Ryan (Age 5) Handprint Flowers Acrylic Painting
Item Details
Ryan (age 5)
Untitled (flowers), 2021
Acrylic painting on canvas
Unsigned
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital is on our route to the Cincinnati Zoo. Seeing as we have three young children, we would drive to the zoo quite frequently. Every time we would drive past CCHMC, we would take a moment to say a prayer of healing for the patients inside and a prayer of strength and peace for the families.
Never did we plan on being IN that hospital relying on the prayers of others for our 2 year old son. Ryan spent a week in the Intensive Care Unit in March of 2017 with a brutal pneumonia that turned into sepsis. It was a seminal moment in our lives. One that gave us a perspective only found within those walls as each ICU room contained a different family trying to cope with their own worst days.
My husband and I felt at the mercy of Ryan’s infection. Endlessly watching the monitors and willing them to go in the right direction. The only thing to hang on to were the only people capable of giving Ryan a fighting chance: the doctors and nurses. Not only did they care for Ryan’s body, supporting his own immune system as it tackled an attack on multiple fronts, but they held our worst fears in their hands. They listened and answered our questions with clarity, compassion and kindness. And they shared in our joy when it looked like we would come out on the other side. We are forever in their debt. For us, all of the education, all of the expertise, all of the research and the case studies and the drug trials, all of the patient care training and collaboration played a role in giving us the greatest gift.
We still say prayers for the families inside the walls of Children’s when we pass, but we have added prayers for the doctors, nurses and support staff who day in and day out provide the same nurturing care and medical expertise that were so instrumental in our stay there. There are no words we can say. No amount we could ever give to say how incredibly grateful we are to the staff at Cincinnati Children’s.
Beth and Jon
Condition
- no apparent conditions to note.
Dimensions
Item #
ITMG838095
