Decked out in a “Toy Story” Jessie costume with a big, red cowboy hat, Brianna Davidson, 18, joined her peers Friday as they walked through a crowded hallway of the University of Illinois Chicago’s West Taylor Street hospital. The small group of kids, some assisted by staff members, marched around the unit dressed as Minions, witches and more.
Around 200 hospital staffers joined in, too, dressed as everything from aliens to Mrs. Rachael. They lined the hallway to cheer on the hospitalized kids as they passed by with full hearts and even fuller pillowcases brimming with candy. Nurses helped Davidson pick out her Halloween costume just before the event kicked off.
“I didn’t know anything about it, then they were like, ‘Do you want to be in a Halloween parade?’ I said, ‘Yes, of course!’ especially since I can’t go trick-or-treating,” said Davidson, who has been in and out of the hospital system for years.
It’s a tradition more than ten years running: The youngest UI Health patients parade through the fifth floor of the UIC hospital. However, It’s more than just a costume show-off or a chance for the kids to collect bags with candy; it’s a chance for the admitted pediatric patients to retain a piece of childhood normalcy.
“When you get to be in the hospital for longer, it gets pretty drab,” said Dr. Andrew Kreppel, who specializes in pediatric infectious disease at UIC. “So something like this really gives a moment where (patients) can say, ‘Ok, things aren’t always like this. I can think of life outside of here.’”
For kids unable to walk into the parade, due to isolation or other limiting conditions, the dressed-up staff brought candy and the spirit of a not-so-spooky Halloween to their hospital doors.
“There’s a certain sense of isolation, difficulty and suffering about being in the hospital,” said Dr. Benjamin Van Voorhees, head of the pediatrics department and physician-in-chief of the Children’s Hospital University of Illinois. “Bringing the life of Halloween, the joyfulness that I think children and families experience into the hospital with costumes and playfulness… It’s just a really wonderful thing.”
Even UIC’s tiniest tots were included in the Halloween celebration. At just 5 days old, baby Tatum wore a pirate costume, custom made with fabric by some of the UIC nurses on the celebrations committee, according to Julia Ziernicki, a NICU nurse of four years at UI Health. Ziernicki, along with three other nurses, worked for about eight hours to create 22 tiny costumes for the babies in the unit.
Parents of the NICU babies get to keep their child’s homemade costume and bring it home as a keepsake. Creating memories for parents is one of the many things that make the handcrafted costumes worth it for Ziernicki.
“It’s a cute memory for the parents,” Ziernicki said, who was dressed as a pumpkin Friday. “They’re not always able to come here and not able to see every milestone, too, so it’s nice to have a little memory for the parents.”
This hallowed Halloween tradition, enriched by the staff’s overwhelming commitment to dressing up in costume alongside the young patients, serves one overarching purpose: To bring joy.
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“One of my coworkers, who has only been here a year, said to me this morning, ‘It’s always worth making a kid smile,’ and that’s exactly it,” Kreppel said. “The kids really enjoy it.”