At first sight Brian Goff looks like your typical pre-teen, member of the football team, a video game fanatic. But, a year ago, Brian and his family received news that turned their world upside down. Brian was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma, a type of cancer affecting his left thigh.
“When they looked at the x-rays they knew it was a tumor and from then on it was basically a nightmare,” says Brian.

Brian had surgery to replace his femur, then chemotherapy and other forms of radiation therapy. After a nine month absence from school, Brian faced the anxiety of re-entering and re-assimilating into his life before cancer, that included rekindling friendships with his classmates.

“A lot of them were actually like scared to come to my house and hang out and stuff because they thought they could catch cancer, but, after we did a presentation when I went back to school they seemed to not be as much scared,” says Brian.

The presentation Brian speaks of is part of an education initiative organized by Stony Brook University Hospital. The program helps ease the transition back to school for children with cancer and their parents.

Classroom visits and presentations in advance of a patient’s return to school include role-playing and activities designed to educate the other students and allay any anxieties about their classmate’s return. “Cancer was not contagious, that I can’t catch it, I felt secure that I can act the same way like I use to when he was in my class in fourth grade,” says Brian’s classmate, Rotimi Giwa.

“Many children are afraid of the word cancer or afraid to be friends with a child who has cancer we do stories, we sit down and explain what it is like to have a child that misses their friends, to have an illness that they can’t come to school and we really try to teach them about what it might feel like not to have your hair and how to be a friend to a child with cancer, we do art projects, ask them to draw a hero, talk about courage and bravery, and we explain to them that the child in their classroom, their student our patient is our hero and how proud we are that the student gets to go back to class,” says Debra Giugliano of Stony Brook University Hospital School Re-Entry Program.

Selden Middle School Principal, B.J. Phillipson, says that the program has taught her students invaluable life lessons that you just can’t learn from a textbook. “They are taking the challenge, and have outreached themselves to help Brian, it has made our students more compassionate, aware and better people,” says Phillipson.

Right now Brian is attending school all week but doing half days. He says with the exception of back to doing homework, he couldn’t be happier.

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