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Helping Children Is In Fashion

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By CHERYL BENTLEY, The Suncoast News

Published: January 21, 2008

WHO: North Pinellas Guild of All Children's Hospital

WHAT: Luncheon and Island Cruisin' Fashion Show, plus prize drawings, to benefit the All Children's Foundation

WHEN: Doors open at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

WHERE: Heritage Springs Golf and Country Club, 11345 Robert Trent Jones Parkway, Trinity

WHAT FOR: Money raised will go toward the neonatal intensive care unit in the new All Children's Hospital that is now under construction in St. Petersburg.

According to the Web site www.allkids.org, construction on the $400 million project - which includes a medical office building, parking garage and central energy plant - began in 2005 and is scheduled to be completed next year.

The 775,000-square-foot hospital will have 240 patient beds and equipment to diagnose and treat all sorts of pediatric health problems.

All Children's Hospital is Western Florida's only specialty licensed children's hospital, according to the Web site. All Children's also has a specialty care center in New Port Richey and a therapy center in East Lake.

BACKGROUND: Krista Howe of Oldsmar knows All Children's Hospital well. Too well. Her 11-year-old son, Tyler, has been under treatment there since he was 18 months old.

Tyler has been treated for both hydrocephalus, an excessive accumulation of fluid in the brain, and Dandy-Walker syndrome, a congenital malformation of the cerebellum, the smaller part of the brain, which is involved in sensory perception and motor control.

Through Wednesday's event, Howe is giving back to the hospital that's helping Tyler.

"When you say All Children's you immediately think babies," she noted. But the center treats children of all ages. Howe's sister Jamie was successfully treated there for encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, when she was 16, for example.

MORE ON THE EVENT: Howe promises a light-hearted time for a serious cause. The fashion show features cruise clothing from the Cotton Patch brand. It's intended to get attendees in the mood for the February fundraiser involving a Carnival Cruise Lines trip to Cozumel, Mexico.

Carnival has agreed to match the proceeds going to All Children's.

FOR DETAILS/RESERVATIONS: Call(727) 943-2264 or (727) 781-0917.

JUST THE FACTS

•The new All Children's Hospital is the largest commercial construction project in the state.

•It sits on 12,000 cubic yards of concrete in caissons (underground support columns) weighing about 48.6 million pounds, or more than 10 space shuttles.

•Each caisson is capable of holding 3.8 million pounds, roughly equivalent to 270 adult male African elephants.

•To place the caissons and create the building's basement, 67,000 cubic yards of soil was excavated. If it were spread 6 inches deep, the dirt would cover 80 acres.

•There are more than 8,000 tons of rebar and 45,000 cubic yards of concrete in the hospital building. That's enough concrete to lay a sidewalk 4 inches deep, 4 feet wide and 175 miles long - stretching from St. Petersburg to Daytona Beach.

•There are 10,000 data ports in the building and enough data cable - more than 2.3 million feet - to stretch from St. Petersburg to Atlanta.

•The metal ductwork in the building - more than 1 million pounds of it - is enough to build more than 400 automobiles.

•The more than 1,450 miles of copper wiring in the hospital would stretch from St. Petersburg to Topeka, Kansas.

•The 2.5 million square feet (52,000 pieces) of drywall to be installed is enough to complete roughly 250 average size homes.

•The 15,000 gallons of paint to be used would fill a swimming pool that's 26 feet by 26 feet.

Source: www.allkids.org

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