Harborview Medical Center’s patients come to us from the nearby neighborhood and from miles away. Their health issues may be straightforward; often they are complex. Their visits may be planned long in advance, or in the blink of an eye following an accident. But each patient has a story – a story of loss, survival, recovery and success.
Empowering patients – whether it’s teaching kids to love reading, motivating survivors through art or supporting those with mental illness in their search for a job and home – is equally as important as healing their bodies.
Harborview provides patients with the most advanced health care to help them get well and back to life. Our patients have the determination and spirit to make it happen.
Recent Patient Stories
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Lily James
Meet Lily James, a child who fought courageously to survive after a boating misadventure on Lake Washington in July 2009. The family towed Lily and her brother on an oversized tube and on the way home, a gust pulled the tube from its cleat and into the air. Its line caught Lily’s legs and yanked her overboard. Lily’s legs were crushed near the ankles and her right foot was nearly severed.
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Naomi Ishisaka
Naomi Ishisaka knows that getting to the heart of a story takes time and research. The 35-year-old journalist has worked for papers throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Ishisaka’s talent for getting to the real story served her well in September 2009, when she found herself writing the first installments of Naomi’s Noggin: My Meningioma and its Demise, a blog she created after being diagnosed with a brain tumor.
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Kyle Daniels
Kyle Daniels of Seattle wasn’t expecting to discover his inner artist as a patient at Harborview. But during a recent workshop with the Harborview art program, he had the opportunity to try sculpture and surprised himself and his sister with a beautiful finished piece.
“I’d never done this before, but it was really fun,” he said. “It was cool to see the clay transformed by my ideas and my hands.”
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Jaden Bigelow
Jaden Bigelow, 7, had one foot in a cast but it hardly slowed his beeline to the book cart at Harborview’s Children and Teens Clinic. “Do you have any ‘I Spy’ or ‘Where’s Waldo?’ ” he asked a staffer.
In its 11th year, the hospital’s pediatric literacy program introduces young children to Madeleine, the Lorax and other characters. It also helps kids better understand choices and make healthy ones.
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