Young patients shop at toy closet
When Andrea Brunk was 8, she was diagnosed with leukemia. About halfway through her 18-month course of treatment, she discovered a closet in an out-of-the-way corner at the hospital where toys were kept.
The toys were used as temporary distractions. But they were given with the understanding that when the young patient went home, the toys went back to the closet. Andrea had other ideas. She persuaded a hospital employee to let her keep a toy.
Before long, Andrea was making regular trips to the closet to pick out a new surprise with each round of chemotherapy or radiation treatment. The toys had an effect that not even the best medicine could mimic, said Andrea’s mother, Traci Brunk, of Phoenix.
“It changed it for her, it changed everything about it,” Brunk said. “In her mind, she knew the toys would be waiting after every procedure. It was just enough of a distraction.”
On Jan. 16, 2002, Andrea died. Within four months, Traci and Kenny Brunk began buying toys with each paycheck. They persuaded a Phoenix hospital to set aside space for a special toy closet. “We decided after she died that every child should be able to pick their own toy,” Traci Brunk said.
“We couldn’t sit around and not do anything to help other kids. If it helped our daughter, why shouldn’t we help others?”
Word spread and before long, three other Arizona hospitals adopted the idea. On Wednesday, Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d’Alene became the fifth hospital in the country to dedicate an Andrea’s Closet.
The Coeur d’Alene connection came to be after Brunk’s grandmother was visiting her sister, Linell DeVeraux, of Hayden.
While Brunk’s grandmother was taking a walk in her sister’s neighborhood, she stopped and told the toy closet story to another local resident, Katie Kladar.
“She left me in tears,” said Kladar, a former family nurse practitioner and the spouse of a Kootenai Medical Center surgeon.
“But the tears helped me make the decision to do something.”
Andrea Brunk’s parents were at KMC on Wednesday for the dedication of the new toy closet, which is portable and already filled with toys. When the hospital’s remodeling is completed, a permanent closet will be opened.
“It’s going to make a huge difference to children who come under our care here,” said Lori Schneider, KMC’s director of women’s and children’s services.
The first patient to use the closet was 3-year-old Arianna Villegas.
The Rathdrum girl has spent two weeks in the hospital recovering after being bitten by a domestic cat. Although the bright yellow toy closet was filled with dozens of offerings – dolls, stuffed animals, magnetic toys – Villegas immediately found what she was looking for.
“Ooh! This! This!” she said, grabbing a pouch filled with glitter and scented lotions.