Had to diagnose a little boy with HIV today.
 

3 months old. Perinatal transmission from mother.

I give him a fifty-fifty chance he lives to celebrate his 10th birthday.

Most of that time he will probably be sick with various infections.

Puts life in perspective.

What the hell am I whining about most days ?!!

Why can´t I simply enjoy every minute of my life? My kids are healthy and so am I.

Note to self: Quit worrying about salt on the roads and just get out there and drive the darn thing! It´s just a car! Who cares if it rusts. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Just terrible Markus, I cannot imagine.

I agree that it makes our other problems seem insignificant indeed.

Best of luck to the youngster, you never know what cures are around the corner.

I guess the silver lining would be the perspective you've gained. Thanks for helping me gain that perspective as I start my day.SmileWavy

Tough day,
BUT, as I have told you before...there are lots of little ones that will see 11... and more, because of what you have done.
Rika

In the 80's I had a pregnant patient who had aquired HIV through her ex-addict husband. She had never been a drug user or had any high-risk behaviors. This was in the era before AZT and the prognosis was awful.

She was a wonderful woman. During her 8th month of pregnancy, we admitted her with her second bout of Pneumocystis pneumonia. She was going to die. Probably within a month or two. She called me to her room and asked if I would deliver her baby by Cesarean. I asked why. She told me she could feel life slipping away and she wanted to hold her baby before she died. I told her that she would not survive the stress of surgery in her condition. She didn't care. She just wanted to touch her baby.

I consulted the hospitals ethics committee and we decided to honor the patients request. I performed her Cesarean on a Monday morning. She died Tuesday night holding her baby. The baby was HIV negative.

It's an awful disease. Just awful. It's heartbreaking to care for these patients.

*That* is a hard day - sympathies. If you look at it another way, the little one has almost 10 years for someone to figure out how to give him his life back, and that's far from impossible.

Yes, drive it. It isn't "just" a car, it's a Porsche, but rust can be repaired.

Jim

If no-one has told you two today & in days to follow....allow me
thank you
Rika

All the years I did medivac the roughest was bringing young kids to the hospital.

We as adults have lived a full life, even if it ends at 20 or 40 years old, but to see a child 2,3, 4 or even 10 years old is just starting and they have the whole world ahead of them. To see it end at this point is rough.

My ex- did heart transplants and bypass's and did them day and night for years. Only time I ever saw her cry was when they operated on a child and they did not make it. Its tough on everyone involved...

Thanks for your work guys. Its a rough job at times...

Dang, Moses...that was an emotional story. Almost brings tears to my eyes.

And Markus - I could not do what you do. Ever since having kids of my own, I just cannot stand to see kids suffer. I just can't do it. Rika is right though - look at the lives of the children that you have helped. You have alot of good karma built up...

Mike

It is important to put things in perspective. Yesterday is gone and over with. Tomorrow is unreachable. We have only now.

wow, moses...that's a load of a burden for a doctor. hat's off to you for doing the job you did..and for the compassion she was given by you and your team.

joe: i concur completely. my toughest work as a lear captain was the air ambo gig flying the babies, etc. in the portable neo-natal unit. they didn't always make it no matter our efforts to get them there. bitterly, we often lost valuable time dealing with u.s. customs, particularly in miami, while the amblance was there and we had to wait for these a-holes to schlep our paperwork and documentation..
ryan

Sucks dude. My sister is a Physician who ended up specializing in substance abuse patients.

Worst thing she ever did, the day to day grind of it ate her up.

The worst part was the kids who contracted aids from their dope addict mothers.

Hang in there.

Ryan,

Agree and we found the worst on clearing customs on a medivac flight was the Russians. We picked up several people who were on deaths door and had to pass through Moscow outbound back to Germany or London and the idiots could have cared less if the patient was inconvenienced or not.

People where we picked up the patient could not believe that we were spending that kind of money to save one person. They asked if he was important (one was, one was not) and they just shook their heads, saying this would never happen under the Soviet system, that life was cheap and one person could be replaced by another cheaper than trying to save someone.

Sad to see and hope its gotten better.

I honestly don't see how you do it...but I'm grateful that you do.

I was in an ER years ago after a car accident and overheard a doctor telling a guy on the other side of the curtain that he was HIV positive. I don't think he was surprised, but it got my attention. Today I went to have my first physical in 4 yrs. and while walking in saw my doctor on the phone, telling someone they were in bad shape. My physical went fine, bp was fine, chest x-ray was fine and I walked out of there passing by some pretty sorry looking folks in the waiting room. Man, there's nothing more precious than good health. Can't believe how lucky I've been. And I get reminded all the time.

wow, joe..from my readings on here you've gotten to see a lot more of the 'other half of the world' than i did doing air ambo. mine was mostly international, but canada, caribbean, central and south america and western europe. i just didn't have the experience in the mid or far east. of course, cheap maintenance was an ongoing problem with my company..saw us whittled down from 7 captains to one - me - in a year, plus the loss of a couple of ubiquitous old lear 20 series jobs. we did have a lr-36xr that we used for overseas. the last trip i turned down right before i quit was to go to concepcion island, which i recall to be about 1,000 miles east of buenos aires, refuel and fly to africa, refuel, cross the middle east and got to italy..and then back around (and naturally below the tracks) to gander and back south. i laughed my ass off to the dispatcher and said i was honestly no longer comfortable taking that plane to 'toledo', much less africa and the middle east. fortunately the ops. director backed me up..said he wouldn't do it either. pictured myself on the end of a spear somewhere in africa or having navigational failure and getting shot down by a rogue mig in the middle east. i didn't know my way around those parts..had no business going. no thanks! rant over. out! ;)
ryan

Thanks for everything you do docs!

David

Markus, like the others say, I don't know how you do it, but I'm glad you do. Me, I'm out cold at the sight of a needle. No stomach whatsoever... and that's just for blood & guts. Telling someone they have HIV, cancer, etc. must be very difficult. How not to get desensitized?

Markus sorry to hear that ,here in the states they started a practice of giving mother's c-section ,seems baby have a lesser chance of contracting the hiv

Thanks for your thoughts and support. For situations like this, OT has a real value.