Pediatric Palliative Care

I went to a Pediatrics interest group at lunch today (so far I've joined about a dozen clubs and interest groups, which is hilarious because uhm, I barely sleep at night and it's only week 2....) Our speaker was a woman doctor who specializes in pediatric palliative care.


To me, those three words are possibly some of the saddest words ever put together. Although palliative care is not strictly end-of-life care, thinking about gravely ill children breaks my heart to the nth degree. She shared that their main objective, besides alleviating pain, is to work with the family to achieve the short-term goals that are important to the child such as watching cartoons like a normal kid, going to Sea World, attending prom...


And of course, in my homesick-and-heartsick state, I start to cry. I wasn't the only one. Sometimes I wonder if I'm equipped to do work like this. If I have enough compartments in my heart to separate emotions from diagnoses from personal experiences and SOB! dying children...or wait is that not the point of medical school training? Right now, I chalk up all of these emotions quietly boiling just beneath my skin to the extreme life changes that I've had to make in a very short amount of time. An anecdote about how I'm failing to cope: I baked three times last week and didn't know what to do with the goods because it was a long weekend and I didn't have anywhere to go (let's just stop and think about how opposite that is from being right in the world). I don't know if I'm handling anything well at this point, but I'm trying! Banana crumb muffin or cookie, anyone?  


Anyways, I digress. I'll leave you with a couple of books that the doctor recommended we read. I haven't read either of them yet, but I'm hoping those of you who want to expand their minds will. I'm currently reading Cutting for Stone (thanks Glenda!) and it is excellent.  


1. The Private Worlds of Dying Children

2. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down