Dr. Gleeson Robello, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital has written a beautiful children's book to help reduce the trauma that a child goes through when they suffer broken bones. He along with his co-author Jamie Harisiades make the topic very approachable for a child. Dr. Robello shares his journey of creating this book. Dr. Rebello was born and brought up in Goa, did his orthopedic training in India and came to the US directly to Boston in 2003 as a research fellow. He did a couple of fellowships at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children's Hospital and then became an attending in the Massachusetts General Hospital in 2008.
The book describes itself as "a tale of trauma, treatment, and recovery in rhyme". It deals with a story from everyday life: a child gets injured on the playground, and ends up in the emergency room. DareBone is the boy who suffers his first major injury - a broken elbow. We meet him together with his "wise-cracking sidekick", the dog Wag-A-Bone. The book also introduces us to several medical heroes along the way. Breaking a bone can be traumatic moment for a child. The book helps adults who struggle with finding the right way to tell the truth about injuries to children. Dr. Gleeson Rebello shares his journey creating this book.
What motivated you to take on a career in Pediatric Orthopedics?
I love orthopedics and loved the idea of working with children. It is challenging, fulfilling and there is a certain freshness that they bring along in all their interactions.
What would say have been the most fulfilling moments of your career?
I know it sounds a bit clichéd but fulfilling moments occur in everyday interactions with patients that have been helped by decisions that have been made and measures that have been taken by me or the team.
What are the special challenges of dealing with Pediatric Orthopedics?
Having somebody else's child entrusted into your care is a huge deal and also the fact that what you do or choose not to do in that situation can have life long ramifications.
How easy or difficult was it for a doctor of your caliber to write a children's book? What kind of resources and support did you draw upon?
All doctors are of a certain caliber....I am nothing special! Almost every doctor has thousands of stories "inside them". Stories that inspire hope and sometimes cause despair. I feel good about the fact that we were able to take a mundane, everyday occurrence in a pediatric orthopedist's life and turn it into something educational and funny, in a creative manner. My co-author Jamie Harisiades (without whose assistance this book would have never happened) and I put in a tremendous amount of time and effort and resources to pull this off. For that reason alone (the effort) it feels good to see it come to fruition!
Though the book is self-funded, our publisher Lisa Akoury-Ross (SDP Publishing) helped us out together a finished product with editorial and illustrating services. There was a tremendous amount of back and forth in terms of communication between her team and Jamie and I. Incidentally, I contacted her through Linked In and then used social media to pitch the book . This was done without the help of a big publishing firm like Harper Collins or say ..Random House. This approach to publishing would have not been possible a few years ago!
What has been the overall impact of the book on your patients?
Parents and children are finding the book and the concept exceedingly useful in helping a child understand the sequence of events following this common injury. This information could be extrapolated to any surgical procedure a child would undergo. The book is selling in multiple countries across the globe and reviews in Amazon and comments on Facebook have been extremely encouraging. A mother of a child that had been treated for this injury wrote this article online which just got published on Yahoo
http://voices.yahoo.com/boston-surgeon-heals-bones-spirits-12416496.html?cat=25 that was very gratifying and sums up what the book was originally intended to do!
When do you recommend giving a child this book to read? Is it suitable for reading even if a child does not have an injury?
The idea behind writing this book is raise the overall level of consciousness about all things medical in a child so it becomes a part of childhood lore. Imagine a world where children of ages 4-12 are able to understand complex medical concepts in a fun manner that they just pick up along the way reading fun books. Going forward if the child or a friend ended up needing to have something done, the anxiety and fear factor would diminish substantially as it is already a part of their consciousness. Jamie and I are in the process of creating an animation show using a similar concept and am actively looking for funding as the cost of animation is significantly higher than writing a book and I cannot self fund it as I did the book!
Children in the US are very active. Any special advice for parents with active children?
Children should be active and when possible use protective gear to minimize injury. I am very fatalistic (stems from my Indian upbringing) and believe that what is destined will happen but that should not stop you from doing one's best to be good at a sport or take proper measures to protect oneself from injury. But if something bad happens there is nothing to be gained from having regrets or assigning blame. It "comes with the territory" of leading an active life or wanting to excel at a physical level.
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