Monday, January 5, 2015

Monday, January 5, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2009. I can remember this photo as if it were taken yesterday. Mattie was pictured with his physical therapist, Anna. Anna ordered a special walker for Mattie. Most walkers are forward moving. However Mattie did not like those walkers. He felt very insecure with them. He preferred having something behind him in case he fell. In addition, the mechanics of moving the walker in the photo was easier for Mattie given the fact that he had three prosthetic limbs (right and left arm and right leg). With the reverse walker Mattie took a couple of steps that day in the Hospital hallway and Anna was thrilled. Unfortunately walking progress was never significant with Mattie given how ill he was, his depleted energy level, and the fact that he did not have the ability to fully participate in rehab because of his chemo regimens.


Quote of the day: Educating the mind without educating the heart, is no education at all. ~ Aristotle 

I think Aristotle's quote is brilliant! It is brilliant because to me true learning only happens when the mind and the heart are taught a lesson simultaneously.  
In fact I believe that when you allow your heart to feel something, even a concept, it helps you explore and think about the concept in a whole new light. It makes you want to find answers and solutions to it. It inspires and motivates you in ways that only thinking could never do. For the purposes of this blog, let's talk about childhood cancer. 

One could educate one's self about the biological nature of a particular form of childhood cancer. Granted one maybe inspired to learn for the sheer pleasure and interest in knowledge seeking. However, when you meet a child touched by cancer and make a personal connection and form an emotional bond with a child and family impacted by this disease, you learn about cancer NOT through a research study or article but through your HEART! This knowledge should never be discounted because it is very valuable. Learning directly from children and families is crucial! What makes it crucial is that through listening with one's heart, it helps one understand with one's mind what strategies will work with a particular patient. 

For example, in Mattie's treatment cycle certain things had to happen. He had to get scans at a particular time to assess whether his chemotherapy was working. The scans would show at the cellular level whether this tumors were shrinking, remaining the same size, or growing. In theory, one should be able to put a child on a scanning machine and take an x-ray, mri, or cat scan. However, this is where listening with the heart comes into play. Knowing something about the child's preferences, fears, and coping styles will enable someone to know how to tailor scans or any form of treatment to meet a child's needs. Without educating the heart, which some doctors feel is ancillary, guess what can happen? Some children like Mattie (out of fear!!!) will not sit still on a scanning machine and comply with a scan. If a scan isn't compiled with, it is like a domino effect. No scan, then subsequent chemo treatments are delayed (which is never good if you are fighting cancer). So balancing mind and heart is imperative in medicine, especially in pediatric medicine. 

Today I spent the day helping my friend Tina de-Christmas her house. I have done this now three years in a row. It has become a tradition in a way. Tina has Christmas trees, like everyone else, but her trees are a bit different. I call her trees, memory trees because all of her ornaments have significance. She and her family collected each ornament either on a family trip, vacation, or made them together over the years. There are stories to each of the ornaments and in a way if the trees could talk, they would be telling the story of the family living in the house they reside in. Tina's parents did memory trees with her as a child and now she is passing this tradition on to her children. Every year that I help Tina with de-Christmasing her house, we have a chance to look at her ornaments and discuss a few of them that catch my attention. Being a sentimentalist, this whole notion of a memory tree captivates me and if Mattie were alive, we would be building upon this. To some extent we had something like this going on, and I did not even realize it. I have no idea what our family Christmas tree would have evolved into over the years if Mattie were alive today. 

Tina asked me today what I liked to put on our family tree. I had to think about it. But I know what was important to me was we always had a Christmas ornament for every deceased relative in our family who was significant to us on our tree, we had antique Christmas ornaments that I had picked from antique shops over the years, ornaments Mattie hand created, bird ornaments (which was something reminiscent of my grandmother), and I honestly can't recall the rest. We haven't put up a tree since 2008, so six years is a long time, and I am not sure whether I miss having one up or not. All I know is Christmas is not the same for us without Mattie.