Greg Rice
He’s devoting his time to sick kids
Greg Rice didn’t get the memo that says medical students have to hole up in the library or their dingy apartments and devote every waking hour to study for fear of flunking the boards at the end of the most exhausting course of study professors have yet designed.
Instead, he takes the proverbial busman’s holiday and devotes his “spare” time to critically ill children and their families or to raising money and awareness to fight life-threatening diseases such as cancer.
Among his many projects, Rice has taken one of his avocations and devoted it to his future vocation. An amateur videographer, Rice has made films of pediatric oncology patients and their families.
“It’s always been patients that I’ve been close with, so I’ve known them for a couple years working there in the hospital with them and have gotten really close to their families,” he said.
A family with a boy, Kyle, whose prognosis included just two months to live wanted to take a trip to Mexico. The family was gone for a week, and Kyle was immediately hospitalized upon their return.
Rice knew that Kyle’s situation was dire and that the family had taken video on their trip but didn’t know what to do with it.
“That night I stayed in the hospital the whole night in the little playroom they have for the kids,” Rice said. “I stayed up all night making (the video). I finished it early in the morning and gave it to them, and he passed away that night watching the video. It was incredible.”
The video was shown at the funeral, and it’s something the family still uses to navigate the grieving process.
“It was important to them, and it was important for me that I got it done quickly,” Rice said.
As gut-wrenching as the experiences are, Rice became interested in this area of pediatrics after six years of participation in the UI Dance Marathon. The marathon raises money to provide families whose children are being treated at the Children’s Hospital with emotional and financial support. It focuses particularly on families whose children are critically ill.
“This will be my sixth year dancing with Dance Marathon, and I was on the leadership team,” Rice said.
That involvement led him on an interesting path from an undergraduate music (voice) major to becoming a medical student.
Rice has taken the path less traveled in his life, in more ways than one.
— Susan Harman
