- Social Security carries out the Tú Eres Magia program, which provides comprehensive care to the biopsychosocial needs of children with cancer who receive treatment at ONCOCREAN.
- In a staging that included dances, characterizations, narrations and aerial acrobatics, dozens of young people forgot their hospital beds and got into their characters.
- After being paused for three years due to the pandemic, the project to perform plays with pediatric cancer patients resumed with this presentation.
In the care of tumors it is not only important to strictly follow a pharmacological treatment but also to pay attention to the emotional part of the patient. With this in mind, a project of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) focuses on offering joy to children with cancer but in a different way.
What does it consist of?
In this way, infants of the State Reference Centers for the Care of Boys and Girls with Cancer (ONCOCREAN) represented the play “The Tree of Wishes” at the San Jerónimo Theater. The initiative is part of the program you are magicwith which comprehensive care is given to their biopsychosocial needs.
In a staging that included dances, characterizations, narrations, and aerial acrobatics, dozens of children forgot hospital beds and got into their characters to represent the story of Amy, a girl undergoing cancer treatment, and Rojo, an oak tree that makes everything possible to fulfill your wishes.
children cancer patients #IMSS represent the play ‘The Tree of Desires’ at the San Jerónimo Theater
➡️ https://t.co/oQHyBWXcAy#ONCOCREATE pic.twitter.com/SqgSyTzvev
— IMSS (@Your_IMSS) June 16, 2023
The production director and founder of the program you are magic celebrated that, after being paused for three years due to the pandemic, the project to perform plays with pediatric cancer patients was resumed with this presentation.
“I feel that for children who are oncology patients it is a way of anchoring themselves to life. When the subject is only disease, death and hospital; You give them this artistic activity and then they have the possibility of transforming what they are experiencing. If they learn to transform, they will be able to use it for this moment and others in their lives”.
He commented that the preparation of the play took two months, during which virtual sessions were held to enlist the small actors, “we had them every Tuesday in these Zoom sessions where we began to teach them stage development tools and then we taught them the steps of what the characters were going to do and give was a bit complex because we didn’t have them here. It is not so easy to ask them to be rehearsing in person due to their situation ”.
Complementary treatment for children with cancer
The director commented that there were cases in which the children recorded their voices for the narration of the story from their hospital bed and they were coordinated from there. For which she thanked the general director of Social Security, Zoé Robledo; and authorities involved such as the IMSS Theater and Performance Hall Administration Trust; the Coordination of Oncology Care, headed by Dr. Enrique López Aguilar, head of the Coordination of Oncology Care, as well as the families of the patients.
“If it weren’t for the Institute, we couldn’t do this, because they are the ones who are making it easy for us to reach the children, the ONCOCREANs are a specific space for children with cancer, if they weren’t in the institution there would be no way to summon them”.
He commented that the scenery used for the work is made of materials that will later be used to manufacture the “Necklaces of Strength” that serve to motivate cancer patients.
“We do this once a year and it is at this time. It is totally an illusion to repeat it again and that it is repeated every year, that perhaps the same children or new children may join. I have had many little ones who are in the terminal stage and leave us, and the parents, today several of them were working, that also leaves you a lot ”.
In order to comprehensively address the biopsychosocial needs of pediatric cancer patients, Social Security carries out individual and group psychological interventions, and has strategies that reinforce the monitoring of minors, such as the program You Are Magic, implemented since 2021; The Necklace: Token Economy; the Fairy and Wizard: Theory of anchoring; and La Pajama with a sense of belonging.
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