SPRINGFIELD — X’zavio Jenkins, 4, sits on the floor of his hospital room staring pensively at a mountain of blocks. His tiny hands are working carefully to stack each one until the structure towers above his head. A severe asthma attack landed him here at Baystate Children’s Hospital in Springfield the night before, and he has been playing with these blocks all day.
The toys seem to be keeping his mind off his illness.
“It helps a lot,” said his mother, Breanna Brown of Springfield. “He was just lying there in the bed, looking sad, but when they brought in the toys it made him so happy and he opened up.”
The blocks are from a stockpile of toys Baystate keeps on hand for its younger patients. The hospital tries to keep a variety on hand, everything from video games for teens to dollhouses for toddlers. The kids they’re meant for might be staying for weeks, or even months. Others, just over night. But all of them could use a little comfort, says Amanda Simas, a child life specialist at the hospital. “We try to make it a little less scary.”
And that’s what Simas and the other child life specialists are hired to do. They go from room to room, often with bags of toys, to entertain or soothe the children.
Sometimes the young patients are also given toys as gifts around the holidays or as a reward following a treatment or a surgery.
But, unfortunately, the toy supply is running low. To replenish the stock, the hospital is holding a toy drive through the end of this month.
In previous years, Hasbro, the toy company based in East Longmeadow, has donated upward of $30,000 worth of playthings to Baystate. This year, however, the company is unable to do it, said Brendan Monahan, manager of public affairs.
Toys like blocks, trucks and dollhouses, which are in constant use, have to be frequently washed to prevent spreading disease, he said. They can only take so much wear and tear before they need to be replaced.
The hospital playroom — a space with colorful walls, books and rocking horses — is looking kind of empty these days. And, says Monahan, there also isn’t much in storage.
“Our warehouse shelves are bare,” he said.
The toys are needed not only to ease the anxiety of being hospitalized, said Simas, they also give medical workers another way to understand what a child might be going through.
“A lot of kids don’t have the vocabulary to describe if they are scared of if something hurts,” she said.
Drawing or painting can help children express themselves nonverbally, she said. And by playing with stuffed animals or action figures, kids can describe where their pain is.
Toys also can bring a little bit of home into the hospital, especially if there are items available that the kids are used to playing with.
X’zavio enjoys playing with Legos at his house, so the blocks Simas brought him from the hospital’s stash were a hit. On that recent afternoon, she sat with him on the floor helping him build a tower.
“We can make it so tall. Good job,” she said, just as the blocks came tumbling down. “He is just loving Legos.”
In another room, Kathy Stuber of Northampton, was sitting at the bedside of her granddaughter, 3-year-old Indiana Spera, while the child received a respiratory treatment.
Leaning back in the bed, dressed in a tiny pink-printed hospital gown, Indiana was playing with princess magnets and a princess wand. A video of “The Cat in the Hat” was playing on a screen overhead.
“The toys help,” Stuber said. “It’s definitely nice to have something to distract them at that age.”
Anyone may contribute new toys to the front desk at the Daly entrance at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. To learn more about the toy drive and to view a wish list from the hospital, visit http://bit.ly/2dIU4dF.
Lisa Spear can be reached at Lspear@gazettenet.com.