Friday night, members of The Gap got together and traveled to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville to help the NICU staff organize some care packages and binders for parents who have a newborn child staying in the intensive care unit.

When we arrived at the hospital, we split into two groups to tackle the two projects; the girls took care of assembling 150 care packages provided by the March of Dimes and the guys assembled 24 binders. Even though there were only three of us, it didn’t take the guys long to put together the binders, so we helped the NICU staff move some things to storage on a different floor of the hospital.

On our way back up from the storage area, I asked the staff member (I believe her name was Cindy) if she could show us around the NICU. She said that she would be glad to, but she couldn’t take us inside the NICU because the babies are very susceptible to the weakest of colds that we often carry.

I was amazed to find out that the department has 38 beds that are almost always full and that the average stay for a NICU baby is a month, though one patient has been there for five months. Cindy also pointed out some of the equipment they use, including an incubator with a blue light attached to the top of it. I asked if the device was used to keep the child warm, but it turned out to be a phototherapy light used to treat newborns with neonatal jaundice.

It was great to be able to help the NICU staff, but it was a sobering experience.  I had no idea there were so many children in NICUs, and this was only one hospital.  I hope that I can bring my youth group up sometime soon to help the staff, as they were very appreciative we could help them.  A project that took a dozen young adults an hour would have taken a staff member several hours to complete, which means less time to be with patients and their families.

If you’re a member of a service organization that’s looking for projects, I highly recommend contacting your local/regional hospital’s NICU staff to see if there’s anything they need help with.