The Doctor Book

We have been absent from our family blog for one month exactly as our son Thomas was diagnosed with cancer. We were publishing over at CaringBridge (https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/thomaslauer/), but are now going to try to bring the two together seamlessly in order to continue the family blog I have written for 14 years. This blog post is copied from CaringBridge and is being published retroactively.

Thomas had decided after his experience at the hospital on Monday that he wanted to create a Doctor Book to teach other people about blood and veins . . . but I suspect this Doctor Book will become a more comprehensive treatise on medical subjects.

On Wednesday morning, before heading into the hospital for more testing, Thomas sat down with 11-year-old sister Mary to start authoring the book. Mary drew a body and Thomas colored in all the blue veins--although ultimately there was so much blood that the whole body is blue! They talked through conversations and then Thomas told her almost all of the words to write down, which you can see in the photos below. His little voice may sound babyish, but Thomas is a smart little boy!

Then Thomas drew his own body all by himself.

We took the Doctor Book to the hospital to show Miss H., the Child Life Specialist. Then after Thomas had his IV successfully placed in his hand (a story to be included in my overall update for today), Thomas said confidently, as if a CEO dictating to a secretary, "Mama, I need you to add something to the book. Write this down: Sometimes a doctor needs to give you an IV."

We considered oh-so briefly illustrating the page ourselves but both decided we couldn't draw something as fancy as an IV, so we would go home later and print out a picture to paste inside the book.