Dr. Ida Fonkoue

So you can experience it.

There's a secondhand, just like secondhand smoking.

You can have that secondhand trauma from watching somebody else being traumatized or hearing somebody else's story of trauma.

Thank you very much.

Well, I have a medical degree from Cameroon.

And this is a story I don't usually, I haven't really shared.

Growing up, I had a younger sister who had sickle cell disease.

And anybody who knows anything about sickle cell will know these are patients that are in the hospital every month.

When I started medical school, even if you're a first year medical student, you become the doctor of the family.

So I became this person who was responsible of my sister.

And unfortunately, she has passed away now.

But I was the one when I finally realized my father was tired to always carrying this burden of her being with her.

I said, hey, I can take over.

I can help.

So for the longest until I moved to the United States, because I'm originally from Cameroon,

I was like my sister's caretaker.

And I never, I could never sleep anytime she had one of her crises.

So in hindsight now, and I think, I feel like my father had an undiagnosed case of PTSD.

Because never knowing if this child is going to make it out of the hospital this time is very traumatic for a parent.

And that happens with parents with children with cancer or any type of chronic disease.