Today in school as a part of our ‘Writer’s fortnight’ each student got to see and hear 2 speakers talk about their life experiences. We are learning to be journalists, so this was a “practice story” at an attempt to write an article.

The first speaker I met was talking about his experiences as a paediatrician, specifically one who helped deal with kidney failure in children. He spoke about his process for going through with treatment, the benefits, the stress and the problems of doing his job. What intrigued me was how he dealt with the stress of having the lives of others in his hand. How does he choose who to treat and who not to treat and in a way does he “play god.” He retorted by saying he has an entire team who makes these decisions, not just him. They account for the entire family, not for the patient as a whole. He talked about how sometimes he has had to convince parents to go through with surgery, but they are not willing to because it goes against their religion. He also talked about how sometimes his patients had other bodily issues which could lead to a lot of pain for the patient if they go through with the treatment. In these cases, he had to decide whether or not to go through with the operation, and this was sometimes a very hard decision to make.

Another example he gave was about a family who had a son who was born with abnormal kidneys. This boy had to be on a ventilator almost always, or else he would die. The boy lived in a rural area where the nearest hospital was far away. Because of this, it was hard to transport the ventilator, and thus, he couldn’t conduct the operation. The dilemna faced by the speaker was whether to risk taking the boy to the hospital where he could have died a painful death on the way or been saved if they reached the hospital safely. The other option was to let the boy be so he could peacefully pass away. This really struck me emotionally, because I felt like I could feel the stress of going through having such an ultimate decision, and how if something went wrong you would have to live with that stress forever. I couldn’t help but think how lucky we are to not have such an ultimatum in our lives and not have to deal with so much stress.