The first time I stayed in a hospital I had to have 8 years. It was in Montreal, Ste-Justine hospital. I used to operate for the ears and I had to sleep in a room with 3 other children. I remember too well when my parents were about to leave the room. They were not yet parties that I had a heavy heart. A night with 3 strangers and an operation the next morning, let's say that I was not very happy.

Yet it was a simple operation to correct a problem in the ears. Still, for me, this experience in which I was cutting for a time of my parents, it was the unknown, insecurity.

My father, (who is worried about nature) looked at me with a certain sadness that he couldn't hide, and my mother, she had to find the words to make me feel strong and courageous. The words she used, were going to serve me allies in my solitude. "You'll see it go well" "The nurses are there" "You gonna take that as a big ".

In the darkness of the night in this hospital room, or the beds with metal barriers and the beeps-the beeps corridors teintaient the atmosphere cold and ominous, these are the words of my mom that warmed my being.

Today, after more than twenty-eight years of volunteer work with sick children and their families, to try to communicate the importance of the "comfort to children struggling with the disease" the memory is still, and always, like the little flame that reminds them of this insecurity, which, in a simple, at night I was awake forever.

On the 27th of December last, I returned to an operating room as the patient. This time, for surgery to a knee. Just like the first operation, 47-year-old rather, everything went well.

And right in the heart of the holiday season it is inevitably the children in the hospitals that I thought, and it is this thought which, again, has rekindled my little flame. Children, in dust jacket, small beings determined who received the words to deal with their darkness, whatever it may be. Children inspired and loved, children, which, in turn, become wonderfully inspiring. Therefore, it is not for nothing that many of the sick children themselves, who end up inspiring their parents.

The words that you offer as comfort can sometimes seem futile, but it is all the love and confidence of the so-called who comes to give them power.

And you know what, there are forty-seven years old, when my parents came to find me in my hospital room the morning after the operation, it is not only their 8 year old child that they have found, it is also a little warrior that had defeated her fear of the night.

Good year 2019 to all the sick children and their families.

Alain Dumas