For local cancer patients, handcrafted symbols from UF faculty and students provide comfort

A wooden heart. A tiny Gator head. A miniature musical note. Each palm-sized carving is designed to slip into a pocket or be held tight like a worry stone, for patients undergoing cancer treatment at UF Health Shands Hospital.

Students in the University of Florida chapter of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association package these faculty-made gifts with handwritten messages of comfort, care and encouragement. And the patients who receive them may never know the person who crafted them, or how meaningful the act of making them became during her own healing.

For the creator of the carvings, Sharon DiFino, Ph.D. — a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions — woodworking began as a way to focus on something besides illness as she recovered from long COVID. The hobby gave DiFino an outlet for her frustration.

“I wanted to distract myself, and working with something organic was very soothing,” said DiFino, who serves as the faculty advisor for the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association chapter. “I’ve always loved wood since I was a child, and this allowed me to create something that could not only help me, but maybe somebody else.”

The project began with a neighbor giving DiFino some recycled wood scraps, refurbished tools and instructions on basic carving techniques. She found the activity was not too tiring and allowed her to take rest breaks when needed. As she researched designs for her creations, she came across the idea of “comfort symbols” — objects that may provide personal meaning to the owner and are often shared in health care or missionary settings.

DiFino created a multitude of wooden symbols: hearts, Gator heads, musical notes, animals, leaves, musical instruments, the African symbol of beauty known as a duafe and the American Sign Language sign for “I love you.” She started by cutting out shapes with a scroll saw, then refined the designs with chisels and other hand tools. Each piece was sanded to a smooth finish and treated with non-toxic mineral oil to preserve the wood for repeated handling.

“Chipping away, so to speak, helped me get outside of thinking about me and my personal situation, and helped me move forward,” DiFino said.

Over time, DiFino amassed more than 200 comfort symbols. She approached Kathryn Davis, the service director for UF’s National Student Speech Language Hearing Association chapter, about incorporating the carvings into a service project. The two decided to give the items to local patients receiving cancer care — a population with special significance for DiFino. Throughout her career in speech-language pathology, she has worked closely with patients with head and neck cancer, and she also lost her mother to cancer.

“It was important to me, as a mentor, to show students that even small gestures can be very big,” DiFino said. “I tell my students that, as therapists, compassion is equally as important as knowledge and skill set.”

Students paired each comfort symbol with a note explaining that the carvings had been created by a rehabilitation therapist using recycled wood and rehabbed tools, and they expressed wishes of strength and good health during recovery.

“As future speech and hearing professionals, we got a glimpse into how small actions such as wood carvings can greatly impact someone’s life,” said Davis, who is pursuing a double major in communication sciences and disorders and music performance at UF. “This experience allowed us to see how our careers as future health care professionals will bring similar joy and happiness that we will be providing to patients one day.”

Davis coordinated with UF administrators Blair DeLaet and Stephanie Reed in the Department of Medicine Division of Hematology and Oncology in the UF College of Medicine to deliver more than 30 comfort symbols to patients.

“The wood carvings were beautifully crafted, and the individual notes added a meaningful personal touch,” said Reed, the division’s manager of health care administration. “I believe each patient who receives one will feel genuinely honored knowing that someone they have never met took the time to think of them and create something with care and intention.”

DiFino continues her wood carving, filling racks in her home with symbols she hopes will carry special significance for those who receive them.

“Addressing patients’ emotional needs is so important to rehabilitation and recovery,” DiFino said.