A story

One of the reasons I've been willing to be away from the family is that the opportunity to make a difference at a pediatric hospital really seems like a good thing to do for the world... even if they move slowly and bureaucratically in many ways, it's also obvious they do great work for kids.

My first week onsite I was getting a tour and walked past a room with a sign above it - "Camp Need-a-Heart" - inside was a girl I'll call "Sara", about Bella's age, awake and talking to her parents, hooked up to a machine the size of a refrigerator. The room was decked out beautifully, with an entire wall of "get well" cards and colorful streamers across the ceiling. The nurse told me she was waiting for a heart transplant.

One of the things I've been charged with doing is analyzing how data flows between the systems in the cardiology department, so I noted her name and looked at the data trail: A transplant patient really has every possible sort of exam and procedure done at some point - Echocardiograms, EEGs, Holters, Caths, Transplant prep visits and documentation, surgery... in one patient I could see it all. So I used this data to make my flow charts, and moved on...

Mostly. I was curious about what documentation would actually appear once the transplant took place, so I made a point of checking on the record every week or so, just to see if that new document had arrived. And a few weeks ago, there was a new record: Transplant Surgery Performed. I logged the document path, and was done with my workflow.

But I wondered about Sara, and how she came out. Seeing her that first day had been so powerful - a girl about Bella's age with a failing heart and a family so devoted. I wanted her to be ok.

Two days ago I was walking through the department and wound up walking past her room for the first time since that first day. I slowed just a little to look in as I walked past, wondering if she was still there. The sun was shining, and Sara was sitting on a couch by the window next to her mom, reading a book. She was smiling broadly and I caught her looking up at her mom with a laugh. The fridge-sized machine was gone, and she didn't appear to be hooked up to anything. Looks like she came through ok.

It made me proud to be doing what I'm doing.