DuPont Community Day

A few weeks ago, Dave, Isaiah, and I spent our entire morning at DuPont, but not for anything medical.  Community Day was back on September 20th and it was a day to celebrate and see the brand new expansion of the hospital.

I'd imagine that most typical families didn't even know about the expansion!  We've been counting the days.  We know that Isaiah has surgeries in his future and this expansion changes the entire recovery experience.  I've heard a few not-so-great stories about having toddlers rooming with teens in recovery, and rooms being tight and uncomfortable.  The expansion is going to change this dramatically.

I snapped a ton of pictures of everything...so this post is less Isaiah-happy and more DuPont-happy.  The picture above shows one of the new buildings on the left and the old building on the right.  Actually, the NICU is that set of 8 windows (well, two sets of 4 windows) on the far right.  One year ago, we spent a lot of time in that farthest set of windows.

Actually, it was exactly a year ago.  The picture above is what we looked at whenever we looked out those windows.  That tree in front of the building?  We watched those leaves turn orange.  We watched them fall off when we came back in November for Isaiah's first successful full dose of Pamidronate.

That tree holds a lot of my heart.

Like seriously, I started crying when I saw it.

Ok, man, I know how to veer off a topic, don't I?

To begin community day, we were first invited into the new hospital to take a tour!

First was the ER (we flew through there so I didn't take any good pictures) and then we got to go upstairs to the 3rd floor Ortho wing.

That's the wing that Isaiah will likely stay in when he gets his rods to straighten his limbs!


Here's a room, obviously it's missing a bed.  Are you wondering where the bathroom is?

Behind the wall on the end!

It was just fantastically accessible (as it should be since it's a hospital room).

But do all hospital rooms have this awesome track on the ceiling to carry patients to the bathroom?

Moving on from the bathroom, that purple couch by the window (in the picture below) pulls out to a bed and has its own television so that parents/siblings can get a tv break when their child is resting or watching his own show on his tv.

There's even a fridge in the room!  And some storage space!

The nurses have their own nook in each room with a window that looks out to the hallway.

After touring a few of the rooms, we followed the herd of people to the main atrium area.

Where I spotted Spiderman and knew we had to get out tushies downstairs to the lobby area...which honestly felt more like a hotel lobby than a hospital lobby.

Spiderman!

I loved all the details in the new hospital! Check out this bright and cheery tile in the lobby bathroom!

Yup, I totally took a picture of the bathroom wall.

After we toured all of the available inside space, we headed outside to the activities.  We checked out the animals that were brought from Brandywine Zoo and had some lunch.

By this time, Isaiah was ready for his nap and it was getting busy, so after we ate we started on our way out.  (We had plans to visit family so didn't want to completely exhaust Isaiah.)

The hospital was beautiful.  We felt lucky to get the chance to visit it before it opens (which is soon!) and are grateful for our future stays there.