Rustlin’ Up Fun at the Double H

For three years now, the Double H Ranch in upstate New York has been making the dreams of ventilator-dependent children come true.

For five days each summer, kids from ages 6 to 18 who are dependent on ventilators are hosted at the 320-acre camp, located in the scenic Adirondack Mountains, where they can fish, do arts and crafts, and even go swimming.

“It’s fun,” says Dr. Kathleen Braico, a pediatrician who has served as the camp’s medical director since it was founded 15 years ago. Part of the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps, a network of camps for children with serious illnesses, the Double H Ranch is one of only three that offer a program for ventilator-dependent kids. The other two are in Florida and North Carolina.

Double H decided to start the special program “because so many ventilator-dependent kids now are growing up,” Braico explains. “They grow up, they go off to college, they have a life. So we want them to have a childhood, too.”

Parents and siblings join the children at the camp, with activities provided for each to participate in separately or together.

Doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists from the Albany Medical Center Pediatric Intensive Care Unit volunteer their time to interact with the children, giving parents the option of staying with their child or enjoying some time to relax on their own. Massage therapists are available for parents, and on one night a special catered dinner is provided where they are separated from the kids.

An important part of the camp is that families get to spend time together and with other families, Braico explains. Individual families can enjoy medically safe activities together, as well as talk to other families of ventilator-dependent children. “These siblings, they’ve never met anyone else who has a brother or sister on a ventilator,” Braico says. “It helps to bring people to the understanding that they’re not alone.”

One of the most unique activities for campers is swimming. Children are placed in a sitting position in special flotation devices so that their lower bodies are in the water, but their trachs aren’t. Meanwhile, someone is either in the water with them using an Ambu bag to breathe for them, or the child is still hooked up to his or her ventilator, which someone pushes along the side of the pool to keep up as they swim.

“They just love it,” Braico says. “They splash and they’re safe … they get to float, kick water in the counselors’ faces.”

Supported entirely by donations, there is no charge for any of the camp’s programs. Participants only have to provide their own transportation to and from the ranch.

For more information about the Double H Ranch and other Hole in the Wall camps, visit www.holeinthewallcamps.org.