Baby Claire's Blog: Congratulations Dr. Rachel!

Dr. Rachel received news this week that she was accepted to do her fellowship at Duke! Congratulations!! What exactly does this mean? Well, my understanding of it is that she has one more year of her residency at Duke. If she was just planning to be a general pediatrician, she would be done after that. But she is working towards becoming a pediatric cardiologist. So she will have several more years (I think 3 maybe??) doing research and working in pediatric cardiology along side of other peds cards.

Claire saw several peds cards fellows while she was in the NICU and they sometimes shadow the doctors who have completed their fellowship and sometimes they came alone.

But what this REALLY means to us is that hopefully Dr. Rachel will get to be Claire's pediatric cardiologist until she is 18 years old. Well, that is if Dr. Rachel stays in this area or at Duke. Even if she left Duke and was at a hospital in NC nearby, we would travel to see her. But we think she should just stay forever and be Claire's personal doctor. ;)

Dr. Rachel is a special person. We know that God brought her into that NICU room that day as an intern to watch over Claire. I don't remember exactly when she came, but it was about a month after Claire was born I think. I remember the room we were in, the nurses Claire had that day, and where my mom and I were sitting in the room when she walked in. The nurses were talking and carrying on with each other and Dr. Rachel just quietly stood there. When she finally caught a break in their conversation, she introduced herself to the nurses as Claire's new intern. She asked if she could examine Claire and she so sweetly came over and unwrapped the blankets from around Claire and talked to Claire in such a kind, gentle voice. When she told us she was going to school to take care of heart babies like Claire, I knew she was a gift to us from God.

She is the one who fought, against all odds, to organize the multidisciplinary meeting between the neonatologists, pediatric cardiologists, pediatric cardiac surgeons, and the liver surgeon. The attendings kept saying it was a big task for an intern and that it probably would not be done. But she did it and I heard several attendings commend her on her hard work at organizing this meeting of the minds that so badly needed to be done for the best care for Claire.

It just all worked out at the time it needed to. And now we have a special bond with her and hope that she can continue to watch after Claire for a long, long time. And we know we will get the BEST care possible for Claire with her. Not that we don't like our other cardiologists, we just LOVE Dr. Rachel. :)

This is the first picture I took of Claire and Dr. Rachel. It was the weekend before I was going home for my baby shower and it was also right after the neonatologist had agreed with me FINALLY to do another ultrasound of Claire's liver (which in turn revealed to them that the cyst was pressing against her IVF and restricting blood flow - not good).

December 10, 2010

This next picture is the day Claire left Duke to come home. Dr. Rachel had told the new resident doctor who took over Claire's care after her that he had to tell her when Claire was being discharged. She was working somewhere else on another rotation and ran over quickly to see Claire before we left!

January 13, 2011

This was at one of our many trips back to Duke for check ups. Dr. Rachel came down and waited to see Claire until her ultrasound was done.

March 30, 2011

She brought Claire a special toy - the pink puppy. It's one of Claire's favorites. She calls it "Woof Woof" of course. She squeezes him and snuggles with him a lot!

March 30, 2011

Dr. Rachel and Marie came up the day of Claire's liver surgery to check on her and they got their "Team Claire Rose" March of Dimes T-shirts. Dr. Rachel checked on Claire several times during her visit.