restorARTively

Memorial Day 2002 was the first year that the holiday brought on new meaning; though at the time and in the years since I wondered what was making me feel so melancholy. Nine Memorial Days later, I finally get it. The flag. Read more at http://www.jamessproject.blogspot.com/ where I am transferring my blogging to to allow it to be more personal. More real. More about how preventable medical errors and patient-physician communication affect patients and clinicians on a day to day basis.

It is hard to maintain a restorative mindset when preventable death and pain keeps rearing its ugly head in pediatrics. This morning I learned of the death of a 40 day old baby who had been diagnosed with a treatable CHD (congenital heart defect ) - but the parents had never been told of the diagnosis. So the patent ductus arteriosus killed the child. I shed a tear and screamed in my heart. The parent should have been told. Of course, there is no guarantee as to the outcome - but what would have been guaranteed is that the family would have been a part of the treatment team. If tragedy still struck, there would have been a community of support built already the parent and the medical team. This brings me back to why I am here to begin with. Why James died. Why I ended up enduring the additional trauma of civil litigation. Why the book is titled, "Split the Baby ". Such a phrase can evoke disturbing imagery. Trust me. What James looked like after the medical interventions was...