A Hospital is His Home

These are a few photographs made during the last year as I worked on a story about Manny Evans.  His home is a hospital. Click on the photos to enlarge.

 Hundreds of cars, trucks and ambulances pull up the circular drive in front of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center every day.

But each morning at about 8:30, a yellow school bus rolls to a stop in the front of the massive hospital until the sliding doors open and Manny Evans, 7, glides out, heading off to another day at school.

Other students might live in suburban split levels or city Victorians, but Manny's home is the hospital, a place he's lived for the last four years. His neighborhood is the hospital's Transitional Care Center on floor A6, and he knows everyone who passes through, from the doctors to the other patients' families.

"We're dealing with his medical needs, and we're also dealing with the issues of trying to raise a child in a hospital," said Paul Boesch, who runs the hospital unit where Manny lives. "He has his biological mother, but he also has 60 other surrogate parents here in the hospital, the people who provide care for him, but who also provide companionship."

Manny has neurofibromatosis, a disease in which non-cancerous tumors form on different nerves. His tumors interfere with his ability to swallow and speak, to breathe and to properly digest food.