Love medicine
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[© Brendan Bannon/MSF] |
"Sometimes what you need to give a patient is love. For two months, little Steve was our fuel. He kept us going," Dr Rodrigo told me.
I think that in medicine, as in life, there are ordinary relationships and extraordinary ones. Extraordinary ones teach us about ourselves and connect us deeply to other people. They change us as they remind us of each other's humanity. It sounded to me like the relationship that was fused between young Steve, his family and his team of doctors was extraordinary.
When Steve came to the hospital he was sick. His first line ARV treatment had failed. Whatever medical interventions were tried seemed to be failing as well. Steve, at just 12 years old, was facing death.
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[© Brendan Bannon/MSF] |
"For two months he was our fuel," said Dr. Rodrigo. "He kept us going and now the medical me doesn't understand what happened!" When I look back, I ask myself: what did we do to make him better?
"At the time I was trying to phase into the stage where you let him die peacefully. Then we started to get closer to him. We talked to him about his dreams. ... The emotional me wants to believe that love was the treatment. The medical me still wonders what was that got him through and made him recover.
"I remember a couple of days being fed up with work. Things weren't working and I went and saw little Steve who was dying and he would give you a smile and everything was better.
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