The Art of Healing
For this hospital program, art is the best medicine.
Photo by Emily Hedges
Abby Fuller shows off her artwork as she sits in the
dialysis chair.
Abby Fuller turned 8 years old on February 22 this year. Like any 8-year-old, Abby’s new teeth are coming in. She loves jumping on the trampoline and playing with her brother and sister. Coloring and painting are “like my favorite things to do,” she says.
Today, her favorite things to draw are pirates, although she says her best drawings are of mice, with and without whiskers.
But even as she tells her stories and laughs, clearly Abby is not a typical 8-year-old. She does most of her artwork, including the fuzzy poster of, what else, a pirate, while hooked up to a dialysis machine in the Shands hospital pediatric dialysis area for about four hours a day, three days a week.
Abby, and many patients like her, are able to create art and express themselves with the help of artists from the Shands Arts in Medicine (AIM) program. The program reaches out to “urgent” patients, according to program director Tina Mullen. “Urgent” patients include cancer patients, women facing difficult pregnancies, patients waiting for transplants and just about anyone who has a lengthy hospital stay.
“We want to keep them remembering that they are a person, not an illness,” Mullen says. “Sometimes they aren’t treated like individuals by doctors, and yet, for them, this is often the most important time in their lives.”
AIM keeps people remembering who they are in a variety of ways. The program, which started in 1990, is the largest of its kind in the United States. AIM has more artists, activities and patient visits than any other hospital art program in the country. Shands AIM has helped start eight other arts programs in Florida hospitals and has hosted visitors who were interested in starting programs from as far away as New Zealand.
Before 1995, the atrium at Shands hospital at the University of Florida did not attract many visitors. It was mainly a dark meeting point for different wings of the building. That all changed with a little help from AIM and some funding from the hospital.
For one year, the artists and volunteers had cancer patients and their families paint ceramic tiles. Some tiles are delicately designed with swirls of color and precision brush strokes, forming intricate patterns. Others have cartoon characters and animals - simple but beautiful drawings by terminally ill children. More than 1,000 tiles were painted, and a mosaic of bright tile pieces and beads that spell out the words “healing” and “wisdom” frames the healing wall.