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Strollerderby
The Comical Side of Childhood Illness
Ever taken your kid in for X-rays? A blood draw? A CT scan? Surgery? Or maybe you’ve had to tell your Type I diabetes kid, “no dessert tonight … or ever.” Or you gluten-intolerant preschooler she’s off the Pop-Tarts. Those are all reasonable things for a person to do, in the name of health maintenance. But getting a child to understand what is happening to them — and why all the changes — isn’t always easy.
Take it from me, you can’t hug away the fear that a heavy iron apron, a dark room and big, big machinery invoke — even if the X-ray really will only take a second.
But there is a way to make things better — even funny.
By reading about them. Some doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Boston hand out medical comics, written and illustrated especially for kids. The pictures are fun. The stories are funny. And even better, there’s information that doesn’t read like a medical textbook.
Dr. Athos Bousvaros combined his concern for children with his love of comics. He joined with comic book artist Joe Staton and works like, “Amy Goes Gluten Free: a young person’s guide to celiac disease.” Hardly a medical journal, the comic is an informative and entertaining guide with everything a kid with celiac or gluten intolerance or Crohn’s disease might want to know.
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1 Comment
Jenny commented on Sep 01 10 at 8:08 amDid you mean Celiac disease?
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