DENVER — HCA HealthONE Rocky Mountain Children’s Hospital has opened a new, dedicated space for adolescent and young adult patients — a project inspired by a late 23-year-old patient's vision.
Ryan Austin spent 50 weeks at the hospital battling alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare soft tissue sarcoma, before he died in April 2024. During his treatment, he voiced the need for a space where older patients could escape their rooms and feel normal.
"As a 22, 23-year old, it was hard for him to find and escape and get… out of his room while he was doing treatment and just feel a little normal,” Ryan’s mother Rachel Austin said. “I'm really incredibly proud of the fact that he saw a need for this room and that he voiced that to the team, and that his heart was big enough to share that.”
The new teen lounge features video games, jigsaw puzzles, a big screen for movies and a putting green, in honor of Ryan’s favorite sport. The room is also decorated in green, his favorite color.
“We have 4-year-olds, and we have spaces for them, but what we needed was a space where we could really cater to our adolescents and our young adults,” Kara Hellums, a child life specialist at the hospital, said. “I got to help dream this with Ryan. We walked the space with him, and he gave us ideas.”
Execute Director of the Rocky Mountain Children’s Health Foundation Cathy Sandoval helped partner with Shea’s Village Foundation to fund the project.
“If you’re a teenager and you’re stuck in the hospital, your life kind of got hijacked at a time when you’re making plans for your future,” Sandoval said. “You’re excited, and suddenly you’ve got to be in the hospital.
Sandoval said the room provides a place for teenagers to forget they are in a hospital and just focus on being teenagers.
“It’s going to make their experience so much more rich and rewarding,” Sandoval said. “I've worked on lots of great projects throughout my career, but this one is one of the absolute highlights. It just became this beautiful vision, and it turned out more beautifully than I could ever have imagined.”
Rachel Austin said the room is a great representation of who her son was, and she knows he is still a part of the space.
“He’s been a little MIA in my life lately, as a little angel following me around,” Rachel said. “I wondered, ‘where were you Ryan?’. And now I know he’s been here, monitoring the room and making sure that it comes to fruition.”
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
