Taking Care of Your Own: Parenthood and the Medical Mind (The Grand Rounds Press Series)

How can a person be a responsible doctor and a responsible parent? How do doctors cope with the illnesses of their own children? Is there a solution to the competition for time? Where does the personal-professional boundary lie? In this book, Dr. Perri Klass explores a subject rarely touched on in the professional literature: the connections between medicine and parenthood. She observes that the roles can overlap in unexpected ways: "Will I ever forget what it was like watching my own daughter get fluoroscoped---watching her heart beat inside her ribs, and thinking with confusion of what I knew about systole and diastole." Dr. Klass tells of a terrified medical student unable to recall any of his pediatrics training during his wife's difficult labor. And she addresses the concerns of children who grow up knowing that at any moment the sound of a beeper may call a parent away.