The little girl in the frilly, blue dress and black, patent leather shoes looked like she was on her way to a birthday party Wednesday.
But as soon as she walked through the door of the Rolling Meadows Police Neighborhood Resource Center, a sixth sense that children seem to possess prompted her to burst into tears.
And with good reason.
The youngster was among more than two dozen preschool children from the East Park Apartments in the northwest suburb who were being poked at by doctors and nurses from Northwest Community Hospital as part of Cook County`s free immunization program.
The children were anything but happy.
”They stand with big tears, and then the tears start to drop out and their little mouths are hanging down and you can see their lips quiver,” said Pat Sanders, a nurse at the Arlington Heights hospital who coordinated the preschool physicals.
”You can`t console them,” she said. ”They don`t want their shots, so they cry and cry and cry.”
Sanders was among about a dozen adults who volunteered their time and services to provide the free physicals and shots to the primarily low-income residents of the complex.
State law stipulates that children in certain age groups must be immunized for a variety of ailments, like mumps and measles, before they go to school each fall. Physical exams also are required.
So each summer, hundreds of thousands of children play out the same teary-eyed drama before doctors and nurses at private or public-health facilities throughout Cook County and throughout the state.
One thing that made Wednesday`s theater at the East Park Apartments complex unusual, however, is that normally the children must be traipsed to one of Cook County`s public-health clinics to get the free shots.
”It`s really unusual that they (doctors and nurses) would come and do on-site exams and immunizations,” said June Laystrom, community nurse for Rolling Meadows.
The idea to bring the doctors and nurses to the patients was the result of an effort by Laystrom, hospital employees and Diana Vasquez, the social worker at the complex`s community center.
Laystrom said Vasquez told her last year that transportation to the Cook County facilities was a major problem for many of the residents of East Park. So a mini-clinic was opened briefly to immunize 33 children.
This year, the program was expanded when a group of Northwest Community Hospital employees launched a community outreach program that included providing the preschool services at East Park, said Barbara McFall, the hospital`s manager of nursing education.
The 2-year-old Neighborhood Resource Center was a natural location for the clinic since it has become the focal point of the apartment complex, providing residents on-site relations with police officers as well as educational services, including English classes, tutoring and youth clubs.
In addition to the physicals and free shots, the children also were tested for lead poisoning and Spanish-language translators were on hand to assist parents in filling out the necessary paperwork before their children could be examined.
”It makes it easier for the moms and kids who live there because they don`t have to travel a long distance to the Cook County facilities because the doctors and nurses come to them,” McFall said.
If numbers are any indicator, this year`s program was an unqualified success with a total of 98 children being pinched and inoculated during the three different clinics offered this summer, the volunteers said.
