Cancer Sucks

Please continue to pray for my mother. She has made it through one round of treatment, but is having a lot of pain and sores already. It turns out her treatments with only be every three weeks. We still don't know when radiation will start, it depends on the response to the chemo. But no matter what cancer sucks. I just finished up my second month that I spend at St. Jude during my second year as a resident. I was on the Leukemia/Lymphoma service whereas I was on the Solid Tumor/Neuro oncology service when I was there back in August. This month was a lot easier than the last one. The patients aren't as sick and they have a much better survival rate. Just while I was there in August I lost three patients personally and I think we had six die in all. This month we didn't lose any while I was there, although I didn't have a good track record about having to transfer people to the ICU thanks to RSV. Two of them are still intubated I believe. But the newest reason that cancer sucks lately is this girl who is still at LeBonheur after having surgery to remove tumors from her brain. Now, I know I don't talk about being a doctor much on here. I guess part of it is that I want to leave all that stuff at work. Then there is HIPPA of course. But also a lot of the stuff I see would just break your heart. Families without even so much as a thermometer to take a child's temperature or parents that don't care enough to take even if they had one. This girl who I am talking about has not been my patient and I have not seen her at LeBonheur, so I feel all right with sharing about her. In fact, Katie learned of her first as her mother seems to be friends with a lot of the people we know, although we do not know them personally. Here is her mother's blog: http://erikandkatekrull.blogspot.com/. I'm not sure about the whole backstory regarding how she presented, but apparently she had trouble walking. It is striking how the blog goes from a happy family without mention of illness to a girl whose brain and spinal cord is eaten up with tumor. It is enlightening and heartbreaking to read this mother's chronicling of her feelings in all that has happened. This is what makes being a general pediatrician frightening. Either you pick up something early and it's a good catch, or you don't make a diagnosis until it's all too obvious and other doctors wonder how you could have missed it and consider you an idiot. It seems there is no in between. This seemed even more highlighted on the Leukemia side, as there is no mass to feel on exam or see on imaging and a lot of these things can look like a virus or some other indolent process. A lot of these things you will only see a couple times in your whole career and I can't imagine having missed or messed up on that one time and how it would feel to delay treatment because you missed it. I am still considering the field of pediatric oncology for my future. I am doing hematology this month, which is part of the fellowship for oncology since it is technically hematology/oncology. I hope this combined with last month will give me a feeling as to whether or not this is the right field for me. For some reason I still like the Solid Tumor/Neuro onc side a lot despite the worse prognosis with a lot of those tumors. Unfortunately, I read last week where the Tulsa football player I had featured on the blog a couple years ago(Tulsa Teammates Inspired by Holloway's Battle with Cancer) lost his battle with cancer and passed away. It seems the fact that he knew Blake Griffith and that Blake broke down in the locker room after hearing the news got more press. I think I also featured this Boston College player who had Ewing's sarcoma and returned this year(Mark Herzlich at ease at combine) and will likely be taken in the NFL Draft this year. So please pray for this little girl, my mom, and everyone affected by cancer because who isn't these days. Please pray for the hospital right here in Memphis that has and continues to change the face of cancer around the world. And please pray that I would find out if this is the right place for me and my future. My next posts will be about Baby Allie turning 6 weeks old and the Sip N' See that my fellow residents had for her yesterday and Katie's birthday which happens to be today. Happy Birthday to my wife, best friend, and mother of my children! We love you!