The Three Reasons
A young man on the day he is preparing to leave the Hemotology/Oncology Unit at Cook Children's Medical Center
I spent this last weekend in a padded room, two foot by 8 foot, listening to their voices over and over again. In that room I stared at the same people in the eye for over 48 hrs, never engaging them. I sat in that room alone and slightly nervous, listening and watching and ultimately finding myself in a place of illustrious gratitude.
I have a very good friend who once told me there are only three good reasons to take a job: The Creative, The Money or The Relationship. Yet, as I edited content all weekend from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Epilepsy Monitoring Unit, and Deep Brain Stimulation surgery of Cook Children’s Medical Center, I can’t help wondering if there is not a fourth reason, The Heart.
Initially, I started my career in photography as a high school student who loved the adrenaline of the chase, the all access pass and the totally legitimate reason to go up to the hottest girl in the room and start making her picture. Quickly, however, those reasons gave way to the desire to connect with people, to tell their story, or to capture the expression uniquely theirs, in a moment written for them.
Somehow, somewhere along the line though, I discovered I had to pay an electric bill, and as much as I hated the idea of a phone, I was going to have to pay for one of those as well. So here I am 31, married, a father and paying the electric bill. With this epochal shift come the jobs that don’t always make the portfolio or imbue me with a sense of change or impact. That being said, for every quick in and out corporate portrait, I know I get to shoot for the medical center soon.
Cook Children’s and I have worked together for almost a year and half now and we are now starting to create new avenues for the content. However, during the multimedia editing this last weekend, it was not the video, audio or even the images that captured me; it was the people looking back at me.
The patients, the nurses, the doctors, the volunteers, even the security guard, who hugs me every time he sees me, have all opened their world in a way that says: we love these kids and if you love them too… come help. Families have granted me access to areas spanning from isolation rooms, brain surgeries, and bone marrow transplants, to playing on the floor with big foam blocks in the playrooms. The gift though, is the chance to connect with the kids, the families, and the health care professionals. It is so hard to measure the value of a mother hugging me after a surgery, or a child going through chemotherapy who lavishes the room in the most unabashedly childish giggles. These are the gifts that I cherish with this client.
I spent the weekend in that editing room visiting with families and medical center staff, watching and listening to joys, fears, challenges and triumphs and I would like to say thank you to all of them for giving me a privileged glimpse into their lives; it has and continues to be my honor.