What’s the Matter?
Through a whirlwind of medical emergencies and diagnoses, Dartmouth Health Children’s helped one family hold it together.
In August 2020, when people were still being told to avoid hospitals unless absolutely necessary, Susie Matter listened. Her oldest daughter Mary, age 13, was vomiting and having stomach pain, but her pediatrician reassured her that, so long as she was hydrating, it was still better to rest up at home.
Then Mary’s appendix ruptured. She would spend the next two weeks in the hospital, then develop two abscesses, before being sent home on oral antibiotics.
That was just the first episode in the Matter family’s series of emergency visits to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC)—a taste of things to come. Because within two weeks, all three of the Matter children would make separate trips to the ER, in a rapid-fire salvo of injuries and illnesses so unexpected Susie says it almost felt surreal.
A few days after Mary’s hospital stay, 10-year-old Katherine, Susie’s second daughter, flipped over her bike’s handlebars and broke her arm badly enough that she needed anesthesia to get it set. Then John, the youngest at age 8, fell off the front porch and landed headfirst in a clay flowerpot. “After he got home [from the hospital] around midnight, Mary, meanwhile, woke up and started throwing up,” Susie says.
So back to the ER they went. Mary spent another full week in the hospital for a second bout of antibiotics and a drain for her abscesses.
“That was our first time having a lot of experience with Dartmouth Health Children’s,” Susie says. But it wasn’t their last. For Susie’s family, the hospital quickly became a lifeline during a difficult stretch. As New Hampshire’s only children’s hospital system, Dartmouth Health Children’s serves families from across the region, providing specialized care for everything from broken bones to the most complex childhood illnesses.
Despite the chaos, Susie insists her kids are generally healthy. “They’re involved in school, sports, theater. They have good social lives. But just lots of bizarre, weird things bring us in there.”
The Saga Continues
Three years later, that weirdness boomeranged back again when in the fall of 2023, Susie’s second daughter Katherine’s appendix ruptured.
With an uncanny resemblance to her older sister’s appendicitis, Katherine underwent surgery, developed an abscess a few days later, and spent two weeks at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (CHaD) in Lebanon, New Hampshire, which is a part of Dartmouth Health Children’s. A drain stayed in for six weeks afterward, and she eventually needed a second procedure.
“She even went to school with the drain,” Susie recalls.
And that wasn’t the first time Katherine and the Matter family were faced with a confounding medical diagnosis. A few years earlier, in 2021, Katherine’s fifth grade teachers noticed her falling asleep in class. Her grades were slipping. The family began a battery of tests—MRIs, EEGs, bloodwork—which lasted over six months before finally landing on a proper diagnosis: ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic autoimmune arthritis that affects the spine and can make people severely lethargic. Katherine also has celiac disease.
Through the spate of ordeals her children faced over the years, Susie has balanced realism with resilience. “It was very stressful,” she admits. “It’s made me hypervigilant, especially after the appendix ruptures. For the first one, [which happened] during COVID, I understood. But for the second one, I thought we went in early enough. And it still happened.”
Still, because both daughters ruptured their appendices at age 13, she jokes about how her son’s about to turn 13. “If he even says the word ‘stomachache,’ we’re in the car,” she says with a laugh.
With a Little Help from Child Life
Luckily, the Child Life team at Dartmouth Health Children’s was there to help Susie and her family navigate the whirlwind of injuries, illnesses, and hospital visits. Child Life specialists support children and families by using play, education, and emotional care to ease the stress of illness and hospitalization. They also tailor their approach to each child’s age and needs, helping them understand and cope with medical procedures so that families like the Matters can navigate challenging healthcare experiences with greater confidence and comfort.
“Child Life makes stressful, scary, and painful experiences easier for kids and their parents,” Susie says. “[They] help kids be brave. Sometimes it’s easier for a non-parent to help kids prepare for hard things like surgery and IVs. Plus, Child Life has more medical knowledge than I do so they can more accurately answer my children’s questions. I appreciate Child Life for how they helped us navigate the anxiety and stress. They just made it more fun.”
That word—fun—floats oddly above the Matter family’s story. Not because the experiences were joyful—they certainly were not—but because Child Life helped make them bearable, Susie says. A bit of glitter on the IV pole. A pumpkin quite literally in the corner.
On Halloween, while Katherine lay in a hospital bed with a drain in her side, Child Life made sure she could still celebrate the holiday. “It was really nice to celebrate in a way that was doable for her,” Susie says.
Nor did they flinch at a mother’s vigilance. They understood that when trauma visits your house repeatedly, caution becomes instinct.
“There’s a balance there,” she says, “between being a responsible, caring mom and being overly worried. But these are all weird things that sort of keep happening, and I don’t want to miss them.”
In appreciation for the care they received, Susie and her family have made generous contributions to Dartmouth Health Children’s in recent years. Their support helps make it possible for other families to access the same kind of thoughtful, expert care when they need it most.
Today, Mary and John are thriving. Katherine continues to navigate her diagnoses with ongoing support from specialists at Dartmouth Health Children’s, working closely with her care team to manage symptoms.
None of the Matters love going to the hospital. But they no longer see it as a place only for emergencies. Thanks to Child Life, it became a space where care extended beyond the physical. A place where a child could spend Halloween with a drain in her abdomen and still smile. Where a mother became a little less afraid of being afraid. And where, against bizarre odds, a family started to feel whole again.
To learn more about Dartmouth Health Children's or the Child Life program, please contact Polly Antol at (603) 646-5316 or Polly.Antol@hitchcock.org.
