By Dr. Steven Abrams
I arrived at Texas Children’s Hospital from Ohio as a newly minted fellow in neonatology in the summer of 1985. At the time, Texas Children’s was one building, now called “Abercrombie,” and was a seven story hospital with a 24-bed Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and another 50 or so Level 2 NICU beds in three separate nurseries. I began research on bone health in infants at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center (CNRC), then housed on a few floors of what is called the Medical Towers building on Fannin Street.
I stayed at Texas Children’s and Baylor College of Medicine for nearly 30 years, except for a brief sojourn in the Washington, D.C. area in the late 1980s for research training at the National Institutes of Health. I returned to Texas Children’s and Baylor as a faculty member in 1991.
Now, it is time to embark on a new and exciting opportunity. Next month, I will be the Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. This is a new medical school and a new Department of Pediatrics with its primary pediatric teaching hospital being Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas. Both challenges and opportunities abound, and I am grateful for them and for the opportunity to continue to serve the children of Texas in this unique way.
Leaving after three decades is not easy and I wanted to say goodbye with this blog post. I leave Houston with many fond memories of my experiences at Texas Children’s and the incredible importance of Texas Children’s to the city of Houston.
I met my late wife Judy in Houston at Congregation Emanu El where she served as a junior assistant Rabbi. We shared more than two-and-a-half decades together being part of the Houston community, and ultimately I said goodbye to her here. She always told me and our three children to do what we are supposed to do with our lives, and that the pathway would be clear forward. She and I were very proud of being part of Texas Children’s and having our children expertly cared for here.
The most remarkable part of being a faculty member at Texas Children’s is seeing what we can do for children by relying upon the strengths of the people who work here. I was recruited to Texas Children’s by the incredible Dr. Arnold J. Rudolph. Dr. Rudolph was a legendary leader of our field for many years. He taught us to always focus on doing what we knew was the right thing, which was not necessarily the easiest thing, for our young patients, every time, every day. He focused on families and the dynamics of an infant within a family. He never stopped teaching even into his last years of life. His teaching showed us what pediatrics education was about and he made it clear that education should go along with patient care and research as our passions as pediatricians.
Through most of my time here, our department chair was Dr. Ralph Feigin. We all have Dr. Feigin stories, but here is my personal favorite. After the tsunami hit Sri Lanka in late 2004, I wanted to lead a team of neonatologists and staff members (nurses, respiratory therapists and others) to go there and help them rebuild their NICUs. I had identified medical and research connections in Sri Lanka who were anxious for us to make such a trip. I emailed Dr. Feigin with my plan to lead a 10 person team from Texas Children’s to Sri Lanka. I emailed him at 6:30 a.m. At 6:45 in the morning, he called me at home to tell me it was a great idea and by 11 a.m., he met with the Texas Children’s Hospital Board of Directors and the money was approved. So much for months of haggling! We went to Sri Lanka and hopefully accomplished something in that difficult setting. Dr. Feigin’s approach was to quickly and decisively take action on behalf of children everyone and he taught by example every day.
Other memorable moments include waking up one Sunday in 1998 to be told to head in on-call to Texas Children’s for the delivery of octuplets. That was quite a delivery and experience taking care of them! Also, I am proud to watch the incredible work Texas Children’s has done internationally in many settings and the Texas Children’s unending support for the rights of children throughout the world, especially those in Africa and Latin America. I hope that my advocacy for new forms of therapy for children with liver disease, for good nutrition for children, and for health care for newborns throughout the world can be a legacy I’ve provided to the Texas Children’s community that will continue forward.
I want to express my tremendous appreciation to our department chair, Dr. Mark W. Kline, and many others at Texas Children’s and Baylor including Dr. Dennis Bier and Dr. Steven Welty, my section heads at the CNRC and Neonatology, respectively, for their support over the years and their assistance in helping me make a smooth transition to Dell Medical School.
I also want to express my appreciation to the Baylor and Texas Children’s public relations departments for their assistance in teaching me how to do a better job of advocating for children in the media and with the public. These are skills I will need in my new position.
In the end, I am saddened to leave the friend I call Texas Children’s behind, but happy to be able to transmit the skills and values I have learned here over the last 30 years to help develop an outstanding new Department of Pediatrics.
Don’t be strangers if you come to Austin! I hear they have decent barbecue there.