12. Item #78: Video Games at a Pediatric Hospital

Item #78: Being in the hospital can be scary and lonely for kids! Visit your local hospital to play a two-player video game with a pediatric patient. Be sure to dress thematically to match your games! Take a picture of yourself in front of the children’s hospital. Do not take pictures with the kids unless they approve, their gaurdian(s) approve, and the hospital approves; we don’t want them to feel exploited. However, you MUST play with a child to get points for this item. This will be the honor system. You will have very bad karma if you cheat on this one. -Kristin Lindsay

Teammate of Team Purgatorgy donned a Princess Peach dress to play video games with a pediatric patient at Palm Beach Children’s hospital. This was an especially fitting item for the team as teammate Margo recounts her first GISHWHES.

Margo had recently been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and had an especially hard time with summers being cooped up with nothing to do. When she began her first GISHWHES, she had a full week of 24/7 activity, creation, and motivation that helped her find ways to manage her disorder. “I’m in serious denial that it really is over, but all great things must come to an end, I suppose. I will carry GISHWHES everywhere I go, though, and that will never end,” she remarked on the news that this would be the last GISHWHES.