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I direct the intensive care unit at the only Level I pediatric trauma center on Chicago's South Side, where we treat children with all manner of illness. I felt well prepared to manage the full spectrum of diseases when I moved from Boston to Chicago in 2009, with one major exception.
During my first week in Chicago, I cared for as many children with gunshot wounds as I had seen over the course of two years in Boston. Last year alone, we treated 54 children with gunshots at my hospital, more than the deadliest school shooting in America's history.
Recently I admitted a teenager whose body was permanently destroyed by the effects of this affliction, after surviving the original injury. He was paralyzed from the shoulders down, with tubes protruding from his windpipe and stomach. He endured recurrent pneumonias, urinary tract infections, pressure ulcers and depression. At 15 years old and almost 6 feet tall, he weighed barely 110 pounds. His cheeks were gaunt, eyes dark and sunken, limbs thin and contracted. He looked nothing like the spry teen he once was, lean and fit and 50 pounds heavier, before he was shot in the back.
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