Chris Feudtner

Greetings. I am a pediatrician at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where I care for children with complex chronic problems as part of the Complex Care Service, provide palliative care for children with serious and life-threatening illnesses as a physician on our Pediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT), partner with and support the families of these patients, and help to run our Ethics Program, including our Ethics Consultation service. I also conduct a variety of research studies aiming to improve how we provide care to these patients and families. I began to write seriously in college, focusing on poetry, and was lucky to be taught by several wonderful poets. But I did not learn to write prose until I was in graduate school, studying history and working with some masterful writers -- and finding essential guidance in the book by Joseph Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. More recently, I have benefitted form instruction on how to write fiction. Some might say I still have not learned to write prose well, and I don't disagree, committed instead to the endless endeavor of trying to improve. In my writing, I try to clarify -- as much for myself as for others -- both the mechanisms and the meanings of illness and medicine. "Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness" was my attempt to do this for a particular disease through the lens of history and a remarkable medical archive of letters between patients and doctors. "Light and Shadow: A Novel of Pediatric Internship" represents my attempt to use fiction as a means to explore the many ramifications of pediatric serious illness on patients, their families, and healthcare clinicians.