fixing what is broken.

To anyone who's read this blog for oh, more than a few posts, it's obvious I still have a strong interest in medicine/oncology. And believe me, if I were good at science, I'd be in med school or nursing school in a heartbeat (ahem, see spring 2010). But that is not the case. I still read Atul Gawande, Jerome Groopman, Perri Klass and Danielle Ofri, and whenever I go into a bookstore I usually go to the medical section first, to see if any doctor, nurse or student has written a new book I might like. If I'm completely honest, a tiny minuscule piece of me still would love to be a pediatric oncologist. So it's safe to say I have strong feelings about medicine and the kind of doctor I like, and would want to be.

My nephew and I were in the car today; I was driving us to meet my dad so we could go to my aunt's house to visit her. I had asked my nephew if he knew my aunt was sick and going to Heaven soon. I reassured him that he would not go to Heaven for a verrrrrrrry long time, and neither would his daddy, Aunt JJ or anyone else, and that my aunt was sick with something called cancer, that the doctors cannot always fix. There was a pause, and then this little voice from the back of my Jeep says, "But JJ, I thought doctors fix people and make them better. They can't make Aunt Edie better?" I explained that they want to make people with cancer better, but sometimes it is very hard. But geez, kids have a way of saying the most starkly important things in such a matter-of-fact, innocent way.....because isn't that what we all, at our most basic level, wonder when someone we love is ill? You're a doctor; doctors are supposed to make us better. And kids say it out loud, with no anger, embarassment or anything. There's something refreshing about that, and I think it's why I loved working in pediatrics.

I can understand the feeling, too. When my friends Erik and Sophia were sick in middle school from leukemia and a brain tumor, respectively, even at the age of 12 or 13, walking around CHOP, I realized that something wasn't right - why isn't everyone going home, I thought doctors could make kids better. When friends or family members get sick, we all have that first irrational thought of, why can't they FIX THIS NOW. And if they die, we think this wasn't supposed to happen. We rail against G-d, doctors, each other, ourselves.....because sometimes things break. Sometimes things fail. And even four years of college, four years of med school and subsequent years of internship, residency and fellowships cannot fix everything that is broken, no matter how much we wish it would.