Children Are Precious
Larry Chiaramonte
January 2006
January 2006
April traces of snow remained by the pond where I was sitting. The trees stood like burnt match sticks devoid of their leafy crowns. Birds settling around the pond promised a spring time regeneration. My first day of retirement, it was the beginning of the end of my life. With nothing better to do, I was feeding the quacking ducks. I felt my life had slipped away without any meaningful accomplishments.
A young mother with a four-year-old boy sat next to me. She was uncomfortable sitting so close to a stranger. The boy was not. He was too immersed in watching the birds fight for a piece of bread from my hand. I tore off a piece and handed it to him. He began feeding the ducks.
The woman sized me up, "Day off?"
I held up my hand asking her to wait as I put in my hearing aids.
"Day off?" she repeated a little louder.
"No, just retired," I said.
"From what?" she asked.
"Pediatrics -35 years a children’s doctor," I answered.
She seemed to unwind " I love my boy’s doctors. They are saving his life. He is now in remission from acute leukemia. They treated him with triple therapy –three cancer drugs in rotation. An other six months cancer free and they will call him cured."
Having run out of bread the boy was chasing the ducks. He was flapping his arms and quacking.
"Triple therapy" my mind journeyed back in time to thirty years ago.
"Triple therapy." It was first used when I was in training on a children ‘s ward in a cancer hospital. "Triple therapy." Was being used in placebo- controlled research. I had been assigned a four-year-old boy with the same disease as the boy now feeding the ducks-acute leukemia. In those days this diagnosis was a death sentence. On average, the children died within three months from the first signs of the illness.
The teaching doctors were following a research protocol using triple therapy for the first time. There was a fifty percent chance that the patient would receive drugs that were blanks. We all were blinded. This meant that the doctors nor the patients did not know who was receiving the active drugs. The code reveling who received the active drugs was broken only after the experiment was over. I thought "how cruel! My little patient is dying. We have some drugs that might help and we might be using placebos." My teachers stressed we could only beat this disease if we took the long view and did accurate research.
I had the task of administering these drugs intravenously. No easy job. The boy’s body was swollen from steroids used to counter the spread of the leukemia to the brain.
The pressure on his optic nerves blurred his vision. He could still feel the pain of a needle stick.
"Wrap him in a sheet with a free arm. While I try to start this intravenous." I instructed the student nurse.
I felt a vein. The alcohol I used to clean off the area gave off flumes burning my nostrils. My heart pounded in my chest with the fear I would fail and hurt the boy more than necessary. The needle to my surprise slipped easily into the vein as I heard clapping coming from behind me.
"Good job, Doctor Ferranti" It was the boy’s mother Mary Garvey Esq. who had come to visit straight from her work as a malpractice attorney. At five foot six in heels, dressed in a power suit with her hair up in a bun, she looked as threatening as she did in court when I last saw her.
She and her law partner were suing the hospital, my attending, and me a student doctor for some mistake a nursing aid had made. This was a high-powered legal team fast earning a good reputation. Mary Garvey sat at the plaintiffs’ table planning the attack. Her husband and law partner Stanley Garvey Esq. examined and cross-examined using words like swords to fillet his victims. I found out that day the law could demand someone with a minor responsibility pay the major damages. As lawyers say "go for the money." The hospital settled the case.
"I hope you can care for my son. We found from our case you are a well-trained doctor. Please feel comfortable treating my son. We are on the same side now. We both want just the best care for my son. Right?" She said.
"Right. You understand the research protocol?" I asked.
She said, "Yes, let me change in the bath room."
Minutes later she reappeared no longer an attorney but as a concerned mother in her tennis sneakers, jeans and tee shirt. Her hair was down and soften her face.
"How is he eating?" she asked.
"He is not eating" I replied.
She sat and took a baby’s bottle from her purse to feed her four-year old son.
"I read that children may regress when ill. At this point a bottle will not hurt." She picked up the child and began feeding him. A tear ran down her cheek as she rocked the shadow of her child in her arms.
"Can I help you? Do you want anything?" I asked.
"No we will be fine. Good night" she replied.
It was Friday night. I was done. I left the hospital for some much needed sleep. As I stepped outside I was greeted by an April snowstorm. The promise of spring like the boys life was fading away.
The next day I found her asleep with the boy in her arms in her reclining chair. She was no longer the malpractice lawyer striking fear into the medical establishment. She was just a simple concerned mother. I had been in her world in court. A world filled with human confrontation. Now she was in the hospital. This was my world. Here mankind joined forces to struggle against nature. Who has more pressure? Doctors or lawyers? I thought we doctors can afford to be nice we are confronting a common enemy.
Just then, her husband, six-year-old daughter and nanny arrived for a Saturday visit. The husband put his finger to his mouth for silence and motioned me outside. When we were alone and out of earshot he began " he can not see. He is dead. Isn’t he?"
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