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Care Package ideas for friend when her child is going through surgery?
Hey Ladies,
If any of you have had your child hospitalized and/or major surgery, what would you have liked in a care package for yourself? I want to get a friend a bag with some things she can eat or maybe distract her mind (if at all possible) while her 4 year old son has his third open heart surgery. Please let me know if you have any suggestions! Or if the care package idea is dumb and you have other ideas, I would love to hear them!
Thanks!
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Re: Care Package ideas for friend when her child is going through surgery?
If her son is having open heart surgery most likely he'll be in the PICU afterwords. She will not be allowed to bring food and drink into the room so consider what food and drinks you give her. I would probably give a few small bags of snackfood, case of water (if you aren't mailing it), maybe some games, word search books. Personally, a book was a disaster for me, I couldn't concentrate enough to read a book.
Does your child have a preschool class, or a sunday school class? If they do maybe ask if all the kids could make a get well card for her son.
Does the hospital make you pay to park? Ours did and it was such a pain remembering a dollar every time you needed to leave (ours was a small city hospital so they only took cash/check). Maybe get some prepaid parking tickets or give her a handful of singles for the parking garage. Change for a vending machine.
DVD player and DVD's, If you don't have your own children, or they're in school can you sit with her during the surgery. How about slippers for wearing around the hospital?
We were in the hospital for 2 weeks while dd was in the PICU fighting meningitis. Unlike surgical patients, we were allowed to bring in outside food, but rarely went out ourselves. Friends sent several care packages and it was truly like Christmas. One sent a handmade blanket, which was wonderful since we left home in a rush and had packed nothing. That bright blanket was very cheery in an otherwise bland room. We also got homemade treats, a box of cookies, some trail mix, brownies. May I suggest you also throw something in there for the nurses? I gave the brownies to the nurses station and it was very appreciated. For us, since we rarely left the hospital, actual tangible things were better than gift cards. We loved the immediacy of the treats since we were kinda living in each moment and not looking too far to the future.
This is big, and probably not necessary if they are planning their hospital stay instead of getting life flighted like we did, but my parents sent us a laptop and another friend logged in to her netflix on it so we had some outside entertainment. That was HUGE! We now have our own netflix, but at the time, we were stuck with network tv and kiddie dvds. Keeping up with the outside world on the internet was also a great relief.
Hope that helps!
Hi,
We've spent a total of 11 weeks in the hospital with our son who is 7 months old, both stays he had surgery and we were able to bring food in. Maybe check on the policy of the hospital they are going to?
What I enjoyed were snacks (homemade and packaged). Maybe go to Costco and pick up a few different snacks. Magazines are great too, I agree it's too hard to concentrate on a book. If they have an ipad you could get them a gift card so they can get some movies or apps and/or add some dvds if they bring a laptop. My mom got us nice slippers for Valentine's day and they were very handy when sleeping in the room with him.
Also, I would look into restaurant gift cards to places around the hospital that deliver or do take-out. You can get pretty sick of the food at the hospital quickly and sometimes it's good to get out, even if it is for 10 minutes.
I hope that helps and will keep your friend and her son in my prayers!
Lots of great ideas so far. DS has spent so much time inpatient I've lost track. The longest stay was 5 months in reverse isolation with shingles, then he had trouble with his dialysis. I would have loved anything to read, books, magazines, etc. Something to exercise the brain with, like suduko. I even did crafts, sometimes with ds, sometimes on my own. One Christmas I made decorations for the unit tree (yes, enough to cover it - we were there for 2 months). One Easter I made decorations, again. I like the DVD idea too.
Also, snacks like pp's were suggesting - healthy ones. I gained an extra 30 lbs over the last 10 years that crept up on me, mostly from being stuck at the hospital, or at work and not having time to make and bring my own food, or picking at the crud the cafeteria had. I would have killed for a bag of sliced apples and sugar peas. Even the PICU will have a patient/parent fridge, she should be able to put fresh stuff in there. If she's not sure, she can ask. I've never been told no, just only to put in one day's worth.
Oh, and for the love of pete, don't bring stuffed animals. We had countless visitors over the years feel bad for ds and insist on bring him one to make him feel better. I ended up with 6 huge garbage bags full to donate. Fortunately, most were unused, clean, with tags on and a local charity took them.