Children's Hospital on PBS

Last night as I watched TV at home and stayed up too late I found a PBS program about Children's Hospitals. What bit I watched (before it would make me call Abby at 2 AM to cry) was really good. It captured a lot of the very subtle elements of what it is like to have a kid who is sick and in the hospital and what it takes to shift your baseline and move into the hospital. I found myself talking to the screen and when they profiled a parent and asked questions that were too good, I had turn it off.

I may give it another shot sometime when Abby is around. We had to bail on and episode of ER the other day when they had a sick baby though:

"Sick baby!, Sick Baby! Click! click!"

Turns out that the baby on ER had NEC, Necrotizing Enterocolitis, which makes the baby's bowel dissolve, a prime cause of SBS in infants. Somehow it recovered and went home in a month. Sure wish we lived in NBC-land sometimes...

To go along with the 6 part documentary, PBS has also created a website for parents of sick kids to go along with this which has some good information, even if it is a bit dry and really full of the cancer patients who make Abby and I sigh in relief each day that Ellie only has SBS.

It made me really glad that we at Children's in Boston and not somewhere else. Little things about how Chicago Children's works made me relaize that we are in a truly great place, here and sometimes we forget how lucky we are to be here in our little bit of the 8th floor.

One interesting thing that I read was a quote from a researcher who said, "I haven't seen a 'Eureka!' yet, but I've seen a lot of good steps in the right direction."

I think that right now these kids on Omegaven might just make Archimedes start singing in his bath tub.

How, exactly, do you nominate someone for a Nobel Prize?

I think that saving babies' lives is right up there in the benefit to mankind category. Our pale baby (who should be very sick and green by now) would be a good exhibit in the application.