Finding Cures. Saving Children. St Jude Children's Research Hospital

This past week I made the 8 hour trek across the great state of Tennessee. Granted with family in Knoxville and in Nashville it took me 3 days because I had to stop and take advantage of seeing them. But Sunday evening I rolled into midtown Memphis. I’m not usually the sort to stay with random strangers (except almost all my trips to Africa). But, it is completely different when you know those strangers are in fact your brother and sister in Christ! Actually it makes ALL the difference. For the month of January I will be allowed to ‘work’ with hospital patients at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. And if that wasn’t enough grace from God, He has also provided a wonderful family for me to stay with free of charge AND they even let me eat dinner with them free of charge. Like a free home cooked meal that I didn’t have to cook! I’m pretty sure every morning and every evening I sincerely thank God for each of these amazing blessings. Like I have told my sister before the big 3 for a college student or single post-grad person are 1: a warm bed 2: food 3: a place to do laundry. Jennifer graciously provides 2 of the big 3 for me on a semi regular basis for which I am eternally grateful. However, the King’s have stepped it up and have actually provided all 3 of the big 3, and I am still in amazement at their generosity!

Monday, I went to St Jude for the first time and spent all day in new employee orientation. And with it being the first Monday of 2016 there was quite the crowd.  Unfortunately, much of what they went over did not apply to me as I would not actually be receiving a pay check from them, but I did receive a really cool official St Jude bag! Tuesday I joined the inpatient leukemia team as they were doing morning table rounds. Talk about overwhelming! I realized very quickly that all of these patients are extremely complicated, and I knew I had jumped into the deep end! But as the day progressed the Heme/Onc fellow very kindly explained a lot to me and broke things down to where I could almost wrap my tiny little brain around them. Yet when I heard my attending tell her to assign me 2 patients because I was “qualified to see them” I was again terrified and questioned any sort of “qualified-ness” about me! But as with many things, once you make yourself jump in there and do it, things start to get a little easier. I have now had 2 days of successfully following my 2 patients and I have learned quite a lot. Although I still feel like I don’t know anything, so don’t ask me questions just yet!   

What has impressed me the most, however, of all the things I have learned (thus far) is what I have learned about St. Jude the institution. I always thought of it as a hospital that does research but it’s much more like a research institute that happens to have a hospital on site. Most of the buildings at St Jude are for research and I would venture to say most of their employees are scientists and not doctors or nurses. Actually, I felt a little out of place at orientation because most of the people were researchers or business men and things. Anyway, it was nice to see the amount of effort that was being put into researching childhood cancers. When St. Jude was opened in 1962 the survival rate for childhood leukemia was like 4% in just 20 years it jumped to around 75% and today it is at 94%. And even more amazing is that with a DAILY budget of 2 million dollars, all funds are raised by grants and outside donors (through ALSAC the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities). Patients do not pay a penny for their treatments at St Jude. It’s pretty amazing! On site they have a little mini museum telling the history of the founder Danny Thomas, the history of the research advancements and awards received etc. One of the quotes from a parent caught my eye, “when we looked out of our hospital windows at night the lights in the research buildings were always on, and it gave us hope.” The things being done at ST Jude are truly amazing, and it brings people from all over the world in search of a cure.

I expected this rotation to be really hard for me emotionally. It isn’t the easiest thing to see so many children with such horrible diseases. But, to my surprise there has been a lot of joy and hope. Because we know that for most of these kids we can make them better, and that is exhilarating! I must say though, I have had my moments of hard times. My heart aches for the mother who hasn’t slept in 4 days because her son was just diagnosed with cancer and she stays awake with him all night and all day trying to wrap her head around all that has happened and all the treatments and procedures her little boy is going though. And yet, I am so thankful she is here, because I know her son will be taken care of, and so will she. It has also been hard to see the 1% of cases that are so unique that we just don’t know what to do. With all the knowledge and research we still don’t know everything. And of course, all the most difficult cases of cancer around the world come to St Jude here in Memphis. It has been amazing to sit and watch experts in the field discuss the best course of action in each case and how to adjust them for specific things. And it is incredibly humbling to realize that I am sitting among them. I don’t have an inkling of their wisdom and yet I do have something much more powerful, direct access to the Great Physician.

I was standing in a room today listening to a frightened mother question my attending physician on the course of her son’s treatment. The chemo had given him such bad side effects that we had to stop it and use different chemo drugs that wouldn’t do that. She almost broke down as she asked if these new drugs would change the overall prognosis of her son’s condition. Obviously they were second best to what he had been getting, and she feared they would not cure him. My attending tried for a long time to explain everything to her. That in medicine we must first do no harm and these drugs were harming him, but it is a fine line between harm and benefits. After a while I stopped listening and just began praying. I know she is scared, terrified actually, it seemed like a lose, lose situation. . .  But God. . . I couldn’t help but think in that moment, ‘Lord you are more powerful than any chemo regimen, and you alone can bring comfort in this situation.’ I realized that no matter the advances in cancer research Christ is still the best medicine. Deep down He is who everyone needs no matter what they are facing. Even with the best cancer care in world and the best cancer research in the world, it’s not enough for the cancer patient without Christ. They may not know that, but it is so true. And so obviously they all need our prayers; but not just the ones at St Jude but the kids with cancer in Brazil and Honduras and Finland, and Zimbabwe, and next door. They don’t all get the best care, but they can all have the Great Physician. So then, can’t we all be physicians in some regard, praying for the Great physician to bring healing? That’s the best weapon I have against cancer, and we can all fight with it! Oh to contemplate the power of prayer, and yet I tap into that great power so little for all the people in my life. Can you imagine if any of us actually prayed without ceasing? If I, as a physician, could live in an attitude of prayer such that it saturated all my patients, what amazing things could I see God do?

That is what I am learning at St. Jude. . . thus far J