Is the Santa Claus-dying kid story made-up b.s.?

Hospital, singular. The only one he could have reached in 15 minutes from Jacksboro is LaFollette Medical Center. Knoxville is 30-plus miles away.

 

Every Christmas a few friends lose their shit on Facebook because Hallmark has taken off the Golden Girls and replaced it with A Christmas Wish for Uncle Butch, A Christmas for Old Weeze and a bunch of other bullshit no ones heard of.

 

Is this story the definitive #post-truth?

 

Most likely starring Candace Cameron Bure.

 

Interesting. He did say he got there in 15 minutes, so that would certainly narrow it down.

I wonder if he backs off the 15 minute claim, saying something like, "well I don't know exactly how long it took to get there, but it only seemed like 15 minutes."

 

Tahoe?

 

I'm starting to think YF's Twitter obsession may dig up the truth instead of more fodder for what was once the golf topic.

Hallmark and one other channel, Freedom (used to be Pat Robertson's channel) have gone all-Christmas.

Meanwhile, since Speed bought in the Tahoe factor, gotta add that Mrs. Claus is a 6.

 

Joe Biden photobombs another ...

 

I don't know about this story in particular (and the lack of a hospital name is eyebrow worthy, but I know from my children's hospital experiences that he may have signed waivers saying he wouldn't disclose any other information, up to and including the name and age of the kids he visits), but I can tell you that seriously ill kids in particular often die at moments like these, often when their parents "give them permission" by whispering in their ears that it's okay to go or, in cases when parents are unable to emotionally accept what's happening, by dying when their parents are sleeping or out of the room. And it can be fast - talk to any of the peds hem/onc nurses and doctors, and they will all have stories of kids who have done something like opening presents and then died very quickly thereafter.

(There's two particular stories in a book called "Attending Pediatrics" I'm thinking of, one where a child with CF whose mother couldn't accept that he was dying disconnected his monitors to take himself to the bathroom while she was sleeping, then died in the bathroom, another where a young boy with leukemia survived to open his presents on Christmas morning, then took a nap and died during it. I also personally know a relapsed cancer kiddo who was bouncing on a trampoline outside, then came in for water and started turning gray/blue and died right there. It's often an agonizingly slow process, and for all we know the kid in this story had been going through it for a while, but the moments of death can be very fast.)

Also, some families/children feel more comfortable with their last days not being at home as they don't want those memories there, or the child needs such strong pain control it's not feasible to do it even with home hospice care. We have a peds-specific hospice building out here that accommodates many of those patients, but even then a few have wanted to be in the hospital rather than there or home.

So I don't know if this is true, but as someone who spends a lot of my time (and will be spending my future career) in the company of seriously ill and dying children, this didn't ring nearly as false to me as it did to y'all. And there's your cheerful post for the holidays.

 

Do they all have magical conversations written by Mitch Albom for the Hallmark Channel?

 

As an editor, I'd buy the description of the last moments. I'd accept the quotes of what the kid said (assuming Santa might have burnished them a little). But I would want the name of the hospital in the story and would want to have my reporter confirm the account with the nurse who called "Santa," and/or the family.

Going by the basics of Who, What, When, Where and Why, we are missing Who, When and Where.

BUT ... once a story like this gets in the pipeline and the visions of Web hits dance in your head and you aren't libeling anyone, it's hard to put the brakes on these days.

 

If it weren't for those damn federal laws barring reporters from naming minors ...

But seriously, how much does HIPAA dictate what the hospital can tell the reporter? I spent a few years writing marketing pieces for a children's hospital and if we were even considering writing about a specific child, we had to get a release signed by the parent.