HELPING
Children HEAL TAKES MORE THAN JUST MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE
BY TYLER YOUNG
Watching a child suffer through an illness is one of the hardest experiences any of us can go through. Dr. Ana Ruzic Do ’00, a pediatric surgeon at UK HealthCare Kentucky Children’s Hospital, often meets families on “their worst day,” as she puts it. Not only must she rely on her surgical expertise to step into a situation, her role requires her to be a comforter, someone who can build trust quickly with parents who are entrusting her team with their children who need significant care. It’s clear when you talk to Do that she truly loves this calling. While she admits the lows can be very low, she speaks on end about the resilience of children and how inspiring it is to see them take on often unfathomable health challenges and heal, whether it’s quickly or years down the road. 6
THIRD & BROADWAY
“A child just wants to be a child and be done with whatever’s going on here,” she says. “The adults, we walk through this world, sometimes carrying the weight of the world within us, and often do so with little grace — and we tend to struggle through it. But a child, as long as they are given a loving environment, they don’t need much more. They are incredibly resilient and very motivated to go back to being a child.” It’s a role that she’s been forced to adapt to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Simple nonverbal communications like smiles and hugs are frustrated by masks and physical distance. To compensate, she relies even more heavily on the hospital’s child life specialists, who find creative strategies to comfort and even distract the children during medical procedures and recovery. She believes in a posture
