“I would watch a lot of the cooking channel,” said the T.W. Josey High School senior, “and I love to read. But at times I would be so bored that I thought I was gonna go out of my mind,” she recalls. She envied the young children who retreated to the hospital’s playrooms to color or play with toys and wished for a place where she could get away.

“No offense,” Chantal said. “But we (teenagers) don’t really want to play with crayons. When you’re in a kids’ hospital, they have (treat) babies and on up to 18-year-olds, and they all get lumped together. It’s great to see Dora the Explorer or dinosaurs on the walls for all the children, but teens need a place, too,” she explains.

Thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Alicia Rose “Victorious” Foundation, hospitalized teens are getting that place. A new teen room, decorated in collegiate style, is now open to youth ages 13-18 on the fifth floor of the MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center, offering a private escape for teens to find entertainment, or simply hang out and talk with other teens.

The Alicia Rose “Victorious” Foundation was established by Gisele and Mario DiNatale in memory of their daughter Alicia Rose DiNatale who spent numerous days in a hospital battling a rare form of cancer. She died in 2002 at the age of 17. The foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for adolescents while they are receiving hospital treatment by funding teen rooms in children’s hospitals across the nation.

Child life specialists with the MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center asked Chantal and other teen patients to provide input on what they’d like to see included in a teen room. Many of those ideas were implemented. The room is decorated with football jerseys, posters, baseball caps and other sports memorabilia. There are bean bag chairs, a couch, rockers, a huge flat-screen TV, DVD player, stereo and multiple shelves lined with board games, movies, books and arts and crafts supplies - all geared for teens. There is also a PlayStation 3 for video game fun and a computer with internet access for keeping up with homework and with friends through e-mail and other online networking sites.

“Our patients provided input about their needs and suggested ways we could improve things for them, and we listened,” said Kimberly Allen, Manager for Child and Adolescent Life Services at the MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center. “The new teen room provides a place where teens can be teens. We want them to have just as many opportunities for entertainment as the younger children do and to feel like their needs are being met here,” she said.

MCG Health, Inc. (d/b/a MCGHealth) is a not-for-profit corporation operating the MCGHealth Medical Center, MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center, the Georgia Radiation Therapy Center, and related outpatient facilities and services throughout the state.  For more information, please visit mcghealth.org.