Days can be long and difficult for patients receiving treatment at Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh, but a group of three young girls and their babysitter are working to bring those patients comfort and warmth.
Mason, Skylar and Ellery Shapiro worked with their babysitter, Ellen Graham, to create handmade blankets. Graham's mother is a patient at Hillman, and said one of the biggest problems is feeling cold when she gets treatments.
"You're just instantly cold. They have blankets here that they offer you, but it's just so nice to have your own warm comfortable blanket," said Terry Williams, Graham's mother.
Graham accompanies her mother to treatments, and decided to take on the project to make blankets for patients. She quickly got helpers.
"Just kind of telling them about what I've been doing with my day, not having any idea that they would want to be a part of this, too, and they immediately were jumping up and down, excited to help me," said Graham.
"We wanted to make people who are staying in hospitals over Christmas, make them happy and help them get warmer," said Skylarm, who is 12 years old. "It made me happy because we knew that we were making someone else's day. And it's really important to do and it's really easy and I enjoy making them."
The girls were part of the project from start to finish, even picking out the fabric.
"We tried to make stuff, like them match together and unisex," said Ellery, who is 10 years old.
The patients receiving the blankets were surprised and touched by the gift.
"I'm here for a long time, from 8:30 in the morning until about 6 at night. So this will make it a little easier, I think," said Marianne Ank, a patient receiving treatments.
"It's a great blanket, actually. It's really thick, it's warm. It was a great thing I thought. And to see young people take the time like that, to do something for somebody else, I thought it was a great day. Their mom should be proud of them," said Eugene Skerkoski, a patient at Hillman.
Graham said the project is part of a much larger mission. She said she wants to inspire others to do similar things to give back to patients receiving care who might not have family to be with them.
"It made me proud of her that she notices what the other people are going through and she knows how lucky we are to be able to be together through all this and there's people come down here that don't have anybody and they're just as cold and would like comfort just as much as anybody else," said Williams.
The young girls also said their work isn't done. They said they plan to take the scraps from making the blankets and make toys for animals at a local animal shelter.