You can't have a lot of people around because of the fact his white-blood cell count [which affects his immune system] is low

""Especially in the summer.There's no swimming, there's no camping, none of the things the family usually does.You can't have a lot of people around because of the fact his white-blood cell count [which affects his immune system] is low.""With the handbag gift purchase of a Wii for Christmas 2008 (""I just couldn't say no,"" Pat said) video games are now a significant part of the family's life away from the hospital, moreso when Joe's in it.The Evanses have eight children (two adult) and four systems - Wii, Xbox, PlayStation and GameCube - and Christmas 2007 delivered three more Nintendo DSes, one of which Joe brings to the hospital.

And during that first stay in September 2008, games became a talisman of life before the diagnosis.""In the ICU, they had this roll-around cart with systems, and you could pick games to play from it,"" Pat Evans said.""Even though there could only be two people in his room at once with him, I'd leave and bring one of the boys in, and they'd play.""When we fashion seiko came into the regular ward, here, it was just him and his brothers, and first thing, they wheeled him down here (to the games lounge), with his IV in,"" Pat says of his son, a typically shy youngster around others, but boisterous in the company of his family.

""Maybe it only lasted half an hour, but it was a big deal.""Video games represent such normalcy for kids that, Usinger says, when they don't want to play them while at the hospital, parents get concerned.But more typically, Usinger said, a parent's seiko watches instinct is to believe that a sick or injured child should be bedridden and spending all of that time recuperating, not playing.Helping Kids Cope""Sometimes kids need to be kids, so that their body can heal and function as normal,"" Usinger said.

in many respects their story is representative of the more than 60 hospitals in the Child's Play network

And though Joe Evans is just one gamer, and Emanuel Children's is just one hospital, in many respects their story is representative of the more than 60 hospitals in the Child's Play network, and of the thousands of patients who have received donations of video games and consoles over the past decade whatever their source.The contribution replica handbags may be a single $50 title, but the gift is actually something else.""It gives them a time to just be a kid, which is really hard to do, sometimes,"" said Jen Usinger, a child life specialist in Emanuel's Child Life Program.

""An awful lot of their time here, they're being poked and prodded, they go through surgery, or they're sick and feeling horrible, and to get a moment and play video games, and just be a kid, is huge.""Game Crazy Wednesdays And A Special WiiIn a sadly ironic way, perhaps nothing certifies video games as a childhood more than the Star Lounge of handbags Emanuel Children's Hospital, where the lives children lead during their stays are far from normal.Here they enjoy ""Game Crazy"" every Wednesday night, playing Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros.Brawl on the big screen TV.

That said, their gaming experience here is, likewise, not anything they'd typically find at home.In a room looking high over the Columbia River and downtown Portland, kids can come here if they want, whenever they want, as late as 10 pm.The relaxed decoration and furniture arrangements, chill-out color schemes and a mini-theater handbag with rolling easy-chair seating, do their best to wash that realization away.Because outside, the reminders of what they can't do are plentiful.""The boredom of being in here, and tied to that IV, with the PICC line in, is something not a lot of people can understand,"" said Joe's father, Pat, 47.The family is from nearby in Portland.

The pair enter a cheerfully painted room and sit down at a long counter

And worse.The pair enter a cheerfully painted room and sit down at a long counter.They pick up Xbox controllers.Lego Star Wars fills the man watches room with its cartoon explosions, jingling studs, babbling minifigs.It's 2:20 p.m., August 4, 2009, and Joe Evans is, in this moment and for however long it lasts, having a normal childhood.""We just hear the happiness,"" Joe's mom, Susan, 47, says as Joe and his 10-year-old brother, Will, tear through Lego Star Wars and Mario Kart on the GameCube.

""It's a chance to have peace of mind, and for the little guy, it takes away, maybe, that knowledge of the poison going through him.""More Than A Gift Of GamesJoe, his family, and the hospital are themselves one amongst the community served by Child's Play which, in its three year existence, has emerged as something of the gamers' hot watches charity.Despite living a lifestyle often associated, by non-gamers, with basement-cloistered self-absorption, gamers have pitched in to the more than $1.4 $3 million donated since Child's Play's establishment in 2003.More than $18,000 worth of video games, consoles and peripherals have come to Emanuel Children's Hospital since 2006.

But the story doesn't stop with the numbers, even though so often it does, typically during a routine mention of a fund drive, often during the holidays.The games serve a therapeutic need that professional staff describe as increasingly critical.The charity is a pipeline of donations that keep games free from the critical-needs scrum of a hospital handbags foundation's funding process.The experience is more than entertainment or diversion for the patient - it provides a family activity, a way for children to support and be with siblings in circumstances frightening to them as well.

it got to the point where we had both gotten so good that when one of us would start the game

Host: Was this a bit like your own King of Kong-type competition?Horowitz: Kind of...Kitsis: But there's no kill screen.Horowitz: There was no kill screen, but by the end of it, it got to the point where we had both gotten so good that when one of us would start the game our first man would take a half an hour and the other one would have to go watches off and do whatever.It just became too much of a time suck.As with everything related to Lost, there's a plot twist.In this case, the twist is that the sub already was called Galaga and that some people knew this.

Somehow, despite discussing this show obsessively with my wife and fellow devotee reporter Patrick Klepek, I never picked up on it before.08-06-2009 Lost Podcast""His parents can recite the days from memory.What parent couldn't, for such my watches watershed trauma in the life of a boy and his family.On September 4, 2008, they found out he had a tumor in his brain.He was in the intensive care unit, often screaming in pain, until September 13, when he was transferred up to Unit 35.That stay lasted until September 18.

He had the PICC line, a catheter he carries inside of him, inserted then.Every time he comes back here, they plug it into something.Sometimes it's an IV on a wheeled stand, dripping saline.Other times, it's feeding him chemicals - poison, fundamentally.His dad, wearing jeans and a weather-beaten NBA Live 2003 t-shirt, pushes this watch rack, hand on his 7-year-old son's shoulder.They are here, in Portland, Oregon, at The Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel, to begin another battery of chemotherapy.This time will be the ""B"" treatment in the cycle; it makes the hair fall out.