Children's Hospitals Nurses Make Video For Cancer Patients
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Nurses at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota have produced a video to encourage their young patients who are fighting cancer and blood disorders.
And they chose just the right song to accompany it. They chose, "Fight Song" by Rachel Platten. It's a popular song on the radio right now.
The video was just posted on YouTube Monday and already it's had thousands of views. We met the nurse who was behind the camera.
Becky Bogan is a pediatric nurse at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. She spent a few weeks with a small video camera in her pocket as she worked. She captured images of doctors, nurses, therapists and even babies in boxing gloves.
They are images that make you smile, maybe even laugh and that's the point.
"It can be hard to work here some days. It's hard for the families and the patients. For a while now, I've wanted to do something like this to bring fun into what we do," she said.
Becky got some help shooting the video from another nurse who works the night shift so that she could include as many people as possible. Then she did all the editing.
"So we just have little clips of everybody and I have never used the editing program on my computer. But I saw I had one, and I opened it up, loaded the videos in and just started playing with it," she said.
She says "Fight Song" seemed like the perfect song to help convey that kids are natural-born fighters and their doctors and nurses are in their corner.
"They're talking about fighting and if you are on a battle or dealing with a battle and you are fighting and strong, but you believe, you can overcome it," she said.
Laney Hays, 2, was diagnosed with leukemia in February.
Her mother says the staff here has given her family strength.
"On those hard days when we are crying and we need somebody, a shoulder to cry on, Laney knows them and trusts them. They can walk in a room and she lights up too," Nicole Hays said.
"They do just have to first cope with it, and then just start fighting," Becky said.
The woman who sings "Fight Song," Rachel Platten, has seen the video and even retweeted a link to the YouTube page so more people can see it.
Platten wrote, "This moved me to tears. I sometimes can't believe what this song is doing. Huge love to these nurses and patients."
The video was shown to a gathering of patients, staff and families on Monday, in honor of National Nurses Week. They made an event of it, even handing out pretend Oscar awards for the best performances in the video.