Abstract • 41

The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp was created in 1986 by actor Paul Newman for children with cancer and blood diseases who because of their disease, its treatment or its complications, cannot attend an ordinary camp. This summer will be the 12th season. Eight sessions each summer serve more than 800 children with malignancies, hemoglobinopathies, coagulopathies, HIV/AIDS and others.

It is possible to offer a safe camping experience in a remote and rural area for fragile children with significant medical problems. A well equipped infirmary and experienced medical/nursing staff is able to provide comprehensive medical care including chemotherapy, blood and platelet transfusions, iv fluid therapy, hemophilia factor replacement, pain therapy and many others safely and effectively.

Because of the camp environment where these ill children are able to feel and act "normal," they can derive psychological and even medical benefits from their interaction with other children with similar diseases. Camp activities are designed to challenge children as well as to be fun.

We have learned much about the long term consequences, physical and psychological, of having a malignancy: that sickle cell anemia is more debilitating and demoralizing than we had believed on the basis of our hospital experience; that children with hemophilia can participate in activities such as horseback riding.

Good things regularly happen at camp - things that do not often occur in the home or at school and certainly not in our hospitals and clinics.