K: Kids

As an aside, sorry for the long delay between posts. I have a huge committee meeting for my thesis tomorrow, and I have been working nonstop to get everything ready for it. I'm still not done, but thought I'd post a quick one in lieu of recent events.

My mom is a first grade teacher. I've written about her here before. Because of her, a large amount of my childhood was spent among first graders - days that I had off and she didn't, The Sister and I would go to school with her. We always helped her set up her room in August before the kids came back. Somewhere along the line - and very early on - I realized that I loved being around kids. It's the things that the say, the joy that they have for life, their pureness, that leads me to them. If I enter a room of strange people and see that there are a few kids there, I make a beeline for them. I know kids. I know how to talk to kids. I have a much harder time with grown-ups. I started babysitting when I was about 14 and did it off and on through high school - the vice principal's kids, the hairdresser's kids, my sixth grade reading teacher's son. Then in college, I babysat a lot - it provided me with my drinking money the last two years of college! I sat for two families - one, a Jewish family that kept kosher, they had twin 10-year-old girls (who went to different schools so they could develop their own identities) and a 5-year-old son; the other, a professor's daughters, ages 6 and 7, and we used to go ice skating and get hot chocolate and play board games and generally have a fantastic time together. It was great, and at Wellesley, babysitting (and this was 6 years ago, so I would think it's probably even more now) paid $12 / hour.

Clearly, the conjunction of kids and medicine is pediatrics, and I've known since I was 8 or 9 that I wanted to be a pediatrician. When I was a teenager, I started thinking about specialties, but I didn't grow attached to the idea of one until after my first year of medical school. My friend K dragged me to Ohio with her that summer to be a camp counselor at Camp Friendship, a camp for kids with cancer. I had a cabin of 7-year-old girls, and they wore me out, but it was the best week I'd ever had, despite the lack of sleep, food, and hot showers. I fell in love with my girls - Kaytie, who had been adopted after her birth parents neglected her, and who was the sweetest thing in the entire world; Carly, who had a cochlear implant after she lost her hearing following her treatment; Molly, Katelynn, Jordan, and Victoria. I didn't want to leave (but it was nice to get a hot shower, a good night's sleep, and some good food at K's parents' house after camp!). Six months later, I was upset when I got a letter stating that Camp Friendship was going to be discontinued. I decided almost immediately to find a new camp.

As it happened, it wasn't until Summer 2006 that I went to camp again, but again I had a great time. My 11-year-old camper had recently entered remission from her cancer, and was off medication. She was happy and healthy, and we hung out in the craft room, went to the pool, attempted valiantly to steer "ground boats" with toilet plungers, and shot archery bows and paintball guns. I didn't keep in touch with her much after camp, but I was saddened a few months after camp when I found out that she had relapsed and was back in the hospital. I kept an eye on her through her mom's Caring Bridge journal, but I didn't talk to her. She had a bone marrow transplant last April, and seemed to be recovering fairly well - with a few setbacks here and there. She wasn't able to make it to camp last summer, and so I got a new camper, whom I absolutely adored. About a month ago, I got an email telling me that the Caring Bridge site had been updated. My original camper was back in the hospital. She had a bad case of influenza, and her lungs weren't behaving. Within a week, she was on a ventilator. Instead of getting better, she only got worse. Her kidneys started to fail about a week ago, and her live not long after. She passed away on Tuesday, at the age of 13. My mom couldn't help but ask me, "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" when I told her about my camper's death. But then I saw a hematology consult patient on Tuesday afternoon - a bright, vibrant 13-year-old girl (yes, another 13-year-old). She was admitted to the hospital with severe bleeding following a routine operation, and her local hospital couldn't figure it out. She was scared and had been dealing with this problem for almost two weeks before she was transferred here. And after two days here? She was fine. Her clotting cascades were normal, and she had an aberrant blood vessel through the wound site that kept opening up with the wound reorganization. And things like that? That's why I know I can do this. Because for every bad story in Peds Hem/Onc, there's at least one good one.

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