Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501160042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If all goes well, Summer Dunford will be home today listening to her favorite artist, Tim McGraw, sing "Don't Take the Girl."
Friday, though, Summer was the first of six children to snip through a paper-doll-strewn ribbon to open a Children's Hospital wing at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley.
Summer, 8, was the only child in the group who was an inpatient at Community; the others are being treated at the downtown Roanoke hospital as outpatients.
She has been hospitalized there since Christmas Day, receiving chemotherapy for a pre-leukemia condition.
Her parents, Tim and Penny Dunford of Pulaski, expect to take her home today.
The hospital within a hospital, which cost $900,000 to create, is for children like Summer, said Dr. Preston Boggess, director of pediatrics education at Community.
Boggess wants to provide a level of care in the 20-bed wing that will allow sick children to be treated near their Western Virginia homes rather than forcing them to travel to larger medical centers.
With 15 teaching physicians who oversee about a dozen interns and residents, Community hopes to become a regional children's treatment center, getting referrals from facilities other than its 13 sister hospitals owned or operated by Carilion Health System.
"I'm excited to see the cover of the book, and now we can put the pages in," Dr. Ron Neuberg said.
To him, the wing is the physical environment that can contain special programs to help sick children and their parents cope with the emotional distress of illnesses.
And what an environment it is!
In the entrance hallway, an interactive play wall, designed by a California artist, has crank handles that move the animals or the Norfolk & Western train in it. Throughout, furnishings and wall trims in plum, blue and yellow make the place look more like a play school than a hospital. Designs stenciled around overhead lights offer even bedridden children a playful view.
"It's scary enough to be treated with chemotherapy and [by] people in white coats without having it happen in a dreary place," Neuberg said.
In a wall of photographs of doctors, nurses and support staff looking very off-duty, Neuberg wears a Mickey Mouse hat.
Neuberg, who was an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia, came to Community Hospital in July to develop a program in childhood cancer and blood disorders.
Even though the diseases he deals with are life-threatening, about two-thirds of the patients will get well, Neuberg said. Treatment programs need to change from "focusing on disease with a high risk of dying to focusing on a disease and going on with life," he said.
The Children's Hospital gets some funding from the Children's Miracle Network, and it has attracted $74,000 from other donors who are recognized in one-of-a-kind tiles designed by Roanoke artist Jennifer Willis.
Tile sizes were dictated by the size of the donations, and one of the largest tiles honors Jonathan Lawson, who died in April at age 2 of a rare brain tumor.
His parents, Timothy and Jeannie Lawson, gave the hospital $13,000 from money raised by the community for a bone marrow transplant Jonathan never got.
"We have another $10,000 to give, also," Timothy Lawson said Friday as he and his family left the introductory ceremonies.
The wing will be open for tours today from 1 to 3 p.m. Staff members will be there to explain the place they helped design, and characters Ronald McDonald and Hamburglar will team up with a clown troupe to entertain children.
Next week, patients will begin moving in.
by CNB