15-year-old Josh Church and 14-year-old Brandon Gordon aren't playing your typical video game. Yes, it does have its good guy and bad guy, but those characters, well, they're chemotherapy versus cancer.
"It's kind of hard at first because when you kill the bad cells, you turn the corner, and there's 50 more cells," explains Gordon. "Once you kill one bad cell, it reproduces three."
The video game is called "Re-Mission." At Sparrow Hospital it's used to teach adolescent cancer patients about their disease, its treatments, and its side effects.
"You learn about your nausea, your energy level, and how you need to take breaks and take medications," Sparrow's Lydia Watkins, RNP.
Both Gordon and Church were diagnosed with bone cancer this year.
"I didn't really know anything about a lot of cancers," says Church. "It's not anything I thought about."
"I was very confused, and I didn't know that much about it," Gordon says. "I didn't even know it existed."
Through "Re-Mission," the boys have battled their way through not only bone cancer, but other cancers like leukemia and brain cancer. And it's helped them understand what lies ahead.
"I know that it's easily curable," Church says. "I know that it spreads, but we caught it early, so that's good."
Church and Gordon say the information they've learned about their illness is invaluable, and it's all thanks to a video game.
Sparrow just started using the video game this summer.
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