Doctors Aid Ill Patients During Vacation

Nothing cuts to the heart more deeply than a fresh and fragile life struggling to be fully lived. For infants arriving too soon or too sick to make it on their own, a quiet war for survival is waged in the neonatal intensive care unit of Woman's Hospital of Texas.

For highly skilled doctors, like Scott Jarriel, who care for these kids, there are no "do overs." They must get it right or a life could be gone.

"We deal with life and death," says Jarriel, a neonatologist.

At Woman's Hospital, most babies survive and thrive. The battle, however, takes it's toll and for doctors who've spent most of their waking hours, 50 odd weeks a year, caring for critically ill kids, it seems logical that vacation would be a time for total escape.

For a trio of physicians working the NICU that's true, but not in the way you'd think.

"Suddenly, I'm just organizing pillow fights. It's really nice,"says neonatoligist Jayne Finkowski.

"It's a family reunion, it's a love fest, it's incredible," chimes in Carlos Rivera, Jayne's husband and a pediatric neurologist.

They're talking about Camp Periwinkle in Burton, Texas, about as far from Bimini or the Bahamas as you can get.

"I don't know what I'd do without this camp," adds Jarriel, Jayne and Carlos' long-time colleague and crony.

Their fellow campers are kids who have placed their cancer fight on the shelf in exchange for an ecstatic week of simply cutting loose.

"All you need to do is see those faces to understand why we come back," says Jarriel of the smiles generated by the roughly 130 campers.

The trio of healers has been returning to the unlikely place of escape each and every year for close to a quarter century.
Without fail camp visitors sense an electric quality in the quest for fun, an urgency that's expressed in the need to push limits before limits are reached.

"We have never had a camp where we have 100 percent survival to the next summer," explains Rivera whose many duties include preparing volunteer counselors.

"I tell them, I want you to be a counselor like this is the last camp that this kid is going to have because for someone in someone's cabin, that's going to be the truth."

When you don't know what the future holds, you don't hold back and for campers that unleashes an exuberance that's become purely Periwinkle.

"By mid-week I'll go, what do I do for a living ? I don't really remember," explains Finkowski, whose started as a counselor and is now the camp director.

"No matter how much you give, you will receive that much more in return,"says Rivera whose campers call Periwinkle "the best week of their life, every year."

For the physicians and friends who make-up the family that's become Periwinkle's staff, the six day session drains the body while invigorating the soul.

"You have absolutely nothing left to give physically and yet you are absolutely tanked up from an emotional standpoint. That is the end of camp, the last day,"

You could call it fuel to fight the good fight, preserving life, until it's time again for fun.