BOSTON - Taylor Carol, 23, knows all about boredom in the hospital. As a 12-year-old boy, he spent six months in intensive care fighting terminal leukemia. He could not eat, speak or even see. Twelve years later he stands, cancer-free, as the co-founder of two separate charities that have benefited over 25,000 families.
Speaking in the “Ideas Dome” at HUBweek in Boston City Hall Plaza on Friday, Carol recalled his personal health struggles and detailed his mission to make illness more tolerable for others.
Once healthy, Carol began to study the effect of boredom on pain perception. He found that hospital patients experienced a drop of six points on a ten-point-scale of pain perception when occupied. In short, this is pain relief comparable to morphine.
This gave birth to Carol’s first charity, “Gamechanger.” Gamechanger provides gaming consoles to hospitalized children, entertaining them through their illness. It has raised over $23 million in donations. 93 cents of each dollar goes towards helping patients. For those without control over their limbs, they have even created controllers that can be used solely with your mouth.
Carol’s second charity, ZOTT, helps patients through the use of AR and VR. One way in which it does this is by helping patients receive education.
As he talked about ZOTT’s other function, Carol began to grow emotional. He explained that the charity allows dying patients to live out their dreams through virtual reality. ZOTT lets patients experience a virtual visit of landmarks such as the Pyramids of Giza from their hospital bed.
“This is what I’m proudest of,” he said.
All photos taken by Harry Jones.
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