Empowerment

A Mother’s Love

On my in-patient peds rotation there was a little boy who has a number of conditions. He was developmentally delayed.

He had this disorder that made his bones really stiff, so didn't really have joints and was very immobile in bed. He had a seizure disorder and needed a CPAP machine. He just wasn't doing well and was in and out of the hospital. When I saw him, he had already been admitted for like, a week or so and he was there for my entire rotation. His mom was a superstar and did all his care at home. I think what impacted me the most was seeing just how involved the mom was in his care because she was always at the hospital while everyone else in their family at home. I took care of him for a couple weeks and would go into check on them in the morning and she would give me a full nursing report and tell me what needed to be done. She had a two- or three-month-old baby as well and they were in the room with them. She had his crib setup because she just stayed there 24/7. Honestly, I don't even know how much she left. Every time I went in the room she was there, or she was like down getting coffee or breakfast and the nurse would tell me that she'll be back shortly. It taught me that parents are good advocates and just know their children best. 

Another patient that just kind of stuck with me was in a family medicine clinic. A middle-aged woman came in because she said she just needed something to help her anxiety right at that moment because it was getting too overwhelming. That was the surface level and then we gradually got into it more and she started talking about some conflicts at work and people not being very kind and pretty degrading. Yeah, just not a great work environment. She was feeling a lot of like stress and anxiety everyday going into work and she couldn’t take some time off from work. We started talking more and more, and there was just one thing after thing that came up that she was going through. I’m thinking, no wonder you're anxious and sad, you have so many things going on. Then eventually, she talked about losing her mom two weeks ago. She was super close with her mom. She came in just saying she was anxious, and she wasn't even going to tell me any of these other things. There was just so much going on with her to contribute to her situation below the surface. I wouldn't have ever guessed that because she seemed like she could put on a pretty good face. That encounter was so impactful, because she had a lot of resilience. 

How do you think both of these instances are going to impact your practice as a physician going forward? 

It’s important be comfortable asking questions that can be hard for patients to being up. Also remembering that there's likely a lot more going on beneath the surface that they're not telling us, and so not be quick to judge their situations and giving them like the benefit of the doubt.