While many hospitals match parents of newly diagnosed patients with parents whose children have been cured, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis has a program that matches parents of children whose cases are terminal with other mothers and fathers whose children didn’t survive.
It’s a nontraditional program, for sure, but Justin Baker, chief of the Division of Quality of Life and Palliative Care at St. Jude, says parents of dying children “don’t feel understood. They feel lonely. It can feel like almost complete and total isolation.”
Started in 2014, the program now has 21 mentors, and these mentors help, even if it’s just via phone, text or email, reminding parents of terminally ill children that there is someone else available to lean on who has felt the same unfathomable grief.
Read more about the unique program in Wednesday’s Family section.