Blessings and Sudden Intimacies: Musings of a Pediatric Intensivist

An introspective look at how the experiences of an intensive care unit physician helped shape his optimistic worldview during a thirty-two-year medical career.

In Blessings and Sudden Intimacies: Musings of a Pediatric Intensivist, Dr. Greg Stidham entertains, inspires, and expresses gratitude for the experiences that have enriched his life. Not only does he reveal many of the extraordinary things he's experienced, but he also opens a way for us to view our own lives as a series of blessings.

Encounters with critically ill and dying children and their parents, present the poignant "sudden intimacies" of the book. The "blessings" refer to the young patients, families and healthcare personnel who touched him. Throughout, he tells of trying to ease, understand and make sense of the suffering of his young patients and their families. But he also balances the serious narrative with funny stories, letting us in on the sort of silly humor that helps a medical staff get through its day.

The book doesn't just cover Dr. Stidham's professional life. Now retired, he intertwines stories from his personal life, too, looking at how experiences at home and work have shaped and influenced each other, and him. He covers topics such as friendships, marriage, birth of children and grandchildren, relocations, health issues, vacations, and travel.

Through it all, the Cleveland native and Kingston, Ontario, resident maintains an optimistic mindset that gave him the empathy and strength needed to sustain a long medical career, most of which was spent at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center and LeBonheur Children's Medical Center in Memphis.

An accomplished writer, Stidham has published a memoir, numerous pieces of short fiction, and creative nonfiction. But his real passion is writing poetry.

Blessings and Sudden Intimacies presents a series of experiences that take readers on a ride along with Dr. Stidham as he comforts, cares, grieves, and comes to understand how one can find blessings in some of life's most difficult times. The stories are told in direct, clear language that brings his patients and their struggles to life in vivid fashion, which helps us find meaning, as he has, in the smallest, most fleeting encounter.

Greg Stidham is a pediatric intensivist (intensive care unit physician) who retired in 2012 after a 32-year career in academic medicine. In retirement, he has resurrected his passion for literature and creative writing. He has published a memoir, numerous pieces of short fiction, and creative nonfiction. But his real passion has been and is poetry. Dr. Stidham grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. He graduated with a degree in English while completing prerequisite courses to attend medical school. He received his MD and pediatrics training at the University of Toledo College of Medicine in Toledo, Ohio, before continuing his training in pediatric critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Following his training, Dr. Stidham joined the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center and LeBonheur Children's Medical Center in Memphis. He started the Critical Care Program at LeBonheur and was Chief of the Division of Critical Care. Later in his tenure in Memphis, he started the hospital's Pediatric Palliative Care Program and chaired the Biomedical Ethics Committee for more than a decade. After twenty-eight years at the children's hospital in Memphis, Dr. Stidham moved to Kingston, Ontario, where he assumed the position of Professor of Pediatrics at Queen's University and Kingston Health Sciences Center. He currently serves as a volunteer grief counselor for bereaved parents through Bereaved Families of Ontario. He continues to live and write in Kingston with his wife, Pam, and Dexter, the last survivor of their ever-evolving pack of rescue dogs.