When 14-year-old Sam Lane figured he had cancer before it was officially diagnosed, the news hurt all the same. It was a rare form of brain and spine cancer that had him run through the gauntlet of treatments. One of the few things that distracted him was a little LEGO set given to him by a nurse. According to NBC News, it was a little LEGO playset of an MRI scanner.
It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a LEGO set of the famously terrifying diagnostic machine, but made less frightening by the brightly colored LEGO bricks it’s made of. It comes complete with a moving table and a patient to be slid into the MRI machine’s gaping maw, minifigs of hospital staff, and it’s even got a little waiting room.
That LEGO set is now used in hospitals around the world to help kids understand what an MRI is before they climb into a real one. If you’ve ever been inside one, you know that they are loud, intimidating, and claustrophobic.
They can deter adults, so you can imagine how terrified some kids might be in the presence of an MRI machine.
LEGO Donates Over 10,000 Mini MRI Sets to Hospitals Worldwide
According to research published by LEGO itself this past week, over 1 million children globally have used the set to prepare for medical scans. 96 percent of healthcare professionals said the toy helped reduce anxiety, and nearly half reported needing less sedation for their young patients after playing with one.
LEGO, a company we recently learned has a whole black market of criminality operating at the fringes of its fandom, doesn’t sell the MRI machine model—it donates them. So far, the company has given away more than 10,000 steps to hospitals around the world, all in an effort to help children face their fears with a bit of fun.
Sam’s LEGO model now helps other kids at Boston Children’s Hospital better understand a machine that previously would have terrified them. Sam himself tells NBC News that he used to be terrified of MRIs. Now he sleeps through them.
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