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Dr. Janet Franklin and Dr. Joan Morris
Joan Morris [JM]: I always wanted to be a physician. When I achieved my goal, I sat and watched a little 3-year-old who would be getting chemotherapies, and her leukemia just did not get touched, and she would be dragging toys out of the toy room so she could play her little cooking thing and no matter what we did, we weren't making a difference. I felt there was a great need and a calling, and I wanted to make a difference.
Janet Franklin [JF]: When I was a resident, one of the lab techs had a teenage daughter who was diagnosed with T-cell ALL. I became friends with the mother and, therefore, knew her daughter, and it was pretty impactful because they had gone through such intensive therapy. She was trying for a transplant. And she ultimately passed away, and I remember how it struck me that, you know, we have just got to find a way as physicians to do all that we can to bring more successes for patients, particularly patients with their whole lives ahead.
JM: The difference from when we started our training to now is just amazing. When I was a resident, we couldn't do anything except support them. And nowadays, you are able to have the patient go into remission.
In the last few years that I actually was in practice, there was a little 4-year-old, and no matter what we did — chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants — she still within a month would come back with all her leukemia, but she was running the halls, and you'd look at her, and you never knew anything was wrong with this child. Then, there were new antibody trials that we were able to get her on, and she's about five years out and still in remission and goes to school and has a normal life and wouldn't be there without the changes that have happened over the years.
JF: It was overwhelmingly gratifying being able to see that there were patients who would have been given a so-called death sentence who got new agents, new drugs, new therapies — different ways of treating leukemia that have not been done before — actually had responses, and it was a joy and a surprise at the same time.
Sometimes I think learning how to live well and being in the moment comes from watching children who have every reason to perhaps be very depressed or very down, very withdrawn, and they're not. And you're just amazed.
JM: As a pediatrician I think the neatest thing is that you become a part of their families. I've gone to so many high school graduations, college graduations. I get calls when people are able to have children, and the chemotherapy hasn't hurt them, and they're in labor, and they're screaming on the phone, and they say, "This is because of you!" I asked, "How do you remember who I am? You were four." And this is somebody who's in their 20s and they say, "Well, your picture is framed, and I say goodnight to you every night." So you realize that you've made a difference.
