KANSAS CITY, Mo. — One of the world’s biggest pop stars spent part of her day Thursday visiting sick children in Kansas City.
Fresh off her final Era’s Tour stop Sunday in Canada, Taylor Swift made a surprise visit at Children’s Mercy Hospital.
Patients and families were expecting a different special visitor at this time of year. But it seems children weren’t disappointed it turned out to be Taylor Swift.
There was a buzz at Children’s Mercy Hospital Thursday morning just as a local first grader was about to be released. Caregivers said she might want to stick around for lunch.
“I was already getting suspicious with how everyone was acting because this was a lot for Santa,” her mother Phillis Faulkner-Johnson said.
But never in her “Wildest Dreams” could the 6-year-old girl imagine the person walking through the door was the pop star she’d dreamed of meeting Taylor Swift.
“I told her my favorite song is “Bad Blood,” Faulkner-Johnson’s daughter said.
They talked about her tour and her last concert
“She said I made her day,” the six-year-old girl said.
Just as Swift made the days of a lot of other children going through tough times around the holidays.
She met 12-year-old Blake, who was diagnosed with leukemia in June and just received a bone marrow transplant Wednesday. He was struggling with recovery, but when the pop star stopped by his family reported suddenly he was more talkative than he’d been with any of the staff.
Blake was able to show her the Chiefs blanket his primary care physician gave him he’s taken with him to every one of his hospital stays. Swift had to chuckle when she saw it said “Go Taylor’s Boyfriend.”
The mom of the little girl already home from the hospital happily going through her signed tour book said after an especially rough week in an ongoing medical journey, for Taylor Swift to call her “her bestie,” means a world of difference.
“She doesn’t have to do this, she doesn’t have to come and give so much of her time. But she did and it literally has made her little six-year-old life,” Faulkner-Johnson said.
Asked what it’s like having Taylor Swift as a best friend, the girl responded, “Awesome!”
The girl, who will turn seven next week, also passed along a special Happy Birthday wish to Taylor Swift, who as Swifties know, is celebrating her 35th birthday on December 13.