Farmers Weekly Review

By Nick Reiher

One of the things that nearly got lost in the shuffle while we were awaiting (and waiting and waiting) for our firstborn, Jillian, to arrive was who would we call on for a pediatrician.

Luckily, we had that extra time as Jillian lurked for a few extra weeks so we could ask some friends who recently had been through the experience. I believe our friends Terry and (Miss you!) Lisa Burns recommended their pediatrician, Dr. Gilda Alcala.

That was good enough for us. We hadn’t even met Dr. Alcala when Jillian finally arrived at St. Joe’s, which led to our first near heart attack, as well as a glimpse of how thorough and caring our kids’ pediatrician would be for the next umpteen years.

I met Dr. Alcala at the hospital before Tammy did. And when she saw me, she immediately thought it was necessary to transfer Jillian to a pediatric heart hospital. I was so dark-skinned, and Jillian, at that time, was fair, like her Minnesota-born Mom.

After she met my fair lady, Dr. Alcala canceled the emergency plans, seeing Jillian’s coloring simply was lighter than my olive Italian skin.

I was sorry to hear Dr. Alcala passed away recently at age 82; even sorrier because I read in her obit she suffered from a rare neurological disorder for the last years of her life.

Through the usual check-ups, vaccinations and the regular kid bumps and bruises, Dr. Alcala was the friendly, caring, insightful, professional person we could count on to get us – and the kids – through it all.

And she rarely missed anything.

Like the time we brought son Andy in for a check-up before he was a year old. We commented to her how many freckles – angel kisses – he had, just like Mom.

Dr. Alcala took off her glasses for a closer look. “Those aren’t freckles,” she said. “That’s Urticaria Pigmentosa. It’s a type of allergy, but 99 percent of the time, it’s nothing, and they outgrow it.”

Of course, that’s the against-all-odds lottery we “win.” For the next six or seven years, we would be working with Dr. Alcala and her colleagues at the former Children’s Memorial Hospital who specialized in rare cases such as that.

As we took him in for regular check-ups, Dr. Alcala re-assured us time and time again. About everything. And Andy did outgrow it.

Dr. Alcala also took care of us.

When Jillian was about 9 months, we brought her in for a check-up. Dr. Alcala noticed that Tammy and I looked as though we hadn’t slept much of that time.

Since Jillian suffered with cholic, we didn’t. We told Dr. Alcala Jillian started crying as soon as we put her in the crib. Her advice went something like this:

“Put her in the crib. If she cries, go in and comfort her after one minute. But don’t take her out! Leave, and if she cries, let her go for five minutes. Then go comfort her. Do the same again, but wait 10 minutes.”

After nearly 10 minutes of heartbreak as we sat in the other room while Jillian cried, we noticed her cries getting softer, and finally, she was lying down in the crib asleep.

There would be other adventures in getting both kids to sleep a few years later, but at that point, we finally were able to get some much-needed rest.

There were dozens of other times we needed a pediatrician to tell us everything was going to be OK, and then make sure it was.

Dr. Alcala was there for all of them.

When Andy graduated from seeing a pediatrician to our family practice doctor, I stopped by Dr. Alcala’s office one last time. Her nurse handed me a 4-inch-thick folder of his records to pass along.

And I gave her a hug. It seemed so insufficient for all she had meant to us. And I told her thank you. She seemed a little teary-eyed, but I’m sure many of her other kids’ parents felt the same when they left her for good.

At one point, when we were in the depths of the urticaria sorrows with Andy, Dr. Alcala looked at the little, brown-eyed boy and said in her Filipino accent, “Oh, Ahndrew. You are special.”

So were you, Dr. Alcala. And then some.

Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.