Adrienne found online communities helpful when recovering from Lyme disease
About two years ago I became very sick. After dealing with illness for a number of months I was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease. Suddenly I had an explanation for all the symptoms I was feeling: aches and pains, headaches, blurred vision, dizziness, memory loss, upset stomachs, anxiety, depression.
I was lucky to find a great local doctor and have a supportive network of friends and family to lean on. I took my prescribed antibiotics and felt better. I took time off from work and gave my body time to heal. Both played into my eventual recovery, as did the support network I found online. By connecting with an online Lyme disease community I learned what hurdles other people like me were facing, and how they beat (or at least coped with) those hurdles. I asked questions like what homeopathic remedies worked best for them? How did they alleviate anxiety? How were they able to ease the upset stomachaches caused by their antibiotics?
I was helping myself get better, and after a while started sharing my own remedies and coping mechanisms. The back and forth developed into strong, supportive relationships that were very important to me. They didn’t take the place of a trip to the doctor’s office or real life bonds I had, but it was so helpful to have access to people who understood my ups and downs, didn’t mind my occasional venting and were so eager to share information. Full story »
by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on May 23, 2012
By Vivian McNeeley
Angela
When I gave birth to my daughter, Angela, in the summer of 2005, she was a perfect, healthy, happy baby and we were thrilled to welcome our first daughter into our family.
As Angela grew she amazed us in every way. She was outgoing, smart, funny and not at all shy. She had a way about her that was all her own. I was a little concerned that she seemed to be a tad clumsy and unsteady at times, but figured that was just another part of the person she was becoming. When I asked her pediatricians about it they said not to worry, but as time went on there was no denying that her funny little swagger had turned into a noticeable limp.
After being referred to an orthopedic doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital, Angela was diagnosed with developmental dysplasia of the hip, which means she had a problem with formation of her hip joint. She was 5 years old at the time.
By most standards, 5 is still very young, but when it comes to catching and correcting hip dysplasia, it’s considered quite late. If identified between infancy and the baby’s first birthday, doctors can usually treat it with special harnesses or casts, but for a child Angela’s age, treatment is much more difficult and often involves multiple surgeries.
Hailey Olson, seen here with Susan Chi, MD, and Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, is the first patient in a trial challenging the conventional wisdom about rare brain stem tumor. (Image: Sam Ogden, DFCI)
Hilary Olson had no reason to suspect that her daughter Hailey might have a brain tumor.
“Her smile was starting to droop a little, and one of her eyes was a little jumpy,” says the 6-year-old’s mother. “We took her to see a neurologist, and he thought she might have pinched a nerve.
“But when he sent us to Boston Children’s Hospital for an MRI,” she continues, “the radiologists sent us straight down to the emergency room.”
Chris Carpenter, MD, of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Global Pediatrics Program (GPP), sees the world a little differently than most people. When faced with news stories about poverty and suffering in Africa, many of us see tragedy; Carpenter sees an opportunity to help.
Now he’s sharing his vision with the world, through the eyes of a camera. His documentary film, “Born in Goma” captures his time in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on three special patients— Isaac, Gisele and Dieume—trying to survive in the midst of extreme poverty and violence.
Be aware, some of the following images are somewhat graphic in nature.
After finishing medical school and his pediatric residency, Carpenter was ready to embark on a personal mission to practice medicine in areas wracked by violence and lacking in resources. In October of 2009, he went to Goma, an eastern city in the Congo, where he worked with families whose daily life was a constant struggle. But despite the harsh conditions, most of these people had an unbelievable will to survive. Full story »
by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on May 17, 2012
By Kathryn Michalski
Peter
When my son Peter and I go out, it’s not unusual for people to fawn over him a bit.
“What a happy kid.” “He’s so smart.“ “It makes me smile when I see him,” we often hear. As a mom raising a child with as many health issues as Peter has faced, these comments brighten my day.
Peter was born with anarteriovenous malformation (AVM) in his liver, meaning his veins and arteries weren’t connected properly. When he was just seven months old, the AVM completely disrupted the blood flow to his liver and small intestine, causing multiple holes in his small intestine. He became gravely ill after that. At our local hospital, Peter had one surgery to remove the AVM and three more to salvage what was left of his intestines.
When it was all over, Peter had four ostomies (a surgical opening made in the skin as a way for waste products to leave the body) and a gastrostomy (a surgical opening into the stomach, where a feeding device can be inserted). He couldn’t digest food properly, so he had to receive all his nutrients intravenously (IV), through a medication called total parenteral nutrition (TPN).
Having a child on TPN is a lifestyle, for both patient and parents. It requires refrigerating IV bags and medications, and storing huge amounts of tubing, caps, alcohol preps, pumps, dressing change kits, and other supplies. There is a daily ritual of preparing the medicine and hooking it up, and because TPN requires a permanent central line for IV access, there is always a risk of infection that needs to be closely monitored. Full story »
Tonight at 8 pm, HBO will debut a four-part documentary series, The Weight of the Nation, an unflinching look at the severity of the obesity crisis in America, and its crippling effect on our nation’s health and economy.
HBO and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences have joined forces to bring together the nation’s foremost experts on weight and weight loss for a frank and educational look at obesity in America. The series explains how weight became such an issue in this country and provides answers for how we can get to a healthy weight by overcoming the forces that drive us to eat too much and move too little. Full story »
Feeling "a little" pinch is a small price to pay for good healthcare. But we can do more to reduce the discomfort. (UNICEF Sverige/Flickr)
I remember distinctly both of my boys’ 4-month-old well visits. Mostly because of the shots: all four of them.
Neither boy was particularly happy about being poked that much (though the shiny Band-Aids afterward did help a little).
My wife and I would have loved to help ease the pain of the shots, but we didn’t have any idea how. Frankly, I don’t know that, in the moment, it crossed our minds that there was something we could do, and it wasn’t something we thought to ask our pediatrician about. I mean, it was just a little bit of pain, right?
The problem, though, is that those little bits of pain add up. “Millions of injections are given to children around the world every year,” says Neil Schechter, MD, a pain specialist in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Anesthesia Department. Schechter recently published an article in Pediatrics where he commented that while we’ve come a long way in the last 50 years in understanding and addressing pain in children—especially after surgery or due to chronic illness—pain in the pediatric office hasn’t received the same level of attention.
“The pain from shots and other minor procedures in a pediatrician’s office doesn’t have the same poignancy as pain in an inpatient setting,” he says, “but it is still pain. And if we want to encourage patients’ and families’ cooperation and participation in routine healthcare, we want to keep pain to a minimum.” Full story »
By reviewing a computer based screening on patient alcohol use, doctors can help reduce underage drinking according to a new study
Can a doctor really persuade a teenager not to use alcohol or drugs with a two or three minute intervention? The answer is “yes,” according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.
“In just a few minutes we can make a significant impact in reducing teenage alcohol use,” says Harris. “By streamlining the alcohol screening process for clinicians and patients alike we can make the process easier and more efficient for everyone, which will yield more positive results.”
Teens in Harris’s study completed a five-minute computer-based survey, known as the CRAFFT, which asks six simple questions about alcohol and drug use. After the screening users are assigned a “score” and risk level based on their answers. They’re then directed to 10 illustrated pages of stories and science-based evidence about the serious health effects of alcohol and drug use. Full story »
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