Carmen Uscatu: How ‘Give Life’ is Overcoming Complexity in Childhood Cancer Care
Carmen Uscatu, Founding Member and President of Give Life, shared a post on LinkedIn:
”When we experience the world as “too complex,” we are not just experiencing the complexity of the world. We are experiencing a mismatch between the world’s complexity and our own at this moment. There are only two logical ways to mend this mismatch: reduce the world’s complexity or increase our own. The first isn’t going to happen…”*
When my mind limited me, I recognized it.
When the radiotherapy project stalled – even though I dreamed of creating the best radiotherapy center in Romania, even though I partnered with the best, like Prof. M. Saiful Huq PhD, FAAPM, FInstP (former President of the American Association of Physicists) to secure cutting-edge equipment and service contracts – I felt that I hit a wall. I realized: I don’t know. I didn’t know how to unblock the project. At that moment, I realized that my limits became the project’s limits. I asked myself daily, obsessively: What can I do? What CAN I do?
But because I refused to stop hoping, the answers came.
First: A Master’s In Global Child Health program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in the US, flung open doors to a complex world I’d never seen before.
Second: A partnership with Prinses Máxima Centrum voor kinderoncologie – and the support of prof. dr. Rob Pieters and his team. Today, the Marie Curie team is backed by Máxima’s radiotherapy experts (thank you, Geert Janssens!).
Now:
Dr. Adrian Radu, the youngest radiation oncologist on our Marie Curie team, is in fellowship at The Máxima.
Part of our team**—radiation oncologists, physicists, technicians—is training at Máxima right now.
We’re equipping Romania’s first Total Body Irradiation (TBI) program, a milestone for pediatric care.
AND
This autumn, the radiotherapy department at Marie Curie, – with the hospital’s management’s support- will begin treating children. And critically, every treatment will be guided by Máxima’s world-class expertise.
This is how we fight for comprehensive childhood cancer care in Romania.
This is how we at Dăruiește Viață (Give Life) rise to meet the world’s complexity – by growing our own.
Special thanks to Suditu Mihai Daniel and dr Marius Poroschianu.
*from Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
** Iuliana Giurgiu, Remus-Cosmin Stoica, Loredana Suditu, Mihai Suditu, Alexandru Olarescu, Iolanda Lecea, Gabriela Iota, Ștefan Diaconu, Liliac Iosif.
More posts featuring Carmen Uscatu on OncoDaily.
-
Challenging the Status Quo in Colorectal Cancer 2024
December 6-8, 2024
-
ESMO 2024 Congress
September 13-17, 2024
-
ASCO Annual Meeting
May 30 - June 4, 2024
-
Yvonne Award 2024
May 31, 2024
-
OncoThon 2024, Online
Feb. 15, 2024
-
Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023