THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 13, 1994 TAG: 9410130487
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
The shrill beep, beep, beep of the machine sounds its warning. Two-year-old Rachel Adkins has escaped again, pulled off her ventilator tube and started wobbling down the hall.
Who could blame her? It's moving day for Rachel and the 11 other children at the Transitional Care Pavilion, a unit of Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, and Rachel is ready to roll.
After seven years as the stepchild of the hospital, the unit, located off-site in a medical office building across Hampton Boulevard, is moving into bright and sunny digs in the $72 million addition to the hospital that opened last month.
This is a unit on which ventilator-dependent children like Rachel spend months, often years, tethered to the hissing machines that breathe for them.
It is here that they learn to walk, to talk - often using sign language - and to wean themselves, if they can, from the life-giving plastic tubes that snake from a hole in their throats.
It is a unit where toddlers lie unnaturally quiet on their beds, dully watching ``Sesame Street''; where laughter is soundless because of ventilator tubes; and where the heavy slap, slap, slap of the respiratory therapist's hand on a baby's back is a normal background noise.
And, until Wednesday, it was a unit that was drab and cheerless. Where rooms had two tiny windows to let in the world, and where an annual parking-lot picnic was the kids' only introduction to the outside.
It was during that picnic over the summer that Rachel, who had just turned 2, took her first steps. Barefoot, her tiny toes feeling the cool grass for the first time, she walked to the applause of her nurses.
Rachel, also afflicted with dwarfism, was admitted onto the unit at 7 months, when her lung collapsed during a bout with a respiratory virus.
Since then, she has become the pet of the ward and is, says her mother Michelle Adkins of Roanoke, spoiled rotten by the nurses, respiratory therapists and teachers who tend to her.
On this moving day, for instance, they have dressed her in a bright red dress with an oversized, Peter-Pan collar, red socks and canvas sneakers so clean you know they've never been worn outside.
Because she is hungry, and breakfast is waiting at the new unit, they give her a box of Cheerios and let her scatter the cereal across the floor, mindless of the mess because they are leaving for good in an hour anyway.
In the bed next to Rachel's, her best friend, 2-year-old Shaneisha Currie, whom everyone calls Dutchess, is ready to leave. A Barney doll clutched between her legs, Dutchess is trying to be brave, but she's scared. Everything she knows is in this room. Silent tears leak down her face as they wheel her out.
Then it's Rachel's turn.
``Bye, bye, Rachel. We'll see you in a few minutes over there,'' the nurses call as she is wheeled out, a silver and green oxygen tank strapped beside her as a precaution.
There is just an instant during the journey to the outside, just a moment, when Rachel's face crumbles and it seems as if she is going to cry. But it passes with a hug from her nurse, Tammy Hanks, and a comforting squeeze on her intubation bag, which helps her breathe while she is disconnected from the automatic ventilator.
And once on the unit, it's like Christmas has come early.
Rachel's crib, a shiny purple balloon tied to its rails, overlooks the floor-to-ceiling windows of one of two outdoor courtyards on the unit. The courtyards have electricity and gas outlets so the children can be rolled out in their wheelchairs or beds to enjoy the fresh air.
Built-in shelves already stocked with her favorite toys line the wall of Rachel's cubicle, a vast improvement over the under-the-crib crates in which they were stored before.
Rachel squirms on her crib as Hanks checks her blood pressure and temperature. She wants to get down, wants to play. Not have her diaper changed.
Finally, Hanks pulls down her dress and sets the toddler on the gleaming floor.
Ventilator tubes trailing behind her, she pads over to the shelves and begins pulling down every toy onto the floor.
``It's a lot nicer for her here,'' Hanks says. Then she looks at the mess Rachel has made and sighs. ``But I'm not so sure about us.'' ILLUSTRATION: LITTLE FRIENDS SHARE BIG DAY
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
[Color Photo]
John Morton, a cardiac technician, and Alicia Adams, a respiratory
therapist, move Rachel to the new hospital unit.
Rachel Adkins, 2, lies patiently for a hug from her friend,
Shaneisha Currie, also 2, before they begin the move Wednesday to
their new quarters at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.
Ventilator-dependent children spend months, often years, in the
unit.
by CNB