Elyse McDaid
Elyse McDaid was born on October 21, 1984. Like many first-time parents, William and Lynee McDaid tool their infant home with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Almost immediately, that apprehension turned to something darker, more like fear. Every time they would lay Elyse down to sleep at night she would begin to turn blue. By the time they would get her in her car seat and to Wooster Community Hospital, she would be fine.
For the next six weeks, this pattern played itself out until finally, with three consecutive sleepless nights for her parents, Elyse was admitted to the hospital and was transferred via ambulance to Akron Children's Hospital. What began that snowy winter night was a saga for William, Lynee and Elyse that would last until January of 1988.
Upon admission to Akron Children's, it was found that Elyse had a rare condition, a tracheal hemangioma, which would obstruct her airway when she was lying flat. The treatment would be a tracheostomy along with surgery until Elyse could breathe safely on her own.
With Elyse's multiple, sometimes lengthy, stays at Akron Children's Hospital, the McDaids spent days with their daughter and nights sleeping in the hospital's lobby. At that time, parents were not allowed to sleep in the room with their children, so hospital staff would pass out blankets and pillows for them to sleep on couches in the lobby with the understanding that they would be up and out of the way before the sort of work the next morning. Lynee remembers one night when a pipe broker in the lobby, soaking everything, including her shoes. ON that night, she ended up finding a small loveseat near the pharmacy which later served as a quiet spot for her and William to sleep.
Then in January of 1985, the Ronald McDonald House of Akron opened up. The McDaids were one of the first families to stay at the new House. Though neither had any familiarity with the Ronald McDonald House concept, Lynee says her first memory of the House was, "Relief! It was so nice to stay at the House!" The rooms were warm and comfortable, with homemade Amish quilts on the beds. But their lasting impression was less about the bricks and mortar of the House and more about the comfort and enduring relationships it brought: like the welcoming and truly compassionate way the Blanch Davy, the Resident Manager, dealt with the families, or the camaraderie of Nora and Aldon Nisley, an Amish family from Mt. Hope who had a child at Akron Children's about the same time as Elyse - their friendship lasted many years after Elyse was discharged from the hospital.
Elyse and her parents passed many milestones while undergoing treatment for her condition. She learned to walk while attached to a portable breathing machine with Lynee or William holding up her tracheal tube. Since she had a tracheostomy from 1985 to 1987, Elyse began to learn sign language to communicate with her family and caregivers. Her parents were told that she would be delayed acquiring language so they made a point of talking to her as much as possible. Lynee recalls having a "three-book rule" - they made a point of reading at least three books to Elyse every night before she went to bed. Astonishingly, when Elyse tracheostomy was removed in 1987, she began to speak almost immediately.
In the years since Elyse was finally discharged from Akron Children's in January of 1988, the McDaid family has seen many changes. Their second daughter, Marissa, is now 20 years old and is majoring in Journalism at Ohio University. Elyse, now 27, received her bachelor's degree from Ohio State and her master's degree from Bowling Green State University in Speech Pathology. She now lives in Columbus, Ohio and works at Helping Hands, providing speech therapy for autistic and special needs children.
In similar fashion, the Ronald McDonald House where William and Lynee stayed so many years ago has changed and grown. Those Amish quilts that Lynee so fondly remembers adorning the beds are gone. Blanche Davy has long since retired as Resident Manager. Akron Children's Hospital has now become a regional force in pediatric medicine. And with the growth of the hospital, the Ronald McDonald House of Akron is looking ahead, toward providing both the bricks and mortar and the enduring relationships of the House to a new generation of families.
