This is not content, and not sponsored. It's just a personal and charitable note.

So as many of you know, my six-year-old was hospitalized for 4.5 weeks this past summer with Miller-Fisher (no relation) Syndrome, a type of Guillain-Barré, meaning his immune system decided to eat away at his nervous system. Five months later, he is doing GREAT—as in other than running kind of like Devin Mockobee you'd never know anything happened to him. We have a follow-up with neuro this Friday with nothing but good news and a full recovery in sight.

I bring it up now because a lot of people also asked what they could do to help. The answer is most of the heavy lifting was already done by the incredible nurses, doctors, and staff at Mott Children's Hospital. I've been wanting to do something to pass this gratitude along, and the best thing I could think of was to donate toys to Child Life Services at Mott. You can do this with a Michigan player (and get an autograph for your troubles), or just go on Amazon and send something off the list, choosing the Mott Community Relations address at checkout.

[Details at THE JUMP]

WHY CHILD LIFE SERVICES AT MOTT?

There are orgs with better Guess Who game, just sayin'

Child Life is an arm of the local children's hospital, which happens to be literally the best children's hospital, responsible for making the patients' and care-givers' lives better/tolerable while there. It's not all toys—one of the most important services we received was a specialist who helped prepare our daughter to come see her brother. There are orgs with greater need and more deserving people than people like me.

This one matters because it's ours. Michigan has the best children's hospital in the world because having it is a priority of the Michigan community. If luck's with you, you'll never need to avail yourself of it. But it's there, and it's wonderful, because we've all decided we want this, and have been doing so for a long time. Sometimes it pays out for Michigan—Mott fixed a clubbed foot back in the early 1980s, and years later the foot's owner came here, led Michigan to a national championship, and became the only defensive player to win the Heisman. Usually the payoff is more like our experience, where we went in with a big problem, came out with the best-case scenario, and have been trying to make up a life debt since.

If this isn't moving you, or this isn't your community, totally cool. You're going to be hearing more from us soon on the Let's Go Zak campaign by Zak Zinter and Trevor Keegan to benefit the ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation and the Hav a Sole Sneakers donation program. You can look up your local children's hospital and see if you can donate toys to them. Or if you're trying to get the biggest bang for your buck, Marlin Jackson's Fight for Life Foundation is a model youth program supported by a lot of MGoReaders, and every shelter and social services org (favorites: Mariner's Inn, Easter Seals/MORC) always need things like soap, shampoo, deodorant, towels, socks and especially new underwear.

WHY TOYS?

If you are asking, clearly you are not a kid. But yes, toys make a HUGE difference. Kids in the hospital are terrified, uncomfortable, and often battling delirium (this, we learned, is apparently as common as it is parentally traumatizing). Their parents are sleep-deprived and mental wrecks. And here's the kicker: morale is all-important for treatment and recovery.

I don't have to explain this to any parent, but a new toy hits a kid's brain like a 4-star commitment. But in a hospital setting they also have sneaky medicinal uses. A magnetic drawing board and a tablet helped my son communicate with us while on the ventilator. A crystal growing kit  helped visualize the idea of his nerves growing back. We used a plush doll (dressed in Michigan gear) for him to decorate, point to what parts of his body hurt (meaning the nerves were coming back online), and for the staff and us to demonstrate and communicate what was happening to him.

A pair of toy cars were a breakthrough for getting him to produce sounds. Child Life brought window markers for his sister to decorate his room with, and games to play with him. When he started to recover we got several sets of Legos to help him get his hands working again. His first steps were toward a bunch of dinosaurs that PT/OT taped around the room.

The daily trauma of a certain med was solved with a bag of toys he'd get to pick from at the end of every day he got the shit down. For the greater traumas, the ones best left unremembered, certain Frozen 2 Elsas had to be sacrificed, and were okay with this.

We thank her for her service. RIP.

THE DRIVE

Because Michigan's football players are who they are, they're already all over this. Blake Corum's toy drive for Detroit Rescue Mission had about 15,000 attendees bring well over 20,000 toys, which are going to be distributed to DRM and—because they got so many more than they thought they would—several other local organizations that serve children.

JJ McCarthy and others are hosting a follow-up signing/toy drive at M-Den this Saturday for Mott, and (father-to-be) Mike Sainristil will be at Zingerman's a week from today collecting toys and signing autographs.

For those of you who can't get to one of these, do as you would for the out-of-town niblings and order a thing from Amazon that ships directly to the hospital. To this end, Mott's Children's Services put together a massive Amazon wish list, as well as a simplified three-sheet PDF that explains what they're looking for and not, and a landing page if you want to understand what they do or donate money.

A FINAL, BELATED THANKS

It is no exaggeration to say this: Mott Children's Hospital saved my son's life. Had it not been for their care, competence, and teamwork at crucial junctures we could have had very different outcomes. There are neurologists, PICU nurses, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, a child life specialist, a music therapist, an assistant basketball coach, a 12th floor tooth fairy team, his team at school, family, friends and readers who were so important to us that it's hard not to bother them with tearful hugs when I see them about town. My gratitude to the MGoBlog community and the greater Michigan community is boundless. So is my gratitude to Brian, who pays me enough, and our insurance, who covered enough, that handling the resulting expenses turned out to be so manageable I get to use the "give money to someone elseeeee" tag to reply when people ask what they can do for us.