The paediatric radiotherapy patients need psychical support before and during the therapy process. Distress and fear can be resolved with adequate information and playful elements. Georgina Fröhlich, a Medical Physicist Expert at the National Institute of Oncology (NIO) in Budapest and her children dreamed and implemented the ‘The Mission of Brave’ charitable project in Hungary. She gives a thematic gift box for children before their external beam radiotherapy which contains her linear accelerator LEGO-set, a plush teddy bear (which can escorts them to the treatment room where their parents cannot leave with them), a thematic radiotherapy booklet (a cartoon about Brave, who defeats the evil cells on a planet with his linac-spaceship in the space, and also playful and funny exercises in the radiotherapy topic, i.e.: electron-labyrinth, bunker-colouring,…), stickers about Brave and the linac-spaceship, etc. A stop-motion short LEGO-film about a larger LEGO-bunker belongs to the project also, where Gina’s children explain the process of radiotherapy to the paediatric patients:
https://onkol.hu/bator-kuldetese/lego-film/
And when patients completed their mission, they receive a Brave-shaped gold medal into their neck. She also transformed the linacs to spaceships and the bunkers to space with light painting where paediatric patients are treated in NIO. Children welcome this project with pleasure, they would like to entry the treatment room again to ‘use’ the ‘spaceship’. And last but not least, these well-prepared patients has initial knowledge about the treatment process so they stay calm and can cooperate better, in some cases anaesthesia is not needed. Beside financial support, Mediagnost Ltd. supported the project with the LEGO-set of a Duo Diagnost X-ray device produced initially to Philips Medical. If you would like to contribute to the successfull missions, write to Georgina Fröhlich, Ph.D.: bator.kuldetese@oncol.hu
Georgina Fröhlich with their LEGO-bunker and with the original Varian linear accelerator.
The spaceship light-painting of a bunker and a Varian TrueBeam linac at the NIO.
