Sick Kids

Unfortunately, any physician working with children will encounter sick patients. I forgot this aspect of pediatrics. So when providing anesthesia to children for radiation therapy, the hardest part was the emotional realization that these children had cancer, and often cancer that was incurable. Even when I get "exciting" anesthesia cases such as a craniotomy for a posterior fossa tumor, it means that a child has a brain cancer. This is hard. And even though anesthesia providers are consultants - we don't have to deliver the news, talk to the parents, follow the child through chemotherapy - we still feel that emotional tear, the irrational feeling that some things in this world are not fair. These children and their families who battle illnesses I cannot even fathom, they are incredibly strong, incredibly brave.