Thanks, Carepages.

Carepages goes dark tomorrow and I am going to miss it.  What is Carepages?  It was a health blog that you signed up for to notify your loved ones about your health journey.  We have used it as a lifeline for the past ten years.  When Wendy was super sick, we wrote every day, sometimes twice a day, to keep our loved ones up to date.  As she got stronger and better, we reduced our notifications.  Recently we only used it to mark big milestones.

The thing I loved about Carepages is that it made you really sit down and take stock of the medical day.  In any given day of craziness, it was good to really evaluate what was good, what was bad, and what were the hopes for the next day. And it buoyed our spirits to get messages from our family and friends telling us that they were thinking about us, praying for us, praying for Wendy.  Hospitals can feel isolating, and it was nice to know that people were supporting us from afar.

Today I spent much of the day copying and pasting all of the updates, over 200 of them, over the course of our 10 year medical journey.  I have to be honest, I wept reading a lot of the updates.  Wendy was so young and sick, and I knew, reading the updates, that things were going to get worse before they were going to get better.  I was so young too, and angry at our situation, the unfairness of it all. In 2007 and 2008 Wendy spent every holiday in the hospital, some 180 days.  I left my job, and Michael took an extended leave.  I slept less than three feet from my parents in a hotel room for months, and it became clear that we needed to move into an apartment.  We had two blissful hours with Wendy in the apartment at Christmas, so she could open up her presents, before we had to bring her back to the hospital.

I marked the day that Wendy’s kidneys started working again, the first time we made it home, the day she coded in the PICU, the day she was put on the transplant list. I read the day of her transplant, and the first anniversary, the second anniversary, the fifth anniversary.

As I read, I also read messages from loved ones who hadn’t gotten married yet, or hadn’t had their babies yet.  Friends who hadn’t gotten divorced yet.  Stalwart friends who were battling their own illnesses and have since passed away.  I am so grateful for those messages, to be able to read them, to be able to keep them.

At some point, Michael and I had decided to make Wendy’s Carepage public, so that other people could take comfort in her story, as I had taken comfort in the stories of others over the years, especially when we were looking for stories of kidney transplants.  We had people follow us from all over the world, and they wrote messages of support as well.

I’m going to miss Carepages, it was a part of our life for a long time. Now in the age of facebook and WordPress, it seems almost quaint to have a blog site dedicated just to an illness journey.  Perhaps that’s why it’s going away.  But it marked our lives.   It marked Wendy’s life, her health, her strength.

Today, Carepages showed me how far we’ve come.  A new town, a new home, a new baby (now eight years old), and new friendships along with the strengthening of old friendships. So thank you, Carepages, for everything, for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Thank you for the hope.  Thank you for the journey.

 

My Kid’s Not Normal

Wendy has a concussion, and I remarked to a few friends that it was nice to have normal kid problems.

You see, after many years of having Wendy surf the medical system with her kidney transplant, and not-quite-type-one diabetes (her pancreas works at 15%, so it needs insulin but it’s not officially type one), her high blood pressure, her quirky dietary restrictions, and her eye-tracking/learning difficulty (it turns out its hard to read when your eyes don’t track at the same rate–who knew?) It was nice to settle into a diagnosis that lots of kids get, a sports-related injury.

A normal kid problem.

Wendy is the striker on her soccer team, and over the course of a weekend at a tournament, she played a total of 5 games, where she scored 9 points.  In the third game on the first day, she received a cheap shot from an opposing player, who blindsided her from the right side, causing her to go flying and land on the ground, where she hit her head on the left side.  The player got a yellow card for the action.  Wendy was pulled out and tested for a concussion, but she seemed to be ok, so we let her play the next day.

The next day she was playing in her second game and she had already scored on this goalie.  She was barreling down the field and was about to shoot, when the goalie, instead of stepping back to take the shot, stepped forward to engage Wendy, and Wendy went flying over the leg of the goalie and landed on her right side.

That’s when she was definitely not herself, and after a trip to the Emergency Department, it was confirmed that she had a concussion.

A normal kid problem, Except, of course, that it’s not normal.

Wendy’s concussion seems to be taking a bit longer than most concussions for her to get closer to baseline, it’s a slower recovery.  There are lots of possibilities for this, like maybe instead of a mild-moderate concussion, it’s more like a moderate concussion, or maybe it’s because she had seizures in the acute stages of her illness as a child, or maybe it’s because her anti-rejection drugs are neuro-toxic (they’re tough on the brain.)

The truth is, I could wonder these things all the live long day, and it’s not going to get me anywhere, because the recovery protocol is the same:  rest, no screens, moderate brain activity until she is symptom free.  So now, two weeks later, she’s started half days at school and then coming home and sleeping all afternoon.  We wait, and she sleeps, and she gets a little stronger every day.  But she’s such a vibrant kid, who is always in motion, always joking, always singing to herself, it’s tough to see her only be a part of her normal ebullient self.

As a parent, we are only as happy as our least happy kid, and my least happy kid is hurting right now.

She won’t be able to start sports until a few weeks after she’s symptom free, and she is far from symptom free. In the meantime, Michael has ordered her a snazzy “concussion headband” for her to wear next time she plays, where she will look a lot like an actor on the TRON movie set, and we’re looking into ways to get her trained to learn how to roll instead of land on her head.  Because there’s no way she’s going to stop playing soccer, it might be the thing she loves the most to do, and what all of her friends do, and as long as she is feeling good, we will keep her at it.

Because that’s what we do as her parents.  We support her through this crazy life, to live it the best way she can, the way that makes her happy.  And soccer makes her happy.  Even if it’s a little rough to watch her sometimes because I know all the things that could go wrong.  I still wait to see if she gets up after the hard hits and she often will give us the two thumbs up to tell us she is ok.

And we move forward.  Not normal, but that’s all right.  We move forward anyway.

 

Please Advocate With Me

There’s been a lot going on in the news, and here are some of the things that I’m worried about.  Let’s start with CHIP.

CHIP stands for Children’s Health Insurance Program.  It is a jointly funded program, so each state shares the cost with the Federal Government.  Founded in 1997, it was designed to help the working poor afford health care for their kids. This insurance is for children only and you can only get CHIP for your kids if you don’t qualify for Medicaid but you can’t afford private insurance.  In other words, you need to be slightly above the poverty line to qualify for CHIP.

Congress let that funding expire as of September 30 of this year, leaving states to either carry 100% of the funding or let the program die.  This is a program that gets kids physicals, gets them vaccines, or gets them to the dentist.  It keeps them healthy, and personally I’m a big advocate of healthy kids.   When kids are healthy and well fed, they learn better, they do better and they keep other kids around them healthier too.  To me, it is worth a few extra pennies of taxes.  It’s for children.  It’s the responsibility of all of us to keep our children safe, and when I say our children, I mean ALL children.

Then this last Wednesday, President Trump signed an executive order that  instructs federal agencies to look for ways to expand the use of association health plans and broaden the definition of short term insurance.  As a result, the Trump administration could make cheaper plans with less generous benefits more widely available. This undermines the system of the Affordable Care Act, where the stronger and healthier help to bolster the sicker and weaker, with the idea that someday they will also be sick and weak and they will need a robust health insurance in place to cover them in as well.  That’s the way health insurance works.  you pay now, when you’re well, betting that someday you will be sick.

And eventually, someday comes.

It’s come for my family.  I am the mother of a chronically ill kid who was born healthy but acquired a bacteria that wrecked her little three-year-old body, causing extensive organ damage and resulting in a kidney transplant among other things.  The executive order that the president signed will undermine my ability to keep her healthcare.  It will make premiums go way up.  It will make it increasingly difficult for my husband or me to change jobs.

Imagine what the combination of the expiration of CHIP and the Executive Order signed this week will do to the working poor, with a child who has asthma, or a peanut allergy, or was born premature.

Is it possible to convince people that it is in the interest of society to care for our sickest and weakest members, to care for the health of children?  I think it is.  I’m their advocate, I speak for them, that is literally what advocate means.  It means, “I give voice to.”  And so, I am speaking for the chronically ill kids, the working poor kids, the kids who are the sickest and the weakest among us.

I am asking you to call your Members of Congress to re-instate CHIP.

I am asking you to contact the White House to ask the president to revoke the Executive Order.

It is the job of the strong and stable to bolster the weak and the sick.

That’s what communities do, and this country is just one big community.

Please Advocate with me.

 

Happy Birthday Wendy’s Welcome!

It’s been one year since Wendy’s Welcome to the ED has been released.  The video, which was written by Wendy and myself and animated by Payette Architecture Firm, is an introduction to the Emergency Department for pediatric patients.  Wendy is the animated narrator for the nine minute film.  Here are some of the reviews we have received in the last year from the Child Life Specialist who works in the Emergency Department and has collected comments:

11year old – “It let me know about things that were going to happen and that I would have to talk to a lot of people.  My favorite part was learning about the special light in the room.”

Numerous children– Upon entering the exam room “Where is the rainbow light?”

10 year old Chronic patient- “It is cool that a kid, like me, made this!”  I could see his little wheels start turning, wondering what he could create to help other kids too. 

10 year old-  “I know what you do (talking to child life) because I watched the video.” 

15 year old-  “The most helpful part was telling me about all the people I will meet and that I might have to wait a long time”.

4 year old- “ I know I need to change into these (pointing to hospital pajamas). I saw it on TV.”

Paige Fox, R.N., CPEN   “It’s really great to be able to offer our patients a video that teaches them about the emergency department from the voice of a child.  Wendy explaining her own unique experience seems to help kids understand what to expect and make their stay with us go more smoothly.” 

Ari Cohen, MD, FAAP  Chief, Pediatric Emergency Medicine- “It is a perfect example of what can be achieved when good people come together and listen to the ideas of a child.”

Dr. Cohen recently mentioned to me that “Everybody that has seen the video is impressed (meaning ED leadership)and it is being used as an example of what is needed to help the adult patients manage their expectation for their ED visit.” 

The video never would have been possible without the support of the Family Advistory Council at MassGeneral Hospital for Children.  Sandy Clancy, the co-chair of the FAC, helped to keep the project going by setting up committees and getting upper administration to view it and sign off on it.  It was her work in the hospital and Payette’s work outside the hospital that kept the project moving forward, and we are forever thankful to them both.

Wendy’s Welcome has been viewed over two thousand times this year on the Massachusetts General Hospital Website.  Wendy has been interviewed by local news stations and magazines about the video and other hospitals have contacted us for ideas on how they can create their own welcome videos for their pediatric patients.

It’s changing medicine and it’s changing how providers can manage expectations for their patients.  It’s also opening doors for more patient and family participation on the systemic level of health care.  Cooperation between patients and their families with their doctors leads to favorable outcomes across the spectrum.

It has also won three awards.  The Patient’s View Institute honored Wendy last year with the Partners in Care Award and also honored Payette with the Patient Champion Award. In addition, the Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care honored Sandy and me with a Partnership Award for cooperation between patients/families and hospital staff.

What a year!  We are so grateful that Wendy’s Welcome is making such a positive impact on healthcare!

 

 

The Power of Moments: A Review

The Heath Brothers have released their newest book, “The Power of Moments.”  It discusses how certain moments stay with us through a combination of factors.  Conveniently, the factors form an acronym, EPIC:

ELEVATION:  Defining moments rise above the every day. They’re special.

PRIDE:  Defining moments capture us at our best, moments of achievement or courage.

INSIGHT:  Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world.

CONNECTION:  Defining moments are moments we share with others.

They give good examples for each of these areas.  Then they challenge you to make more of your interactions moment-worthy.  How do you break the script of the every day?  How do you build in moments that are extraordinary for others?

I’ve never read a Heath Brothers book before, but I enjoyed this one.  Of course, I am biased.  One of this blog’s stories is in the book, the very last story in the very last chapter.  It talks about a moment when Wendy had been in the hospital for many months and two nurses decided on the day that there was a huge snowfall, that they would team up to figure out a way to get Wendy some snow.  This was complex because at the time, she was in heart failure and had a severe water restriction, and of course she was going to eat some of that newly fallen snow.  So, the nurses scooped up some snow, measured it, melted it, measured it again, made a calculation, and then went out into the snow AGAIN and got more fresh snow to bring into Wendy’s room. You can read my blog post about it here.

Dan Heath shared with me while we were talking on the phone, that not only was it a wonderful, defining moment for Wendy and our family, but also for the nurses as well.  It was a tangible thing they could do to bring joy to a little girl from Vermont who had been in the hospital for months.  It was connection.  It was elevation.  It was insight.  It was pride.  And it didn’t cost a penny, just some time.

I really enjoyed reading the book, and I’m so grateful to the Heath Brothers for including our story in it.  One day an advance copy just arrived in the mail, with their special thanks. It is unlikely I will ever meet them, but it’s really cool that our story, Wendy’s story, is now in a book.

You can purchase the book today as it has just been released.  If you read it, please let me know what you think of it.  Here is the link to the book on Amazon.