Memory and Hope: Reflections on The Children’s Hospital
Dr. Mok's Notes September 2007
Everywhere you look around The Children’s Hospital these days, everyone is moving. Not just on the go getting their normal work done, but actually sorting through years of accumulated notes and committee minutes and files, trimming down and packing up for the move to The new Children’s Hospital.
Any new beginning is a curious blend of memory and hope. After a recent tour of the new hospital, John Temple, the editor of the Rocky Mountain News, called Children’s a symbol of who we want to be as a community of those who care for children. He said it represents an attitude toward life that spares no expense to help children and their families meet the challenge of serious illness. That legacy got me thinking about what The Children’s Hospital means to me.
The Founder’s Room at Tammen Hall used to be the old library when I was a resident at Children’s. On the wall near the entrance is a picture of a pediatric ward team making rounds at the bedside of a child in 1947. The team included Dr. Harry Gordon, the first Chair of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado, and Dr. LaMeta Dahl Lubchenco, a close family friend of mine who just turned 90 this year. She is the reason I chose pediatrics as a specialty. With one or two degrees of separation, I have been connected to TCH for well over half of its 100-year history, and I owe it and the members of its staff my professional career.
I have been attending morning report at TCH several times a week for nearly 35 years. One would think that eventually case presentations would become repetitive and boring, but the opposite is true. Pediatric medicine and surgery are ever new and changing entities. The discussions during my training about managing meningitis, dehydration and the mystery of Reye’s syndrome have given way to debates on incomplete Kawasaki syndrome, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and all sorts of new bugs and drugs. The patients in general are much more complicated, with survivors of prematurity, cancer and transplantation now getting common childhood illnesses. New discoveries of the genetic basis of many disorders help us understand pathophysiology, and will eventually make treatment more effective. As a place where pediatrics has evolved during my professional life, I owe the Children’s Hospital gratitude for my intellectual growth.
As I rode my bike out to the new TCH last weekend to time the route, I rode past the historic Building 500, the landmark heart of the former Fitzsimons Army Post. My dad served as a radiologist there during World War II. He was the reason I chose medicine as a life’s work. He went on to become somewhat of a legend as a diagnostician in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have always hoped I would measure up to the example he set as a fully competent, compassionate physician. The Children’s Hospital has given me the opportunity to pursue excellence in clinical practice, research and teaching in pediatrics.
My subspecialty interest in pediatrics is bioethics, and I serve as an ethics consultant at the hospital. I have learned to believe in the directive from the American Academy of Pediatrics that our ultimate obligation is to "add life to a child’s years, not just years to a child’s life." The Children’s Hospital takes seriously its role in advancing health care technology, teaching the next generation of health care workers and providing clinical care and advocacy for all children in the Rocky Mountain West. When I am involved in helping patients and families make difficult decisions about seeking cure and providing comfort, I am thankful for the place and the people called The Children’s Hospital. My own children and grandchildren have found much-needed help and support here, and my hope is that every child who needs the expertise embodied in the staff and facilities of the new TCH will be warmly received for many hundreds of years to come.
Contact me with your own memories and hopes at mokrohisky.stefan@tchden.org or 720-777-6130.
