Today's WSJ, p. D1 has a story, "A New Approach for the Sickest Babies," on hospice care for terminally ill infants. One of the hospital's mentioned is CHOP.
At the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the two-year-old palliative-care service sometimes allows parents to choose to move their terminally ill babies to a slightly less effective type of ventilator, but one that will allow them to hold their children, sometimes for the only time.
My heart aches just to read it.
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2 comments:
Oh gosh..
I don't have children..but it must be awful to become a parent for such a short time..and then have to go through the agony of losing your child. I can't imagine..
When Katrina Cook's daughter, Alyssa, was born in February 2004, she knew the baby wouldn't live long. When Mrs. Cook was just four months pregnant, Alyssa was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a chromosomal defect that causes death usually within the first year, and often within days or weeks of birth. In the past, babies with this condition likely would remain in the hospital, or families would be sent home with minimal guidance. But for the Cooks, the hospital brought in the Hospice of Greensboro to help arrange a nurse to check on the baby a couple of times a week and to teach the couple how to handle Alyssa's feeding tube. Alyssa died at home when she was six weeks old. But "we got to take her outside, take her shopping. We got to hold her," says Mrs. Cook, 29 years old, of the time she had with her daughter.
Tulin,
Isn't it a sad story??!!! You can see why the families would want to bring the babies home or hold them, even for a short period of time.
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