'This is Kate making an impact': Kate’s Kart brings books to hospitalized children
Editor's Note: The following is part of a class project originally initiated in the classroom of Ball State University professor Adam Kuban in fall 2021. Kuban continued the project this spring semester, challenging his students to find sustainability efforts in the Muncie area and pitch their ideas to Ron Wilkins, interim editor of The Star Press, Journal & Courier and Palladium-Item. This spring, stories related to health care will be featured.
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Stress. Anxiety. Fear.
Life in the hospital, especially for a child, can be scary and stressful, and patients can feel those emotions repeatedly.
Hospital stays aren’t only a frightening experience for children but for their parents as well. This is something that Krista Layman, 54, knows all too well when she and her husband, Andy, spent time in the hospital with their daughter Kate.
“We spent over 180 days with Kate in the hospital from her birth until she was 18 months old,” Krista Layman said. “It was so foreign and so scary and unknown.”
Kate had a heart defect and was constantly in and out of the hospital. Throughout such a challenging time, the Laymans found normalcy in one thing.
“During surgeries and procedures, reading was what gave us the most healing and gave her the most healing,” Layman said. “We would read the same book, ‘The Runaway Bunny,’ every night because it was comfortable. It was something that just gave us control of the environment."
After almost two years of fighting, Kate Layman died Jan. 15, 2008; she was nearly 2. Even with the immense feeling of loss, the Laymans knew their experience during those 180 days was a chapter of their story that thousands of others shared. They were determined that their experience wouldn’t be the end of their daughter’s story.
“After her passing, we wanted to do something to remember her, and books were the obvious answer,” Layman said.
The Laymans created Kate’s Kart, a charity that brings brand new books on a cart to children in the hospital to honor their daughter's memory. The organization has been rolling around hospitals for the last 15 years, and the Laymans hope each book gives that family a sense of comfort. The same comfort that they found with Kate.
“In that moment, regardless of if you have no books at home or you have an entire library at home, being given that gift in that moment of crisis, it says everything is going to be OK,” Layman said. “We can read. We can be a family. We can snuggle on the bed, and it's going to be OK.”
That stress and anxiety Kate’s Kart seeks to help subside is all too real.
According to a 2021 study by Maya G. Meentken and Jan van der Ende published in “Children’s Health Care,” children who have gone through one or more hospitalizations experience elevated levels of PTSD, depression and anxiety symptoms.
The study also highlighted that prenatal stress helped elevate these symptoms.
Trish Booth, 48, a pediatric nurse for 17 years and mother of a child who received a book from Kate’s Kart, knows how impactful that book can be.
“Any time you can create normalcy, it just helps with that child’s anxiety,” Booth said. “Giving them a book — something that they do at home with mom and dad, something that is fun that they get to pick out — brings them joy and peace in a situation that's completely stressful.”
The gift of a book doesn’t just help the child. It is a lifeline for parents as well.
According to a 2017 study by Stephanie K. Doupnik and Douglas Hill published in “Pediatrics,” parents can experience immense stress while their child is hospitalized, and interventions to help those parents cope can help to alleviate that stress.
Kate’s books help create those all-too-important interventions. The time the cart rolls through the doorway, parents and their children are whisked away and become engaged in the books, engrossed in the joy of a gift and in a sense of normalcy.
“It’s a joy hearing back from these families that say it was the first time I felt like a mom,” Layman said. “I can't feed my baby. I can't hold my baby, but I could read a bedtime story to my child. It’s a joy hearing from those families that it's the first time my kid smiled in two days because they got that truck book or that ‘Paw Patrol’ book that reminded them of the comfort of home.”
One of those smiling children was Booth’s daughter, Rhianna Booth, 16. Rhianna was hospitalized twice in early 2016 while she was then 8, and that simple book did wonders.
“It really did bring such a sense of peace amidst the chaos,” Rhianna Booth said. “It’s very stressful, especially being young, being hooked up to all these different machines and all these nurses coming in telling me what to do.
"You have all these mixed feelings of anxiety and stress, and it’s just so overwhelming. Then this little cart walks in, this little sunshine on a cart, and you just feel joy and happiness.”
As Rhianna’s mother, Trish felt that same sense of joy and relief when the cart rolled its way through the door.
“It pulls you back into reality,” Trish Booth said. “Someone sees me in my crisis. I know I’m not alone because you feel completely alone. It gives you that opportunity to sit, read and do something normal. It’s something that makes you smile.”
Those smiles have swept across the faces of children thousands of times.
Kate’s Kart has given away nearly 425,000 books in the last 15 years, and it currently has 41 active carts in 25 hospitals across Northwest Ohio and all the way to Muncie, Indiana, with hopes to place more carts in hospitals in and around the Hoosier state.
For Krista, that success has done wonders to ease her still-heavy heart.
“There is so much joy and comfort in knowing that so many people have been impacted by Kate,” Layman said. “It makes me know her life has made a difference. This is Kate. This is Kate living and breathing. This is Kate making an impact.”
You can donate to Kate’s Kart at kateskart.org.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Kate’s Kart offers sick children, worried parents hope through books
