At St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Legacy Beads Program offers families a creative outlet to cope with hospitalization and to express feelings during treatment for cancer or other catastrophic childhood diseases
Through the Legacy Beads Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, patients collect colorful, glass beads that represent their experiences during treatment for cancer or other catastrophic childhood illnesses.
Children net one bead for each event: a square, orange one for physical therapy; a green, cone-shaped bead for a CT scan; silver for a final chemotherapy session; gold for remission. During the past year, the hospital has purchased more than 90,000 beads for the program; if placed end-to-end, the strand would extend longer than six football fields. To start, participants receive special beads emblazoned with the hospital’s logo; pieces of string; and square, ceramic beads that spell out their names. Then they begin amassing their unique collections.
“If they visit the clinic three times in one day, they get three blue beads,” said Cara Sisk, a Child Life specialist at St. Jude. “Eventually they can say, ‘This is how many times I went to the clinic.’”
The Legacy Beads activity is only one of numerous offerings sponsored by the St. Jude Child Life Program. Child Life helps minimize the stress and anxiety associated with treatment and hospitalization. One way that Child Life specialists help children cope is by allowing them to express their feelings and chronicle their journeys. Some patients create scrapbooks or take photos; others tell their stories through journals, videos or art projects. Begun in April 2009, the Legacy Beads Program provides an additional avenue for expression.
More than 500 patients now participate in the program, which offers nearly 50 different beads. St. Jude families find novel ways to display their Legacy Beads. Some fashion strands that can be hung from the ceiling; others adorn strollers, purses or backpacks with the baubles.
Teens say the beads give weight and heft to their stories, providing a tactile method for demonstrating the breadth of their experiences. “It gives them a concrete way of sharing their stories,” Sisk said. “It helps bridge that gap back to home, as they talk with people who don’t understand what they’ve been through.”
St. Jude Children’s Research HospitalSt. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering research and treatment of children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. Ranked the No. 1 pediatric cancer hospital by Parents magazine and the No. 1 children’s cancer hospital by U.S. News & World Report, St. Jude is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and from around the world, serving as a trusted resource for physicians and researchers. St. Jude has developed research protocols that helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancer from less than 20 percent when the hospital opened to almost 80 percent today. St. Jude is the national coordinating center for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium and the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. In addition to pediatric cancer research, St. Jude is also a leader in sickle cell disease research and is a globally prominent research center for influenza.
Founded in 1962 by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the world, publishing more research articles than any other pediatric cancer research center in the United States. St. Jude treats more than 5,700 patients each year and is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance. St. Jude is financially supported by thousands of individual donors, organizations and corporations without which the hospital’s work would not be possible. In 2010, St. Jude was ranked the most trusted charity in the nation in a public survey conducted by Harris Interactive, a highly respected international polling and research firm. For more information, go to www.stjude.org.
Experts Available:Cara Sisk is a certified child life specialist at St. Jude who works with teens undergoing treatment for cancer. She can discuss normalizing the hospital environment and assisting children and teens with living as close to a normal life as possible despite catastrophic illnesses.
Jennifer Smith is certified child life specialist at St. Jude who works with children in the Intensive Care Unit. She can address topics of stress management in critical-care patients as well as creating outlets for children that promote a sense of mastery, play, learning, self-expression, family involvement and peer interaction.
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