“Like my child…” Atopy-Food Allergy Therapy Passion
As the sun went down, a call came from the emergency room. A baby with extensible cardiomyopathy was carried with his heart stopped. As the chief of his major, he ran with his gown flying and led CPR. The baby barely breathed and was sent to the intensive care unit, but at midnight, there was a sad news that the baby had left for heaven. Tears welled up and my stomach wiggled as my heart was in tears. Oh, I’m 28 weeks pregnant..
Kim Ji-hyun, a 44-year-old professor at the Department of Pediatrics and Youth at Samsung Medical Center, suffered premature birth 15 years ago when he was working as a medical doctor at Chung-Ang University Yongsan Hospital. be repeatedly hospitalized and discharged At the 35th week of pregnancy, an emergency broke out and gave birth to the first child through a cesarean section. However, due to complications of premature babies, the baby suffered from lung problems and brain hemorrhage. Developmental disorders followed, and the shaking and babbling were late. It was late to stand, walk, and talk. It was said to be a joint on the kitten, and it was wheezing with infant asthma, and the face was not dry due to atopic dermatitis.
At that time, I didn’t think that I would major in allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis and asthma that my first child suffered. Professor Kim is a doctor who is treating child allergy patients from all over the country with the heart of a mother who was anxious when caring for his first child, and is told by patient parents that he takes care of them as if they were his own baby. Professor Kim also felt the “waiting for allergy treatment” as he watched his first child overcome the pain and finally grow normally.
Professor Kim was born with six right toes and has been in and out of the hospital since he was young. When I was hospitalized for a week in the fourth grade of elementary school, curiosity about hospitals, doctors, and patients made my heart pound. Even when I went to the operating room, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What would happen when I fell asleep (under anesthesia).” Since childhood, he has been smart enough to sweep the mental arithmetic and calculation competitions, and Professor Kim, who was the top student throughout high school, went to medical school and delighted his parents.
Professor Kim’s eyes sparkled as he watched his baby completely cured and discharged from the hospital with a sparkling face during a pediatric practice when he was in the third grade of Chung-Ang University’s medical school. “Pediatrics is my major!”
He changed his motivation and order when he was an intern and started with pediatrics, revealing his dream to his seniors and driving a stake in pediatrics early. In the second year of his major, he gave birth to three premature babies under 30 weeks of pregnancy, and stayed in the hospital for a month even though he was in the early stages of his honeymoon, changing the baby to shine and discharging. At that time, there was no neonatal intensive care unit in the hospital, so I installed an incubator in the intensive care unit of the internal medicine, stayed up all night in front of it, and made and administered intravenous nutritional supplements with the nurse.
Doctor raised by Chung-Ang University Hospital and Samsung Medical Center
Teachers of Chung-Ang University did not just look at passionate students. He called a student who forgot about day and night and took care of his babies and persuaded him, “I hope I can return after a full-time medical practice at a bigger hospital for a year,” and contacted Professor Lee Sang-il of Samsung Medical Center and asked him to “grow lumber.”
However, Samsung Medical Center was a completely different world. It was indeed the middle ground. There were many patients with incurable diseases that I only saw in textbooks. I went to a full-time doctor, but I had no knowledge or experience than the majors who had been struggling with a difficult disease there. However, I couldn’t ask my major doctors this and that, so I had to learn it by myself in my spare time. After moving near the hospital, he left his first child, who was overcoming developmental disabilities, to his mother in Suwon, and stayed in the hospital day and night. I stopped by the house to change clothes for a while or to take a nap at dawn. At the end-of-year party of the Department of Pediatrics and Youth, he was even selected as the doctor who solved the most rice with meal tickets at a hospital restaurant.
When I went back to Chung-Ang University Hospital, Professor Lee Sang-il said, “Let’s see each other in the parking lot for a while,” and he said, “The doctor should work where he desperately wants to go,” adding, “I should go back to my alma mater, but I desperately want to work here half.”
Professor Kim took care of young patients as a medical assistant professor at Chung-Ang University Yongsan Hospital for three days out of a week, and studied environmental factors of atopic dermatitis between Chung-Ang University and Samsung Medical Center for four days. He visited about 100 homes for atopic dermatitis patients and collected house dust mites and received a doctorate for research on them.
By this time, he had a second child. As the first non-executive at Chung-Ang University Medical Center, he entrusted corporate tasks and wrote research proposals on lactobacillus and atopic dermatitis late at night, and suffered premature labor and had to repeat discharge and hospitalization. The second was also atopic dermatitis, but fortunately, it healed early.
While Professor Kim was living in a two-house for nearly three years, Professor Ahn Kang-mo of Samsung Medical Center asked to meet him at a coffee shop under the hospital. Professor Ahn suggested, “I hope you will replace Professor Lee Sang-il, who will retire next year.” Professor Kim flatly refused, saying, “I don’t think it’s my place to go,” and Chung-Ang University professors also said, “I will soon be a professor at the new hospital in Heukseok-dong…”He opposed it. Although he was a prospective professor at Chung-Ang University, he said he would take him as a non-executive teacher at Samsung. There was also a professor who was furious. Lee Sang-il and Professor Ahn Kang-mo met with professors at Chung-Ang University and persuaded them by begging, “I will raise you well as a global doctor in big water, so please trust me and leave it to me.”
Professor Kim stood out in academia as soon as he moved to Samsung Medical Center. He received the Asian Pediatric Research Association Young Researcher Award, the Korean Pediatric Youth Association Samarie Academic Award, the European Allergic Clinical Immunity Association Award, and the Korean Asthma Allergy Association Allegopama Academic Award, along with Professor Ahn Kang-mo, and published it in the British Dermatology Journal.
Professor Kim skipped an assistant professor in 2017 and was immediately appointed as an adjunct professor, and the following year, he went to National Jewish Health (NJH) in Denver, Colorado, and returned home from Professor Donald Leung, the world’s best at atopic dermatitis and food allergies. I am still having a joint research meeting with NJH researchers on video.
Professor Kim believes that thanks to several teachers, he has the happiness to treat babies well. The first teacher is a parent who experienced a generous love for her daughter. The mother sold her wedding ring for surgery when her “yukbal daughter” was four years old, and “daughter idiot father” put her “King of Cancer daughter” on a bicycle and went on a “battlefield” to instill love and confidence in her daughter. Professor Yoo Byung-hoon, Lee Dong-geun, Lim Min-seok, and Choi Eun-sang of Chung-Ang University Hospital taught them to open their eyes to pediatrics. Professor Lee Sang-il of Samsung Medical Center planted a medical philosophy that “there should be children on the basis of all judgments in difficult situations,” and Professor Ahn Kang-mo showed an example of how to overcome incurable diseases and organize charts by finding small clues like the nickname “Detective.” Professor Leung of the NJH taught me how to study as the world’s leading researcher. Professor Kim believes that his two daughters, young patients and parents from all over the country, are also teachers who made him.
Professor Kim treats pediatric allergic diseases with the belief that medical staff, guardians, and patients overcome them as a team, raising children with the child’s parents. I believe that mothers should fully talk to their doctors about difficulties and things that worsen symptoms while looking at their children, and doctors should openly talk to their mothers about all kinds of information, including new treatments.
Professor Kim said during the patient’s first medical treatment, “You’ve been having a hard time, right? But you raised her well,” starting with opening the mother’s heart, and trying to convey a smile and warm words no matter how hard she is to soothe and encourage the mother and child. Some carers ask, “I heard you’re doing psychiatric treatment, too?”
With oral immunotherapy, “Food allergy is completely resolved.”
Professor Kim is also famous for customized treatment for atopic dermatitis, but he is recognized for his unrivaled authority in oral immunotherapy for food allergies. It is a treatment that feeds very little allergy-causing food and allows the immune system to embrace it, eventually leading the patient to eat food. Currently, it has been applied to more than 200 children, and 40 to 50 percent have escaped from terrifying food fears. Along with Professor Ahn Kang-mo, he recently published the results of a study in the journal Allergy Asthma and Immunity Research that “90% of food allergy patients have become free to eat food through oral immunotherapy.”
Professor Kim currently manages the disease by remotely adjusting the food schedule with the patient’s mother due to COVID-19. Increase the amount of food that causes allergies for approximately nine months, and eat it completely at nine to ten months. These days, due to COVID-19, they remotely adjust and manage food schedules with patient mothers.
“When children go to snack bars with their friends and talk about the happiness of eating ramen and tteokbokki to their heart’s content, their mouths open automatically.”
Professor Kim celebrates by taking pictures with the child by giving a citation to the patient’s mother when the child passes the last gate of the oral method. Next week, the number of citation recipients will reach 100. When COVID-19 calms down next year, it plans to hold a “healing concert” with parents who were nervous with their babies. I hope that day will come soon..
