A sad reality in our world is health problems affect not only the elders, but also children - ripe souls who have just gotten a grip of the world around them often end up having to be put in the hospital for long stints, which not only takes away their childhood, but also slowly butchers their innocence because of what they might see while staying in the hospital, depending on what section they are in.

A bitter truth of our times is that illness doesn’t discriminate by age. While society prefers to imagine hospitals as where the elderly go to battle the ailments of old age, reality could not be more gruesome, hospitals are also inhabited by children. Not for a short stay, not for a cut knee or fever, but for extended, lengthy periods. These children, little soldiers in unwanted wars, end up trading sandboxes for IV fluids and school desks for hospital floors.

Their childhoods, which ought to be spent on laughter, scuffed knees from playtime and sleepovers at friends' homes, are filled instead with hospital walls, morning injections, and the hum of machines in their ears. Their lives are lived with schedules imposed upon them, not of their own choosing: medication schedules, physical therapy sessions, endless testing, and quiet dread of outcome they are still too young to fully understand.

But the tragedy does not end with lost childhood. The hospital environment, especially according to department, can introduce children to things that heaviness around the soul. In pediatric oncology wards or in intensive care wards, they will witness suffering that cannot be whitewashed, or form a connection with other young patients who simply disappear, leaving behind empty beds and unanswered questions. Every loss, every painful intervention, chisels away at the bubble of innocence childhood is meant to afford.

A sad reality. Image: Ai generated image.

Though they are hard and resilient, most of them carry a quiet grief. They grow up too fast, learning words like "chemotherapy" and "transplant" as their peers learn times tables. Some of them turn into old souls, with eyes that hold a depth which will resonate with pain most adults can barely envision. Others retreat inward, their spirits broken by the sickness, and by the isolation that accompanies it, forgotten birthdays, missed school years, and friends who gradually disperse as people.

But amidst all this darkness, there are glimpses of light: medical workers who defy regulations to bring smiles, volunteers who construct pirate ships out of IV poles, and communities who unite to bring holidays to hospital beds. Even those small pleasures, as nice as they are, can't even begin to replace a childhood lost to cancer.

To have one's childhood in a hospital is to live in an unbalanced middle place: a child, but not quite. It is to deal with mortality before one fully understands what it all really is, and to have the weight on one's shoulders while being tough, for family, for self.

As a country, we must do better than just admire these children's courage. We must be advocating for more resources, more research, and better mental health care, for the family and the child. Because no child should ever have to lose their teddy bear to don a hospital robe. And those who are made to do so, deserve better than to survive, better to heal, to be shown compassion, and given a fighting chance at repairing what was taken.