories. Two individuals who were former cancer patients, talked about how they don't regret having cancer, and how they are happy they had cancer, because then they never would have come to this camp as a camper and found this place. Isn't that so amazing? As human beings, we tend to focus on the negative things in our lives, especially on the negative aspects of illness; yet it takes a really strong person to look at something so difficult as cancer, and find the goodness in it. So I'm already feeling inspired to do good things and to stay optimistic and I've only been here for 4 days!!