Before I get too far away from our stay at the N.I.H., I just wanted to share how magical David’s stay was at the Children’s Inn.

Besides just the fun of having games and activities for the children,

what the Children’s Inn did for David that was unexpectedly magical was make him feel like it’s okay to be ‘special’.

I know he’s had a hard time dealing with the fact that he goes to the doctors more often than all of his friends and his mother is in the hospital a lot. It makes him feel isolated from the community.

What the Children’s Inn did for David was make him feel less alone in his being sick sometimes–that being sick doesn’t mean he isn’t a normal child at heart. Being around other children just like him who are sick, some whom are even more sick, and playing with them and laughing with them, gave him a normalcy he’s never experienced before.

David’s eyes have lit up and his entire demeanor has changed since our stay at the Children’s Inn. We talked about the NEMO mutation and what that means for him after we left, and he handled our discussion much better than he’s ever handled a discussion of our health problems in the past.

Thank you very much to the people at the N.I.H. and the donors who made the Children’s Inn possible. There is no amount of words on the planet that could ever express the power of good that the Inn is doing for sick children.

I think every child who is diagnosed with a serious disease should spend a few days at the Children’s Inn. The impact his stay had on his psychological ability to handle his illness is going to help him for a lifetime.

Thank you.