Splashes of Hope brightens lives of young cancer patients

Anthony Zerato, a 10-year-old boy with a cancerous brain tumor, sits in the waiting room of the Stony Brook University Cancer Center leafing through a binder filled with cartoon characters. "Sylvester," he finally decides, smiling. Sandy Romano dips her paintbrush into a container of white paint and begins to paint Anthony's favorite Looney Tunes character on his hand.

Romano, a volunteer for the nonprofit organization Splashes of Hope, does this every week - sits on the child-sized chairs in the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology waiting room in the cancer center and paints children's hands to distract from the reason they are there.

"She does well with distracting the kids from the procedures, blood work, things like that," Lauren Sharaby, the child life specialist at the center, said of Romano. "Then when they go in the back, their minds are not on the needles."

Splashes of Hope was founded by freelance muralist Heather Buggée of Huntington in 1996 after her friend Will Harvey died of Hodgkin's disease at age 25.

"I thought the hospital environment could be more conducive to the healing process through color and art," Buggée said. So she volunteered to paint ceiling tiles to brighten hospitals and eventually saved enough money to start the nonprofit organization.

Splashing all over

Now, Splashes of Hope has 40 volunteers and three full-time professional artists to decorate the drab walls of hospitals, shelters, adult homes, clinics and similar facilities. Painters from the organization have "splashed" facilities as far away as Odessa, Ukraine, where they painted the walls of an orphanage. Buggée said the foundation gets requests from around the world, and has a long waiting list.

Romano, who was honored as Splashes of Hope's 2008 Volunteer Artist of the Year, began painting children's hands after visiting the University of New Mexico's Children's Hospital Heart Center in 2008. Romano was painting a young girl's hand during the unveiling party for the murals Splashes of Hope donated to the center.

"The nurse came out and needed to wheel her back in for chemo," Romano recalled. The nurse asked Romano to come into the room while the girl was getting her treatment, and so she followed her in. "There was a doctor on her right side inserting needles, and she wanted her name in fancy letters painted on her left arm. Rather than focusing on the needle in her right arm, she was focusing on me painting her left arm," Romano said. "So Heather said, 'Why don't we bring this back to Stony Brook?' "

So they did.

"I've heard from the parents that the kids all look forward to seeing Romano," Buggée said. "They talk about what they're going to get painted on their hand. It gives them something to look forward to."

Anthony, a fifth-grade student at Medford Elementary, gets chemotherapy in the hospital but visits the cancer center weekly for checkups and blood work. Romano talked and joked with Anthony while she painted the black and white cat Sylvester on his hand. She asked Anthony who his teacher is, and about his favorite subject in school. "And don't say lunch!" Romano laughed.

Anthony's mom, Sandra Alongis, 37, of Patchogue, said she gave birth to her third son just days before learning that Anthony, her middle child, had a brain tumor. She said he complained of headaches and stomach aches, and a CT scan showed fluid on his brain, later diagnosed as a stage-one cancerous immature teratoma.

Romano isn't the only person to distract the children while they're waiting for treatment. Sharaby, whose job is to normalize the hospital experience for children, said that a new distraction comes to the center each day of the week, whether it's a clown, a librarian or a "camp on wheels," from Sunrise Day Camp in Oceanside that brings toys, games, puzzles or crafts for kids who aren't able to attend regular camp. When Romano visits, she brings her paints.

"Whatever it takes to make a child's visit a little less painful," said Sharaby, who has held her position at Stony Brook for two years.

Something to focus on

The cancer center's Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Unit has about 40 patients overall who are receiving treatment, Sharaby said. The hallways, waiting room, treatment room, bathroom and eight exam rooms within the center are all splashed with brightly colored murals, most of them nautical-themed with the exception of the outer space-themed bathroom. Portholes are painted on the walls of the exam rooms, and one ceiling tile is painted above each exam table so children have something to focus on while they're lying down and staring up.

Each room has a different theme, including sports, school, and Dr. Parker's band, named after the center's program director, Dr. Robert Parker. The images in the murals are characters the children can relate to - bald mermaids, characters with bandannas on their heads, even likenesses of the patients themselves.

"They don't get a lot of choices in life," Sharaby said of the children. "They have to go to the doctor and get medicine and needles. But when they come into the clinic, they get to choose which exam rooms they want. It's nice to offer them that choice."

Instead of being painted directly on the walls, most of the murals in the center were painted on panels in the Splashes of Hope headquarters in Coindre Hall in Huntington. Sharaby said that because people on chemotherapy are often sensitive to smells, Splashes of Hope spent three months painting off-site so the scent wouldn't bother the children.

One large mural, an 8-by-4- foot underwater-sports-themed painting, is mounted to the wall across from the room where children get their vital signs taken. "It's really helpful with distracting the kids," Sharaby said of the painting. "Sometimes the toughest thing for the kids is having their blood pressure taken," Sharaby said, because children must sit still while their arm is squeezed tightly to get their blood pressure, and because many children become anxious knowing that an examination and needles will come next. "So we play 'I Spy' games with them, and their anxiety goes down and their blood pressure comes out perfect."

Last year Splashes of Hope honored the Laurence W. Levine Foundation, based in Manhattan, as the largest contributor to the organization. Lesley Logue, one of the directors and niece of founder Laurence Levine, a Manhattan lawyer, has donated money to Splashes of Hope for eight years, mainly to brighten up children's shelters and hospitals on Long Island and in New York.

"I just try to think about what it would be like to be a parent of one of those kids," said Logue, a mother of three who sponsored the "splashing" of the Stony Brook University Cancer Center. Why did she choose that location? "Just to make it a little easier on them, or just to give those kids and their families some comfort or distraction," Logue said.

Romano, 59, of Wading River, said she receives a small stipend from the Levine Foundation but will donate it back to Splashes of Hope this year for a project she plans to sponsor.

Romano, who earned her master's degree in education at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, became involved with Splashes of Hope as she prepared to retire as a pre-K teacher from the Middle Country school district. "I always enjoyed painting," said Romano, who said she spent six years painting the hallways of the Bicycle Path School in Selden.

"She does an excellent job making everybody smile," Dr. Mahmut Celiker, an oncologist at the Stony Brook facility, said of Romano, who once painted a flying bat on the front of his head. "You should have seen the expression on the kids' faces. They were all pointing at my head, and I was acting like I didn't know what was going on. You try to show your human side to them here."

After Romano finished painting Sylvester on Anthony's hand, he proudly showed it off to Mom and said next time he was getting Sylvester's nemesis, Tweety Bird. When asked what he liked best about the center, Anthony promptly responded, "the hand painting."