Before posing for a picture with her little brother, 8-year-old Liz Camacho was told that it would be OK to remove her protective mask for a few seconds to get a good shot.
Liz, next to her 5-year-old brother Juan, beamed for the camera, letting loose with a smile that would melt any parent’s heart. Then the photographer, Lori Mackey, snapped a few more pictures of the siblings–some with the mask back on–before taking the storage card out of the digital camera and putting it into a computer.
It was the start of a process that provided a lot of fun for the artistic Liz, who just a few days ago drew a revealing self-portrait that included an intravenous tube coming from her arm.
Liz and Juan are participating in a trend sweeping the country–creating a digital book to share experiences. They are doing it at Children’s Memorial Hospital, where, like other hospitals, administrators are finding that digital tools can have a powerful therapeutic benefit for patients and their families, particularly children.
Another example is found at Comer’s Children Hospital at the University of Chicago, where the staff encourages patients to use its wireless Internet connection to communicate with friends.
On Tuesday, Lasting Impressions for Paper Inc., a Utah company that makes a program called MemoryMixer, donated a “memory station” at Children’s. The software creates a digital scrapbook that can be printed on special paper or burned to a CD if kids want to include music and video. Studio D, a Best Buy subsidiary in Naperville, provided equipment.
“It’s so important for these kids to tell their story,” said Mackey, a creative arts therapist at Children’s. “Kids see things differently than we do. This technology lets you see things through their eyes.”
Liz, who was recently diagnosed with leukemia, has already used the arts to express her feelings.
“We learned things we didn’t know about her fears,” said her mother, Gloria Camacho, when discussing Liz’s recent drawings. Liz was able to express what she couldn’t talk about, such as why did she have leukemia, what will happen to her, and how scared she was about losing her hair, which has already started to happen.
“She didn’t know how to tell us about these fears,” Gloria said.
Liz is not sure if the new digital tools will replace her love for doing arts and crafts with her hands. But she liked working on the computer with her brother, who doesn’t care much for traditional crafts. “I got a lot of good ideas,” Liz said.
At Comer Children’s Hospital, patients and parents are using technology in other ways. Through Wi-Fi, flat-screen televisions in rooms and a program to create Web pages, patients can easily communicate with the outside world.
“I was on the computer a lot using AOL instant messaging to talk to my friends who wanted to know what I was doing,” said Jessica Padilla, 16, who had a heart transplant in March. “When I found out I would get my heart at 1:15 in the morning, the first thing I did was write on my care page that things would be all right.”
The hospital’s Care Pages program lets patients create a Web page where they can post pictures or write blog-like entries to update what’s going on. When a new post goes up, a message is sent to the friends and family who registered on the site.
“It was great for us as parents,” said mom Linda Padilla, “because we constantly had doctors and nurses to talk with and this enabled us to talk with our friends without always being on the phone.”
The book Juan and Liz Camacho made was titled “10 Things I Love About You.” The kids dropped in pictures throughout the book and Liz let Juan use a few sports themes, like soccer, to dress up the pages.
And when Juan, with a little help, cropped the picture of his big sister without her mask and put it next to his picture, Liz turned to look at her mom. The smile on her face was so wide and her eyes sparkled so brightly, it was as if her mask had disappeared.
———-
ebenderoff@tribune.com
