Shane and Esther are playing the Squiggle Game, an art-based activity where one person sketches the outline of something while the other tries to figure out what it is.<\/p>\n
They draw Pac-Man and boots, bear claws and mountains, and\u2014though Shane does well\u2014Esther is on an unbelievable hot streak, so much so that when she guesses \u201cElephants!\u201d from the barest of sketches, Shane gives her that kind of amazed\/angry look that says, \u201cGet out of my head!\u201d<\/p>\n
The two of them soon erupt into the kind of laughter often shared by old friends. But, they are not old friends.<\/p>\n
Shane Sweis is an 11-year-old boy being treated at Long Beach Memorial\u2019s Jonathan Jaques Children\u2019s Cancer Institute for acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow.<\/p>\n
Esther Kim is an art therapist who has worked at the Cancer Institute for the past two years. Her job is to help kids with cancer like Shane deal with the anxiety, fear and myriad other complex emotions that they may be unable to talk about but can confront through art.<\/p>\n
Research has shown that cancer patients experience many psychosocial and psychological stressors when dealing with the disease and its difficult treatment. Art is a powerful tool that can identify these stressors, empower the young patient in the fight against cancer and offer a complementary treatment method to relieve symptoms and gain insights into thoughts, feelings and behaviors.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou help the patient identify and name that feeling that they don\u2019t have the words to describe how they\u2019re feeling,\u201d Kim said. \u201cArt therapy can help with identifying what that feeling is to them. They might not be able to name it, but they can show it through the choice of colors or scribbling something or how they use their lines. It can help them understand what they\u2019re feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n