Originally published on The Journal of the American Medical Association
Two decades ago, an American family traveled to Cusco, Peru, and adopted a 3-week-old Peruvian girl. The process was long and arduous and was successful only because of the intervention of some big-hearted strangers. Finally, after 13 months, the family was able to return to the United States.
At about this same time a good friend of mine in his late 40s, an ophthalmologist in Long Island, New York, contracted a rare cancer. He had one child, a daughter, whom I saw frequently when I visited him. My friend lived long enough to see his daughter get into medical school, but he did not live long enough to see her graduate and become an ophthalmologist.
Read the full article here.
