Bright backdrop is illustrative Digging Deep www.diggingdeep.org Copyright © 2014 Rose Offner and Resonance House of a writing prompt from the “Digging Deep” journal. 50 South Bay Accent COURTESY OF SHERI SOBRATO BRISSON Reaching Out Who are the people that reach out to you? What do they do or say that makes you feel cared for and supported? Write about the times when you have felt alone. In what ways have you been able to ask for help? 70 WE DON’T PARTICULARLY LIKE TO SELL THE BOOK, SO WHEN WE DO SELL IT, 100 PERCENT GOES BACK TO OUR BOOK GIFTING PROGRAM.” —Sheri Sobrato Brisson my book is just taking that idea one step farther, because you don’t get gifts in hospitals anymore, typically. Why not give them something that can really be valuable, and help them through those difficult times?” Brisson sees today’s health care experience as very different from the time when she grew up, partially due to pressures to cut costs and spend less time with patients. “Times have changed a lot since I was a kid in a hospital,” she explains. “You stayed a lot longer back then, which was good and bad. You would be separated from your family, but you’d also be more likely to have the opportunity to work with a child specialist or social worker, and have that support start at the time you were in the hospital.” The author sees “Digging Deep” as a way of giving kids the kind of opportunities to express themselves that they often lack in today’s health care climate. Most doctors can’t spend as much time with patients as they did in the past, she believes, and kids are not always able to work with specialists who can help them address the emotional impact of their illnesses. On the other hand, Sourkes points out that, a few decades ago, most families weren’t open about health problems, especially when they involved children. So they probably wouldn’t have been as receptive to a book like this. “It was desperately needed way back then because you didn’t talk about illness. Kids weren’t even told their diagnosis. There was a lot of secrecy. So in that sense, you wish it could have been around then. But again, it wasn’t the culture. If a family didn’t want a child to know, you wouldn’t as a professional say, ‘Well, here’s a book to talk about cancer.’ ” Sourkes has seen that people can be much more receptive to a book like “Digging Deep” today, if it takes the right approach. “This book is a remarkable tool for kids. With whatever handicaps or vulnerabilities they have, it helps put them back in their life. It’s new territory for them, and new territory for the professionals.” Longer life expectancy Another reason the book is so critical now, says Sourkes, is that many kids with complex illnesses are living on for decades, when they wouldn’t have survived or lived that long in the past. “So we now have this big population of children, adolescents and young adults who are living with very complicated, ongoing medical issues, many of them life-threatening. It’s like a new subculture of kids,” Sourkes says. “These are kids who have gone through terrifying experiences, with all sorts of emotional and physical complications, and they now have a lifetime ahead to figure out what this all means to them.” For example, the outlook for children with cancer has improved significantly over the past 50 years, according to the National Cancer Institute website, which highlights statistics from a variety of research papers. In 1975, just over half of the children diagnosed with cancer before age 20 survived at least 5 years. In 2010, more than 80 percent of children diagnosed with cancer before age 20 years survived at least 5 years. In addition, the number of deaths due to cancer per 100,000 people per year—among children from birth to 19— declined by more than 50 percent between 1975 and 2010. Both Brisson and Sourkes emphasize that the book is not just designed for kids
South Bay Accent - Apr/May 2015
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