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The San Francisco conference was excellent, with very good speakers and a well-organized and well-run agenda. Ruth and I got to see "NLJabbari" and other patient families we know.
A number of families have posted here about the difficulty of making the transition from pediatric care to adult care as a child patient gets older, so I asked Dr. Huang from UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital about it. He explained that the best doctors and institutions make it a gradual rather than sudden transition. Over the time of treatment they help a teen patient to gain more and more understanding of their illness, ask questions themselves, and participate more and more in their own treatment planning and care. If they are then introduced to an adult care provider by their pediatric doctor it can be much easier for them to adjust to the changes. It's also possible, where treatment center policies permit and where legal issues and insurance don't get in the way, for young patients to extend the time they are under the care of a pediatric practice, into their twenties.
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