Helping Children Cope with Medical Procedures

Having two boys with Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome, we have had to help the children cope with many medical procedures. We still continue to do weekly infusions of IgG (gammaglobulins) here at home, which has always been stressful for my youngest son. Several years ago, a friend told me to try using social stories as a means to help my youngest with his fear of getting blood in is line while we infuse his weekly medication. Since then, we have used social stories in a variety of ways.

Our youngest son, Joseph, has always had more fears and anxiety about medical procedures and needles than our middle son. He has a need to know exactly how things are supposed to be, how the procedure will 'play out'. If they do not go as planned, it can cause a meltdown situation. If he witnesses someone else having problems with their medical procedures, this causes him a great amount of angst, as well. He has stayed up late many a night worried about anything from getting blood in a line to worrying about his veins not being good enough to start an IV the next day.

What is a social story? Social stories were originally introduced in the early nineties to support the emotional and social development of autistic children. They were developed to help identify a concern and support a desired outcome in social interactions for autistic children. These stories are written from the child's perspective and are written about the child himself, thus making it unique to that child.

We modified the application of social stories to fit Joseph's unique fears. They worked like a charm! For instance, we were able to extinguish his fear of getting blood in his line through the use of a social story. The strange part of his fear was that he had developed the fear not because he had gotten blood in his line, but because he had witnessed it happen to his brother. He obsessed about this happening to him constantly-even when it wasn't IgG infusion day. We developed a social story that went something like this: