Читать книгу Hannah’s Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived - Maria Housden - Страница 15

DR. MARKOFF CLEARED HIS THROAT AND ADJUSTED HIS glasses. He was Dr. Edman’s partner, one of Hannah’s pediatricians. He was sitting on the edge of his chair across from Claude and me. His shoulders were stooped, his face gaunt and strained. His wiry hair was disheveled, two-day-old creases wrinkled his trousers, and his shirt was missing one of its buttons. He didn’t seem to notice or care.

“I’m speaking to you as a father, not as a pediatrician,” he began, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees. He cleared his throat again; I studied him more carefully. He looked as if he was about to cry.

Claude and I exchanged glances.

“My daughter Danielle was diagnosed with leukemia last year. She’s two years old. My wife is with her now at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where she’s getting a stem cell transplant. We’re trying to save her life.”

In one breath we went from a gathering of two parents and a doctor to two fathers and a mother who belonged to a club no one wanted to be in.

“You are going to have to make thousands of decisions from now on that no one but the two of you can make; some of them may make a difference whether Hannah lives or dies. The best advice I can give you is this.”

He looked directly at Claude and me.

“Make the best decision you can with the information you have at that time.” He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair.

“‘At that time’ is the critical part. You’ll see what I mean. You can drive yourself crazy saying, ‘If only we had known this, if only we had known that.’ The point is, you didn’t know, so just keep telling yourselves, ‘We did the best we could with what we knew. We did the best we could with what we knew.’”

I could hear a deep truth in his words. As I let them seep into my heart, something softened in me and fell away. I realized that Dr. Markoff’s rule applied not only to the decisions we had to make about Hannah’s treatment, but to every other area of my life as well. My fear of making mistakes could no longer paralyze me; from now on, it would be enough to do the best I could with what I knew.