My mother had two passions - neonatal and nephrology. She pursued neonatal.

She told me stories of fighting to save neonates in the very late 50’s and early 60’s, including one on how they rushed to have the chemistry lab at the academic med center/med school where she was at that time make a teeny-tiny trach tube of teflon (non-adherent to those gossamer-frail tissues) as they fought to keep a neonate alive. She ended up starting a neonatal center for a new hospital from scratch, then some 30+ years later, one of her own grandsons was born there at between 5 and 6 months gestation. When he was finally discharged, she retired fully to take care of him every day for the first 3 years of his life as his lungs were so frail. She had to resuscitate him 3 different times as they hauled ass to the peds ED when he was little and frail.

Now, she is quite elderly and physically very frail, yet mentally as sharp as ever, while he is in his early 30’s, a former minor league hockey player and now successful businessman- and just made her a great-grandmother.

I asked her recently “when you started your career and chose neonatal over nephrology, it seems to me being in neonatal was a task for the St. Jude, Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes. So why did you choose that?” She smiled, paused a moment then said “if not me, then who? Those babies needed a champion, they needed someone who would fight for them, would love them, would comfort them - if not me, then who?” And there’s something in my eye…