Cancer Patients Build Courage through Beads
By: Import User
Updated: November 30, 2006
"It's a special bead, and I got to pick it out,” says six-year old Jake. He and hundreds of other cancer patients at Arkansas Children’s Hospital participate in the Beads of Courage program. Jake, who has a form of leukemia, collects the hand-made glass beads; one for each treatment and whatever else his cancer takes him through. There’s yellow for every time a child spends the night in the hospital and red, when a patient receives blood or platelets. There's even a bead to mark when a child's hair falls out. Shannon Moreno-Cook, a nurse at ACH says, “when you start thinking about every procedure they have done, every poke they've had done, every chemotherapy they've had, every blood product they've had... all those different things, readmission, radiation treatments... we're talking thousands of beads, literally." Moreno-Cook says the beads tell the story of each child's treatment, from start to finish. "We have at the end of treatment, a purple heart, just like when you go to war because these kids are at war for their lives.”
