Ten-year-old Lena went home knowing that she’d both courageously completed an intensive two months of rehabilitation therapy and that she’d left behind a valuable legacy at Bloorview Kids Rehab.
Lena, a bright, cheerful and brave girl who was treated for bone cancer, introduced Bloorview to a program known as the Bravery Beads program, a beading exercise that allows children not only to document their treatment, but also to find the motivation and strength to endure it, all the while creating a lovely keepsake.
The Bravery Beads idea is simple: Different coloured beads represent different stages of treatment; as each stage is completed, a new bead is added to a child’s necklace. Lena’s latest necklace sports purple beads, for physiotherapy, yellow ones, representing hair loss, a round white snowman for blood draws.
One large blue bead represents the 12-hour surgery that replaced much of the bone in her right leg with a large metal rod running from her thigh to her ankle. “I am so proud of what I have been through,” Lena said in a profile published recently in newspapers across Canada.
The Bravery Beads idea is one that Lena encountered at the Hospital for Sick Children, where bead therapy has been in use for some years. Lena was shocked to discover the same program didn’t exist at Bloorview and, with the help of child-life specialist Michelle Bernardi, pitched the concept first to her rehab classmates and then to the “big cheeses” of the hospital, including nurses and staff. “I told them it’s kind of like a souvenir of your treatment.”
For most kids, Bernardi adds, the beads give more than a souvenir. “More than anything, the beads are an incredible source of motivation for the kids,” Bernardi says. “Many of these children have giant goals like learning how to walk or how to speak again, and it can take a long, long time. The beads help break the goal down into smaller goals, so they can see that they are making achievements every day.”
For Lena, who returned for the official launch of the program, her triumph came the day she walked out of the hospital on her own, rather than in the wheelchair she needed when she arrived at Bloorview. “Most adults can't go through what Lena has gone through," says Lena's mom, Cathy. “The amazing thing is that even after all of this, she is still smiling.”
