The Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting care for many cancer patients, and, in one excruciating case, the family of a one-year-old little girl battling a rare form of cancer can’t be with her during her treatment.
One-year-old Zoe from Minnesota is currently battling a rare cancer called chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The disease is a blood cancer in the bone marrow, and is rarely found in children. For treatment, Zoe has already started chemotherapy, but is in need of a bone marrow transplant. Zoe’s family has set up a GoFundMe to raise money for the operation.
Read More“My husband called Primary Children’s and what they told him was basically unless she was dying that he couldn't come. When your child is diagnosed with cancer, all it feels like is my child is dying,” Smith said.
Caring For Pediatric Patients During Covid-19
Amid Covid-19, many hospitals have suspended family visitation in order to keep patients and families safe from the respiratory virus. This is especially important for pediatric patients battling cancer, seeing as Dr. Puvri Parikh, an Immunologist at New York University (NYU) Langone Health, says children battling cancer are more at risk of contracting Covid-19 than other children due to their compromised immune systems.
In most cases, one parent or guardian can be present with the child in the hospital. However, not being able to visit each other can be an extremely difficult experience for both the family and child. In order to ease the child’s fear, Dr. Parikh encourages parents to ease their children's fear by explaining that the limitations are for safety reasons, and family members can use virtual platforms such as like FaceTime, Zoom, and others if face to face visits are impossible.
"Because of technology we're lucky," Dr. Parikh says. "Social distancing is a little bit easier than it maybe would have been 20 or 30 years ago."
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