It’s Monday, I recall as I step into work; “Preparing for battle,” I say with a smirk. Surviving all weekend with a sick kid in tow, the parents’ relief as they waited to show you their child with fever, diarrhea and sneezing, the one who is too hot, t…
Category: Pediatrics
When we ignore a child’s preventable suffering, we lose a piece of our humanity
Sometimes an image captures the heart of a nation by putting a face on a human crisis. The one of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 2-year-old daughter Valeria lying face down in the Rio Grande after drowning was powerful. Their family had been …
To anyone in medicine: This is why listening matters
Victor Frankl is an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor, who survived three years in the concentration camps of Dachau and Auschwitz. He once told a story about a woman, his patient, who called him in the middle of the night sayi…
Interns: You’re not alone, until you are
During intern orientation a few months ago, they promised we would never be alone in the hospital. And they were right. Until they weren’t. It’s hard to see colors in the dark — that’s why he looks blue. That’s strange; it almost seems like his chest i…