About 200 parents and their children, who were cared for as premature babies, had the chance to hug, shake hands with and even high five the teams that helped care for them during the most fragile time of their lives.
The words "children's hospital" will never be mixed up for "party space," but for many families, there are plenty of reasons for the smiles, hugs and expressions of joy.
Two-year-old Rosie Greco is a former patient of the neo-natal intensive care unit at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital.
"They handled her with love, they handled us with love, and incredible intelligence, and fast action," said Greco's mother, Katie Herlihy.
"It was all the difference. It saved her life. They saved her life," said Greco's father, Dan Greco.
On Thursday, nearly 200 kids and their families gathered for an annual NICU reunion.
They all faced a variety of medical issues. Many were "premies" like Marcus Mosley, who weighed just over two pounds. Today, he's Dr. Mosley, and he's about to specialize in neonatology.
"It's always wonderful to be back here and see how far medicine has progressed. You know, neonatology, the field, can save even micro-premies and premies even smaller than I was when I was born," Dr. Mosely said.
He was born at 28 weeks, which at the time was considered the earliest an infant could be expected to have a positive outcome, but advances in technology have shrunken that threshold to 23 weeks.
"What we're really doing is not treating disease as most of medicine, we're actually growing people, and growing people means knowing how much nutrition, knowing how to balance all of the organ functions and the immaturity of those organs," said Dr. Edmund Lagamma of Maria Fareri Children's Hospital.
Fareri's NICU has treated more than 20,000 infants over the last 40 years.
Every case is different; every outcome and level of function is different, but every case is a reminder of the gift of life.
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