a man for all seasons

No, no Sir Thomas More allusions today. I have changed my job
description once again this week, to resident pediatrician. Currently I
have now covered the male ward, maternity, and now pediatrics and the
malnutrition ward. The pediatric ward is a challenging one, although it
is nice to talk with the (relatively) healthy mothers in between the
screaming children. And occasionally I can coax a smile from one of the
little ones. One kid that struck me is Josua, a 3 month old child whose
mother died about 10 days ago while in the hospital. We haven't seen
any relatives who have even come back to the hospital to take care of
him since, so we care for him as a hospital, and hope that someone will
come to take him in. He's a cute little guy, wish I could show you the
pictures.
Gary, who I mentioned in a previous blog with the facial tumor, went
home last week after we had exhausted all our options to treat him.
Lisa and Michelle, the pediatrican and chief pediatrics nurse, had to
explain to him that he would die from his tumor, something which must be
really scary to hear as a 10 year old. You wish there was more to be
done, but for those tumors that are chemotherapy resistant, we don't
have much to offer. So he went home with his family to be someplace
more familiar. We gave him a yo-yo to go home with, although he's not
very good at it.