The Goldschmidt Cancer Center was filled with the sounds of laughter again Sunday, the second and final day of the inaugural Festival of Trees.
The center was transformed, with trees and wreaths adorned in holiday styles throughout its zig-zag corridors.
Twenty area schools participated by decorating 2-foot trees intended to help celebrate youth. The youth trees stood along windows in the Infusion Room, where nurses provide chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments, blood products, hydration and other intravenous therapies.
As Kim Haller and Marsha Green walked through the room admiring the trees, Green said she thought the festival was wonderful.
"It's amazing how creative all the students have been," Haller said. "I'm sure it brightens the spirits of everybody who is in here."
The center attempts to provide everything patients and caregivers need, from diagnosis to treatment to recovery and rehabilitation, according to the Capital Region Medical Center website.
The festival is intended to not only entertain patients and the public, but to raise funds for cancer center - primarily focused on the center's linear accelerator. The accelerator can deliver high-energy X-rays or electrons to specific regions of a patient's tumors.
Jay Allen, the radiation oncologist at the center, said doctors like him could only dream about using a machine like that at the center.
Allen said that 20 years ago, when he was being trained on machines, if someone had a tumor on their lung, doctors would treat a 6-inch area with radiation. Because a person's breathing would move the tumor around. With the new machines, the doctors can put a field of radiation around the tumor and follow it.
The new machine can sync up with an image from a CAT scan to find the problem areas.
"Someone asked me yesterday what the smallest area we can treat is. I said if we can see it, we can treat it," Allen said.
So, as people walked through the festival, they got to see how the center utilizes the latest technology and information to treat cancer.
Beside the student-decorated trees were themed trees decorated by designers and large wreaths.
Nolan Muenks, 3, didn't care much for the machines or wreaths. He was just concerned about why there weren't presents under the trees.
His mother, Amy Muenks, said her family really enjoys the holidays.
"We're Christmas junkies," she said. "I think this is absolutely beautiful."