KEALAKEKUA — What Kaden Bruce remembers most about his second trip to Kona Community Hospital was the cold.
West Hawaii is far from frigid, even in the most inclement conditions, but the chill the then 11-year-old boy felt that day was more than skin deep. Kaden, in a weakened and dizzy state, stumbled into the emergency department at KCH on the arm of his mother Natalie — unsure of what ailed him, of what awaited him.
“I was feeling kind of scared at first because I didn’t know what was going on,” Kaden said Tuesday standing in the ER.
It was his first trip back to KCH since an ordeal seven months before that ended in a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, an ambulance ride to an airplane and a five-day stay at a hospital on Oahu learning the unsettling nuances and responsibilities of his new life managing an incurable disease.
“I felt like I wanted to be OK. I wanted to go home,” he said. “I was just anxious to go b ack to just living normally.”
A month after his return to Hawaii Island and a sense of normalcy, as Natalie drove her son to school at West Hawaii Explorations Academy, inspiration struck Kaden.
He couldn’t shake the memory of the cold as he waited for hours in the ER to hear from his doctors, or as he bounced in the back of an ambulance toward an indeterminate amount of time away from his sisters, his friends, his home.
The cold had been more than the antiseptic chill of an emergency ward. It was discomfort. Fear. Uncertainty.
Kaden told his mom he had an idea of how to help other children facing the same challenges. When they arrived at the hospital, the nurses could give them a blanket — something warm, something soothing, something to hold onto.
“It doesn’t seem like much,” Natalie said, “but it’s actually something that’s very comforting.”
Kaden said the idea came from a woman who gifted him a stuffed bear upon his arrival at the hospital in Oahu, which helped him feel loved, safe and as though things were going to be OK.
“It made me feel really good, and I was kind of thinking about that,” he said. “And then (my mom and I) started talking about how it was nice to have a bear, wouldn’t it be nice to have a blanket or something?”
Natalie and Kaden delivered to a group of KCH nurses Tuesday the first four tote bags filled with a blanket and a message to the kids who will receive them.
“You are stronger than you think, and this is a trial that will help make you even stronger,” the message from Kaden read. “I have been where you are and just know you are covered in my love and prayers with this soft blanket.”
Those are words mother and son are intent on spreading to many more than the next four children unfortunate enough to find themselves in an emergency situation at KCH.
“We’re hoping we can get more of these packages to emergency rooms (across the island),” Natalie said.
To do so, Natalie and Kaden have launched Strong 1 — Kids Loving Kids, an online fundraising effort. Those who wish to donate can do so at www.youcaring.com/strong1kids.
The name is a combination of the strength Kaden summoned in the face of uncertainty and the name of the ailment he battles daily, type 1 diabetes.
Natalie said they hope to expand the tote bags to include coloring books, crayons and stickers. She added WHEA and Holualoa School, where her daughters attend, have expressed interest in possibly involving students in the outreach effort.
If Kaden’s idea can become an ongoing charitable effort, he and Natalie envision a board of kids coming up with strategies on how to spend the money to most improve the hospital experiences of their sick, injured or frightened contemporaries.
“Kids have the best ideas anyways, and this could just be one thing where kids are loving kids. Maybe there are other ways,” Natalie said. “We live in such a selfish world, so looking outside to helping others is freeing and really what we’re created to do anyway. You feel better when you love people. That’s what we’re hoping to inspire.”
