A child can be a child again at the Painted Turtle
TIMES SUMMER CAMP CAMPAIGN
The camp at Lake Hughes provides a one-week session for children ages 7 to 16 who suffer from serious diseases that, says the director, often rob them of their childhood.
As a seventh-grader, Eliot Dreiband was known as "the sick girl."
She had recently been diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disorder that commonly causes symptoms such as abdominal pain, rectal bleeding, diarrhea and weight loss. She looked emaciated. And every time she missed school, rumors circulated. Oh, she had cancer, other kids said. Eliot stayed quiet.
But then Eliot's doctor told her about the Painted Turtle: a camp that catered to kids just like her.
"I was given this new chance to be someone else, right before I went to high school," said Eliot, a now-confident 18-year-old who was recently accepted to UC San Diego. "It made me realize, I didn't have to be the 'sick kid.' "
Eliot is currently a camp LIT, or leader in training, and is waiting to turn 19 so that she can be a counselor. She said many of her friends are kids she met at camp.
"Camp is the thing that changed my life," Eliot said. "I was able to be the real me. . . . I'm Eliot, I have Crohn's, and it doesn't define me."
The Painted Turtle, which is a member of Paul Newman's association of Hole in the Wall camps for seriously ill children, is one of the only multi-disease camps and family care centers on the West Coast. The 173-acre camp is about 65 miles north of Los Angeles at Lake Hughes and adjoins the Angeles National Forest.
Started in 1999, it provides a "traditional camp experience" complete with a lake for boating and fishing, a high ropes course, basketball court, equestrian center, archery area, arts and crafts and a wood shop, said Michael House, chief executive of the Painted Turtle.
"A serious medical condition often robs the child of their childhood. They're in and out of the hospital so much, they're in and out of the doctor's office," House said. "We provide a camp environment where they can come and be children again, and have fun, because there's tremendous therapeutic value in having fun."
The camp offers one-week sessions for about 850 summer campers between the ages of 7 and 16; this year it begins June 14.
Each session groups together about 100 children with the same medical condition. These include liver transplant; kidney disease and transplant; muscular dystrophy; hemophilia; Crohn's and colitis; skeletal dysplasia or dwarfism; and diabetes.
A 30-member permanent staff plus dozens of volunteers, a full-time pediatrician, and volunteer nurses and doctors from L.A.-area hospitals attend to campers during their time at the Painted Turtle.
