More letters!

As a senior taking pediatrics, I have an assignment to visit and critique a pediatric-related web site.  While browsing through the virtual pediatric NP site, I came upon the virtual hospital tour for children that you have created.  What a fabulous site!  You present the hospital to children as an adventure and the chance to encounter a brave new world.  I am glad to say I will be using your web site for my assignment and will be giving it rave reviews.

I have to tell you how excited I am about this site. I will visit it often. Keep up the awesome work, the kids are well worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I find that I am very apprehensive with the disabled students at my school.  I like them, I talk to them, but somehow I am afraid of offending them in some major way.  Unfortunately, I probably confuse them with my strangeness.  I guess it's kind of guilt that I do not have  to walk on crutches and wear braces, or depend on a wheelchair and deal with deformities.  Or to adapt and deal with blindness and deafness in a visual and hearing discriminative world.  I am floored!  I am so happy to find your site.  This is the kind of thing I have been looking for, and I am so happy to see this kind of dedication!

I want you to know that I thing the website you have created is outstanding and truly creative!

What a wonderful web page! As the mother of a child with a genetic disorder, I appreciate any helpful ways to cope with daily life.  This is great for adults as well as kids.  My son is 21 now, but what a help this would have been years ago. Thanks for studying and effectively helping people who have to deal with the daily battle of teasing. Words do hurt as much as stones.

Great site - keep up the good work - I'm sure it's brought joy to many young people.

I found your site about a week ago and believe it's the best thing I have ever found on line.  As a pediatric nursing instructor it will be most beneficial to me in trying to teach students about chronically ill children.  Since we just got internet access at the community college where I teach, several of us spent an afternoon reading the children's pages.  We were extremely touched by them

All I can say is what a great site.  Thank you for all your hard work.

I am a pediatrician in private practice for the last 20 years. I was greatly impressed and moved by your web site. Thank you for such a worthwhile effort. I learned a lot from reading the children's comments and poetry. You are to be commended. I will recommend this web site to all my patients with chronic illness or deformity.

This is the greatest page I have found on the web yet. I am so excited to show my 10 year old son.

I am overwhelmed by the vast amount of information you have put into this endeavor.  I am teaching a nursing course covering chronic conditions of all ages.  I plan to visit this site often and have already recommended it to others.

I just wanted to let you know how fabulous your site is...I'm impressed. You're doing a great job and a real service to sick kids and their psychosocial issues.

Loved your site!  Your love of children in truly apparent...thanks for your hard work!

Yesterday someone  passed your site along to me and  I  then spent  the rest of the day looking at all the pages. I have never  been  to a site that's made me stay till I looked at all the pages.  You  have  done more than an outstanding job with the Band-Aid's & Blackboards web page.

Super project!  I hope to be able to use this next fall with my 4th and 5th grade ESL students.  Especially liked the kid friendly hospital tour.  Bravo!

What you're doing here is great... just great.  All the doctors in the world should know about this so sick little kids can go there.   I was dx'ed with MS when I was eighteen and it tore me up... I can't imaginefinding out something like that as a child... the incredible courage those kids show bowls me over. Well, thanks again for doing such a wonderful thing.  Keep up the great work!

Thank you for this website... I have spent some time perusing it crying and laughing.

Kudos to you for a very imaginative, fun, important web
site; very well laid out, great site map, and creative use of audio clips.

...just visited your web site.  It is the best one I've seen. You are very talented!

I just found this site tonight, and I am thrilled. I have been reading it since I found it, and I am so impressed by what I see.

I think that the writings found in band-aides and blackboards are eye openers.  I want to thank you and all the writers (children and adults) for giving me insight into their world to help me understand a little more.

I really like your web site and the way you communicate to children on it...you really worked hard on it and it's very creative and original.

After literally thousands of hours online, I happened upon your site just this evening...having read & reviewed, written about and recommended (or otherwise) more sites than I could ever count, I've never before been motivated to respond to a creator.  More than words can express, I love the site you have assembled - your focus, aims, everything!!!!  What a fabulous resource for children with chronic illness and their often overwhelmed family members!!  I've not only bookmarked it, but will make it a #1 recommendation not only to patients, but to fellow librarians and teachers as well.  You have created what I've dreamed of finding - and it is like reaching out over the Web to find a soul-mate whose vision and mission so closely matches my own.  I come from an educational background rather than a medical one, but the overall focus is the same, nonetheless - reaching out to children with these illnesses and disabilities, helping to raise their own self-esteem and self-acceptance, while at the same time, to help others better understand the unique yet universal aspects of life with a chronic illness. Thank you for creating a real treasure!!!

I stumbled on this site through Hospice Hands, and am simply amazed at it's fresh and sensitive manner of addressing chronic illness in children.

Pleasant AND informative for all ages! Applause,Applause!!! Keep up the good work and I'll spread the news!

First of all let me express how amazed and thrilled I was by your site.  I do believe this will help my daughter Elizabeth in entering 7th grade this year.  I will also use it as a tool to help the teachers and staff try to have some understanding of being a pre-teen with a  disability.

I like the way you presented  chronic illness as not defining the child but the child as a person dealing with the illness the best way possible with the most amount of normalcy.  This site will help me and my teaching in preparing the kids and families for the transition from hospital to home life and school. Thanks!

Your site is incredible, it is such a creative and innovative way to teach empathy and understanding. 

*Terrific* site. It will be featured on the back of the upcoming issue of Pediatric Basics Magazine, the journal of infant nutrition and development published by Gerber Products Company.

What a great and very important site. Thanks from a special educator in Pennsylvania.

 What an incredible job you have done at presenting this very sensitive, difficult, emotional material... I just wanted to tell you how enthralling your web site is, and how excellent the information contained therein.  I intend to recommend this site to other teachers for using in their classrooms. Thank you for this excellent resource.

I am putting together a library program proposal for serving  hospitalized children, and came across your website in the course of  my research.  I have enjoyed it tremendously and learned a great deal. Thank you for taking the time to put it together.

I really enjoyed looking at the information on your Band-aides Web site.  It has really good information.  I definitely give it an A+. It  was sad to learn that there are many children that are very sick and how they have to deal with it in school. I think that it is very important for teachers to know how to deal with these children and to make sure they are accepted by their peers.  I am a teacher myself and one of the things I tell my students during the first week of school is that one of the classroom rules is to be friendly with one another and to not call anyone bad names or hurt your friends feelings and to accept each other as we are. I also want to thank you very much because your web site had  some tips for teachers.

I am an elementary school counselor and I stumbled upon your website by accident, but am glad I did.  I really like the way you have it designed for kids.  The colors and graphics are so comforting to look at. Thanks for doing such a great job.

First off, I would like to say what an absolutely great idea this site is!!!  It is wonderful that people who suffer, or know someone who is suffering from, a chronic illness have a place to go.  This is excellent!!  The stories and comments first hand are fantastic.  It really puts things into perspective.  I simply can't say it enough....  GREAT JOB!!!

I just came across your beautifully conceived and executed Web site.  It's one of the nicest I've seen. Contgratulations!

I just checked out your website and I am SO impressed! I only read 4 of the teens' stories, but they were all so moving and so articulate. Kudos on a fabulous, colorful, easy-to-navigate site.

Thank you for this page.  It's people like you who make a difference in the world.

 I love this site. I'm sending it to every teacher I know...Thank you...for an inspiring and beautiful page!

As a web designer and child advocate it is indeed refreshing to see a site that weaves  wonderful content,  elegant wit and engaging graphics. Thank you for a wonderful addition to cyberspace! KUDOS!

I just wanted to say that this is one of the best web sites I have ever visited - it is informative in so many ways- please keep up the good work - hopefully the world will one day begin to understand about those with special needs and treat them the same way as those without.

Great site, thanks ;)  Something Children of all ages can benefit.  Copied a few of the excerpts and placed them close to my heart.  As a school nurse I have been touched  and torn by many children and adult issues.  Thanks for sharing.

Terrific web site . In doing some surfing to enhance my class on Chronic Illnesses in children I found you!  I teach Maternal-Child nursing and I thank you for this valuble resource.

Wow, your page is one of the best I've seen in a long time!  The graphics, language used, and how you taught kids about other kids with chronic illnesses, and about how to handle teasing was great.  I got so much out of this page, and I'm 19!  Just wanted to tell you what a great page this is!

While there are some web-sites out there for chronically ill children, there are none (that I have seen) that are so well written and so complete.  I am greatly impressed with what you have created and what you are still creating.  I have yet to explore your entire site, but just wanted to drop you a note to let you know how much your site is appreciated by myself and soon, by the children at the hospital.  Your site is soon to be set as the start-up-page on our kids' computers.

Your website is incredible. It makes being sick on any level more tolerable just to know someone else is out there and that you are not alone.

I wanted you to know how wonderful I thought this site was. I am a Physical Therapist who has been working with children in the schools for more than 15 yrs. I am going to recommend this site to our entire school staff (regular ed and exceptional ed)...Thank you for this wonderful service to children everywhere.

I would just like to take this opportunity to let you know that I think your site is the best on the web.  What a wonderful place for kids, parents, and healthcare professionals.  I linked to your site from the PENS homepage (pediatric endocrine nursing society). We do a featured site each month and this month it was yours.

Loved your site!!!! My son is the sensitive one who is always coming up against the class bully. I am going to share your site with him in hopes that it helps. I especially loved the poem and its nice to know I've been giving him the right advice. Thanks!

I think that this is a great way to get across to other people, whether it be someone with a certain illness themselves or someone that just happened to come across the page, the enormous effects of an illness.  By reading the stories, you begin to appreciate everything that you DO have. Thank-you. 

Want to read some more letters? Nine more pages...


 To the frog ponds
 To send your comments
 To the site map

Joan Fleitas, Ed.D., R.N.
 Associate Professor of Nursing, Lehman College, CUNY
 Bronx, New York 10468

  Last updated: January 29, 2009