Jordan and Tyler Corvin (photo by Phyllis McCabe)
Jordan Corvin, along with his mother and brother, visited patients’ rooms at HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus a few days before Christmas, distributing gifts.
Jordan, who has spent much of his life in hospitals, got the idea of giving gifts to hospitalized patients when he was six years old. He knew he didn’t like being in the hospital, especially during the holidays.
His two congenital disorders are Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a weakness in his connective tissue, primarily the skin, joints and blood-vessel walls, and familial Mediterranean fever, which causes recurrent fevers and painful inflammation of the abdomen, lungs and joints.
Jordan also has critically low levels of Immunoglobulin M, a basic antibody, so without antibiotics his body cannot fight infections. Jordan now takes antibiotics every day, twice a day, all year long.
One December, when Jordan was almost five years old and hospitalized at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, someone gave him an electric-train set. This lifted his spirits immensely.
The next year, when he was six, he wanted to give gifts to others and, with his family’s help, delivered presents to Maria Fareri patients. He now calls his annual gift giving to hospital inpatients in Ulster, Dutchess, Columbia and Delaware counties “Jordan’s Wish.”
He has wrapped more than 300 homemade holiday presents with his family every year for the past nine years.