<Doctor of the Month: Rose Ellen Morrell, MD>

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DOCTOR OF THE MONTH

Taking pediatrics personally

On a cold January morning in 1990, Rose Ellen Morrell, MD, Children’s Hospital’s nephrology division chief, faced a parent’s worst nightmare: her 3-year-old son Michael had stopped breathing.

Earlier that morning, Michael, who had recurrent croup, woke up with severe breathing difficulties. When his breathing didn’t improve, Dr. Morrell strapped him into the family’s blue Plymouth van and drove down the hill toward Children’s Hospital. By the time they reached the North Berkeley flatlands, Michael’s breathing had become badly labored. She turned on her emergency blinkers, began honking her horn and sped south down Oxford Street.

She saw two police cars and asked one officer to escort her to the hospital. He turned on his lights and siren and they took off. “I turned to my son in the back and said, ‘Oh, look at the siren,’” said Dr. Morrell, recalling how she mangled her words just as Michael stopped breathing.

Terrified, she pulled over and laid her son on the floor of the van. “I felt for his heartbeat,” said Dr. Morrell. “I wouldn’t have felt the Loma Prieta earthquake at that point. But I couldn’t feel his heartbeat, so I put his head back and did something that vaguely resembled CPR. And I yelled, ‘Help me, help me, my child is dying.’”

When her police escort offered to call paramedics, Dr. Morrell said no. “Put us in your car…now…take us to Children’s,” she said. And he did. Dr. Morrell continued CPR in the back seat of the police cruiser. Two blocks from Children’s Hospital, Michael began breathing again.

A week later in the PICU, Michael waved her over after his breathing tube was removed and whispered, “Get me out of here.” That’s when Dr. Morrell knew he was well again.

The memory of her son’s brush with death still brings tears to her eyes. The experience also sensitized her to the emotional stress of parents with sick children, especially those coming to Children’s.

“Having your kid be this sick really changes how you practice (medicine),” said Dr. Morrell. She knows emotional parents can be typecast, so she cautions staff, “Until your kid has been in this ICU, don’t comment on a parent’s behavior.”

Still, she appreciates the dedication of the hospital staff. “I am in debt to the ICU nurses forever,” said Dr. Morrell. “People came in on their day off to take care of (Michael). They made a list—these are the people allowed to take care of Rose Ellen’s son. He got incredible care, just incredible care.”

Michael is now a healthy 19-year-old, studying at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Two other children, Alex, 31, and Serena, 28, are also doing well. Alex became a father last August, making Dr. Morrell, his stepmother, a first-time grandmother. Serena, her stepdaughter, is in law school at Columbia University.

Columbia isn’t far from where Dr. Morrell grew up in Brooklyn, her father’s hometown. Her parents met in New York after her mother moved there from Canada to go to college. She and her brother were born and raised in Brooklyn until 1958. That’s when the family went on a cross-America trip that forever gave Dr. Morrell a taste for travel.

They left New York with two reservations, one at Yellowstone National Park, the other at Yosemite. Along the way they saw, among other sights, Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. Except for running out of gas on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, it was three weeks of family fun.

After the trip, the family moved to Canada and settled in Montreal, where Dr. Morrell lived from the age of 12 until she graduated from medical school 12 years later.

Dr. Morrell looking in ALi's ear Dr. Morrell graduated high school early, at 16, and entered Montreal’s McGill University. She got a full university scholarship and began an honors psychology program. She did neurophysiological research on rats, naming her favorite lab rat Gottlieb Frege, after a famous 19th century German philosopher, mathematician and logician.

A physician she met during her research work changed the course of her life. “I think you should go to medical school, not graduate school,” said the researcher. Dr. Morrell realized she didn’t want to spend her life in a claustrophobic laboratory, so she applied to medical school.

McGill again gave her a full scholarship; she stayed in Montreal, went to medical school and began her journey into healing.

A one-month elective stint at San Francisco’s Children’s Hospital, now part of California Pacific Medical Center, led her to pediatrics.

The turning point came when Dr. Morrell was on rounds one morning with Dr. Leonard. They stopped to visit a 10-year-old boy, a quadriplegic. He was lying in bed, unable to raise himself up and unable to look around.

“He’s a boy, he’s not an old man,” said Dr. Leonard, “he needs to see what’s in front of him.” Dr. Leonard arranged for the boy to have special glasses, fitted with prisms, to allow him to see what was in front of him, even while lying on his back.

“We go farther, we do more (in pediatrics),” said Dr. Morrell, recalling her decision to care for children. “I feel so lucky that I love what I do. When I’m working with a family, sometimes I can’t believe I get paid to do what I do.”

Meanwhile, the travel bug that bit Dr. Morrell as a girl has taken her all over the world. During medical school she did a one-month rotation in northern Canada, in the territory now called Nunavut. In the Frobisher Bay community of Iqaluit, she cared for Inuit children, and sometimes for their parents. She also flew in small planes to outlying villages that were “remote and magnificent.”

Grateful parents gave her gifts of hand-sewn clothing. One woman embroidered a handmade parka for Dr. Morrell.

She liked it so much up there near the Arctic Circle, she went back for another month. This time she competed in the Inuit Games with the sole non-Inuit team. They lost the igloo-building contest, but gave spectators a comic show. With their kitchen knives they managed to get one ice block placed in the time it took the winning team to complete an entire igloo.

During medical school in the 70s, Dr. Morrell shared her one-bedroom apartment with Doris Wuhuru, a Kikuyu from Kenya, daughter of a man with five wives. They had a great time and this connection proved invaluable when Dr. Morrell later visited Kenya. As she traveled around the country she inevitably found a Wuhuru family connection to stay with. She got an insider’s view of Kenya.

She’s also traveled in Europe, Mexico, Belize, Ecuador, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Japan and China. Every year she returns to visit friends and family in Montreal and practices her French. “The best thing about traveling is to sit quietly and watch,” said Dr. Morrell. She’s learned there are as many “right” ways to live, as there are places to live. “Our life is just our point of view.”

Michael, who’s traveled widely for a teen, wants to learn more about his mother’s professional point of view. He studied for and passed New York state’s emergency medical technician exam. This year, instead of traveling to Europe or South America, he plans to work in New York as an EMT. Who knows, maybe saving lives will become a Morrell family tradition.